Lufthansa prepares the twelfth company of the group (waiting for Ita Airways) – Corriere.it

Lufthansa is preparing to take off the twelfth airline of the group at the end of the summer, in the same days in which – if an agreement is reached and if everything goes smoothly – the European Commission may have to give the ok to enter German in Ita Airways. While engaged in delicate negotiations with the Italian Ministry of Economy, the giant of the skies works for the start of operations of City Airlines, the new regional division which will have its main base in Munich, the second hub in Germany after Frankfurt.

The Web site

There are still few details on the network of connections which should be launched at the end of August barring any hitches. The official site, launched without much fanfare and first discovered by the specialized German-language magazine Aerotelegraph, explains that City Airlines “intends to offer customers on short and medium routes an exceptional flight experience with Lufthansa quality”. The daily flights from Munich will be with “the main European cities”, with “remote areas” and towards the Lufthansa hubs for those who then intend to travel outside the Old Continent.

Planes

As for the fleet in the past weeks, the Lufthansa group has said it will initially consist of Airbus A319s, larger than the Embraer and Bombardier CRJs of the CityLine and Air Dolomiti subsidiaries. In this way it will be able to hire the 250 captains and flight attendants who previously worked for Germanwings, which closed in April 2020. The managing director of the Lufthansa group, Carsten Spohr, recently recalled that City Airlines serves to overcome future contractual limits : according to the agreement with the unions the other division, CityLine, will not be able to operate aircraft with more than 75 seats from 2026.

Documents

City Airlines is currently hiring administrative and ground operations staff. Pilots and flight attendants will be contracted when an agreement is reached with the trade unions (Cockpit for pilots) and in any case not before 30 June 2023, net of those needed to obtain the Air Operator Certificate. According to company documents consulted by the Courier it emerges that the «City Airlines GmbH» division was registered on 5 April 2022 with offices in Munich, a share capital of 25 thousand euros and with the names of Jens Fehlinger, 42, general manager of the CityLine division, and Marco Zenger, 33 , senior director of strategies at Lufthansa.

The motivations

“Lufthansa has lost a significant market share in traffic on continental European hubs in recent years,” he explains by e-mail to Courier a company spokesperson. “In a highly competitive and fast-changing environment in the short- and medium-haul segment, stable and sustainable solutions are therefore needed to make hub traffic profitable for the future,” he continues. For this reason «the “CityLine 2” project was born which then led to the creation of a carrier, City Airlines, necessary to obtain the Air Operator Certificate from the German Aviation Authority». Certificate that has not yet been obtained.

The brands

With work contracts less onerous than those existing for the large carriers of the agglomeration – this is the opinion of the insiders and analysts who follow the European giant of the skies – the aim is also to make the giant even more competitive in terms of operating costs . «City Airlines» would thus join Lufthansa, Lufthansa CityLine, Swiss, Edelweiss Air, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Eurowings Europe, Eurowings Discovery, Air Dolomiti, Lufthansa Cargo.