With ticket bookings now open, Germany’s flag carrier Lufthansa Group is due to launch Lufthansa City Airlines, a new subsidiary offering short and medium-haul flights and “fully integrated into the feeder network of the Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt and Munich” according to a press release.
Under the code VL, the new airline’s first flight will take place on 26 June 2024, from Munich to Birmingham, UK. Throughout 2024, a suite of domestic routes will come online, serving Berlin, Bremen, Cologne Bonn, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Hannover. The only international routes set to arrive before the end of the year are Bordeaux in France, and another UK destination: Manchester.
But those will be added to in 2025. France can expect to see routes to Paris Charles de Gaulle, Toulouse-Blagnac and Lyon-Saint Exupéry. Bilbao and Barcelona in Spain are also on the list. And that’s not all: Belgrade, Bucharest, Dublin, Gothenburg-Landvetter, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Luxembourg, Krakow, Oslo, Prague, Sofia, and Zagreb are all anticipated to be on Lufthansa City Airlines’ schedule.
Controversy
It’s not all plain flying though. Critics point out that Lufthansa City Airlines has a remit suspiciously similar to an existing Lufthansa subsidiary with a strikingly similar name and a very familiar livery: Lufthansa CityLine – which also flies short and medium haul.
The creation of the new entity, founded in 2022 and certified with its Air Operator Certificate (AOC) in 2023, is a loophole that allows Lufthansa to work around “restrictive terms in pilot agreements, thereby lowering labour costs and increasing labour flexibility”. say unions and the Centre for Aviation (CAPA).
Pilot union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) has claimed Lufthansa Group is riding roughshod over contractual conditions and that pilots, particularly those at CityLine, are being invited to apply for new jobs at City Airlines through negotiated voluntary switching.
Gelebte Solidarität zwischen Gewerkschaften 🤝 Die VC unterstützt die @UFOeV im Tarifkonflikt mit der @lufthansa. pic.twitter.com/Dx1GsxdQmW
— Vereinigung Cockpit (@vcockpit) March 12, 2024
“The only way to grow”
Lufthansa’s rationale for the new subsidiary is different. It will give the group a competitive edge, the company says, entering markets not covered by CityLine and cutting costs.
“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 said last year.
The City Airlines fleet will be composed of Airbus A320neo and Airbus A319-100 aircraft, configured for economy and business class seating, with no first class.
