Low cost travel between Europe to the Americas is a hot market right now. We’re seeing low fares unimaginable before and more and more airlines trying to jump in on the low-budget bandwagon.
We wrote about Level earlier this month. International Airlines Group, the company that owns British Airways, launched the new “low cost longhaul airline brand” to initially operate out of Barcelona, Spain to LA, Oakland, Buenos Aires and Punta Cana with prices as low as $211 round-trip. Air France-KLM Group is also setting up Boost after revealing that its French mainline division is losing money on 35 percent of its routes. Then we have a few new budget airlines such as Norwegian Air and WOW Air that regularly offer very cheap fares and are continuously expanding.
Now Lufthansa is looking to jump in the frenzy. Skift reports that they are planning to add long-distance airplanes to its low-cost Eurowings division as competition for transatlantic routes intensifies. Eurowings already flies one U.S. route, three times per week from Cologne to Miami, as well as several to the Caribbean, including Cuba and the Dominican Republic. They’ve already announced possible new U.S. destinations, including Orlando, Las Vegas and Seattle.
“We need aircraft beyond the seven we have,” said Lufthansa Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr, referring to the Airbus A330s based in Cologne that Eurowings uses for inter-continental leisure flights.
Long-haul traffic has been dominated by wide-body jets such as the Airbus’s A330, but new single-aisle jets with longer ranges are making it easier for carriers to reduce costs on less-traveled routes across the Atlantic. Lower costs and a heated battle for a share of the market translates to lower fares for travelers.
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Your article is actually incorrect. Eurowings actually already flies CGN-MIA 3x weekly. Probably want to update to reflect that.
Thank you! Updated.
Also Eurowings has already announced, and made available for booking, Las Vegas, Orlando and Seattle.
They also flew to Boston, but it flopped and was discontinued after about 2 months.