Articles tagged “eurowings”

Lufthansa Group was terrified it would repeat past mistakes, so it built an airline to compete with Norwegian Air and other low-cost, long-haul carriers. Now that airline, called Eurowings, is kaput, and Lufthansa can chalk up another mistake.

This winter is going to be a difficult one for Europe's aviation sector, but Lufthansa's mostly solid business, despite Eurowings, means that it can weather the challenging operating environment better than most.

Air France-KLM is being much more cautious than its rivals on the subject of low-cost long-haul. Joon isn't the long-term answer and Air France-Klm needs to come up with something better if it is going to compete against Norwegian and others.

Lufthansa Group has been more insulated from low-cost competition than most of Europe's legacy airlines. That's quickly changing, and the company needs to get its plans in order. It must find a way to turn its Eurowings operation into a more nimble competitor with lower costs.

Lufthansa Group is about a decade late in realizing the European low cost carriers are a massive threat. But it's good to see the company trying to do something about it and expanding its Eurowings operation.

We believe that a partnership between Norwegian and Ryanair makes sense and could take off with few complications. But we don't believe converting long-term rivals to new friends is done easily in aviation. Still, if anyone could argue until this gets done, it would be O'Leary--with credit going to Willie Walsh. That alone is a remarkable thing.