The Lufthansa Group plans to tweak its short-haul flight operations within Europe. The company will launch City Airlines, operating under the Lufthansa City brand, to handle a growing portion of regional operations from its hubs at Frankfurt and Munich. And, as with some of the other operating airlines within the group, this appears to be focused on trimming operating costs more than anything else.
With City Airlines, we want to create prospects for the coming decades and secure sustainable jobs in Germany. This is the only way for us to grow and sustainably strengthen the hubs in Munich and Frankfurt.
– Jens Fehlinger, Managing Director of City Airlines
In describing the goal of sustainable jobs and sustainable hubs, City Airlines is not talking about carbon emissions (though there’s a nod to that later). Instead, this appears a rather bold attempt to adjust wage scales for a subset of flights. The company notes “Talks with the social partners to agree on conditions for competitive and secure jobs have already begun.”
The Group notes that City Airlines will operate alongside CityLine, which currently mostly operates approximately 7,000 monthly flights on smaller regional jets, also providing connectivity to the Munich and Frankfurt hubs. CityLine also operates some A320-family aircraft, which could transition to the City Airlines fleet. Employees at CityLine will also be given the opportunity to switch to the new operation.
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City Airlines will launch with a fleet of A319 aircraft. The carrier is also evaluating the Airbus A220 or Embraer jets for its future fleet. Lufthansa currently operates 35 A319 planes, with an average age of 21 years. CityLine operates another 13 A319s of similar vintage. Replacement is not an urgent need, but a fleet refresh would drive lower fuel burn and emissions with similar capacity.
From a passenger experience roughly nothing should change, at least in the near term. The A319s will operate more or less as they do today, though with “City” also painted on the fuselage. Unlike Eurowings, with its different on-board experience and sales channels, City Airlines is all about appearing as Lufthansa to passengers, while operating with crew on different contract terms. Whether it succeeds at that better than Joon of the AFKL Group remains to be seen.
Staff recruitment will begin next month, with flights anticipated to launch in Summer 2024.
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