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Lufthansa Group has today announced that two of its airlines will be adding significant new services to the US as the aircraft monolith looks to expand its flights out of Munich and Seattle from 2020.
The airlines in question are Lufthansa and Eurowings and the group has described its new plans as the “expansion of its tourist-orientated long-haul program from its hubs in Munich and Frankfurt”.
From summer 2020 Lufthansa will offer new flights from Munich to Seattle and Detroit while Eurowings will be adding services from Munich to Las Vegas and Orlando and services from Frankfurt to Phoenix and Anchorage. (This is in addition to the Zurich – Washington D.C. service which SWISS announced it would be starting up last week).
Lufthansa Group New Flights From Munich To The US
From 6 April 2020, Eurowings will operate a 2x/week service between Munich and Las Vegas on the following schedule:
EW1200 MUC 11:45 – 14:40 LAS (Mon & Fri)
EW1201 LAS 16:30 – 12:55+1 day MUC (Mon & Fri)
This route is scheduled to be operated by a Eurowings Airbus A330-200.
From 7 April 2020, Eurowings will operate a 3x/week service between Munich and Orlando on the following schedule:
EW1226 MUC 09:10 – 13:55 MCO (Tue, Thu & Sun)
EW1227 MCO 15:45 – 07:20+1 day MUC (Tue, Thu & Sun)
This route is scheduled to be operated by a Eurowings Airbus A330-200.
From 4 May 2020, Lufthansa will operate a 5x/week service between Munich and Detroit on the following schedule:
LH448 MUC 12:40 – 15:45 DTW (Mon & Wed-Sat)
LH449 DTW 17:35 – 07:45+1 day MUC (Mon & Wed-Sat)
This route is scheduled to be operated by a Lufthansa Airbus A350-900.
From 1 June 2020, Lufthansa will operate a 6x/week service between Munich and Seattle on the following schedule:
LH488 MUC 15:30 – 16:55 SEA (Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun)
LH489 SEA 18:45 – 13:50+1 day MUC (Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun)
This route is scheduled to be operated by a Lufthansa Airbus A350-900.
Lufthansa Group New Flights From Frankfurt To The US
From 29 April 2020, Eurowings will operate a 5x/week service between Frankfurt and Phoenix on the following schedule:
EW1284 FRA 14:05 – 17:05 PHX (Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri & Sun)
EW1285 PHX 18:55 – 15:05+1 day FRA (Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri & Sun)
This route is scheduled to be operated by a Eurowings Airbus A330-200.
From 1 June 2020, Eurowings will operate a 3x/week service between Frankfurt and Anchorage on the following schedule:
EW1268 FRA 10:30 – 11:55 ANC (Mon, Thu & Sat)
EW1269 ANC 13:55 – 10:45+1 day FRA (Mon, Thu & Sat)
This route is scheduled to be operated by a Eurowings Airbus A330-200.
Thoughts
The destinations to which the new services will be operating support Lufthansa’s assertion that this is an expansion of its tourist-orientated long-haul program as none of the cities being served have a strong United Airlines presence which could easily connect passengers on to other US cities – Lufthansa clearly sees these services as being “point to point.
Having said that, it’s interesting to see Lufthansa schedule its 48-Business Class seat A350 on its routes to Detroit and Seattle (as opposed to its 36-seat version), as by doing so it’s giving up 38 Economy Class seats which I’d expect it to need on a “tourist-heavy” route.
Clearly, Lufthansa expects a decent amount of Business traffic on these routes too.
As for Eurowings…
I haven’t seen inside their newly reconfigured aircraft yet but I understand that while the Economy Class cabin can be exceptionally cramped (some seats have as little as 30″ of pitch and all seats are just 17″ wide), the Business Class cabin offers 2-2-2 seating just like Lufthansa.
I’m not sure if that’s more of an embarrassment to Lufthansa or a positive for Eurowings.
Bottom Line
As always, I’m delighted to see more transatlantic services being offered – the more flights we see scheduled the more trouble airline will have to fill their aircraft and that just puts downward pressure on airfares.
It’s funny how we’ve become used to hearing the CEOs of legacy airlines complain about how the likes of Norwegian have an adverse effect on the fares that can be changed and yet here we have one of their very own essentially copying what Norwegian has been doing for the past few years.
Still, they say that flattery is the highest form of praise so I guess management over at Norwegian should be very proud right about now.
