Eurowings fleet expansion project nears completion

By August 28, 2018 January 16th, 2020 General News

Eurowings is close to completing a project to integrate 77 former-Air Berlin aircraft into its fleet after nine months.

The jets were previously in service for Air Berlin and were sold off or leased out by the respective owners following the airline’s bankruptcy in August 2017.

Eurowings has been integrating 77 aircraft into its fleet over the past nine months, with the final aircraft to be joining; an Airbus A320 from lessor Magnetar with 174 seats.

Commenting on the announcement, Eurowings CEO Thorsten Dirks said: “Our integration project, which has been managed in record time, is unprecedented in European aviation.”

“Air Berlin was in the market for 40 years. In less than 40 weeks, millions of passengers have access again to a large proportion of the flight capacities that were lost due to Air Berlin’s exit and as a result we prevented the collapse of German air traffic,“ he continued.

The airline has also hired a number of new employees, with 3,000 new jobs in the cockpit, cabin and on the ground, with former Air Berlin employees among the new staff.

Due to its extra capacity, Eurowings says it is now the top airline at six German airports: Cologne, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and now Hamburg, Nuremberg and Hanover as well.

The airline is also recording strong growth at other locations, in some cases up by more than 30%. In total, more than 19 million passengers have taken off with Eurowings this summer, around 17% more than in the same period last year.

Eurowings has also taken measures to increase stability in flight operations, with Dirks explaining: “All these measures have already made a noticeable improvement to our flight operations, given that we experienced a difficult start to the summer with an unusually high number of flight cancellations.

“We will continue to mobilise additional resources and staff over the next few months so that we can return as quickly as possible to offering what our customers rightly expect of us: safe, comfortable but also punctual and reliable flights.”

Reflecting on the investment in expanding Eurowings’ capacity this year, he concluded: “In years to come, anyone looking back on 2018 will see that this was the year in which Eurowings laid the foundations for a successful future.”


Written by: Kimberley Young

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