With effect from 1st January 2009, Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG is selling its shares in the low-cost airline Germanwings to Deutsche Lufthansa AG which will, in future, be running the low-cost airline under the umbrella of Lufthansa Commercial Holding. The supervisory board of Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG approved the sale on Monday.
The sale means that Eurowings can focus on its profile as a regional carrier and will allow Germanwings to develop its low-cost model further as part of the Lufthansa group.
Germanwings has previously been a 100%-owned subsidiary of Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG. The sale will not be associated with any immediate changes in the operational business activities of the two airlines.
The transfer of ownership is to take place at the end of the year. It has been agreed not to disclose the purchase price.
“Following a successful start-up phase, the job of building up the low-cost airline has been completed. It has given me great pleasure to follow the positive development of Germanwings since its first flight on 27 October 2002. Eurowings will now be able to concentrate more intensively on its core business in the regional segment”, says Friedrich-Wilhelm Weitholz, chairman of the management board of Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG. Weitholz has stepped down from the management board of Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG and will be moving onto the company’s supervisory board. In this way, he will also be associated with the company in the future and will be supervising its further development.
As part of the restructuring, Thomas Winkelmann, management spokesman for Germanwings, will be stepping down from the management board of Eu-rowings Luftverkehrs AG and concentrating on the further development of Germanwings.
In order to be able to focus even more on the heightened demands of man-aging Eurowings, Dr. Joachim Klein, who has until now also been managing director of Germanwings, will be concentrating on his activities as a member of the management board of Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG. He will be oversee-ing the sale of the low-cost airline to Lufthansa until the end of the year, when he will retire from the management of Germanwings. “Dr. Joachim Klein has done an outstanding job of building up Germanwings. Eurowings is happy that Dr. Joachim Klein will now once again be devoting his entire en-ergies and experience exclusively to his activities on the management board”, said Weitholz.
During the current winter season, Germanwings is operating a fleet of 25 Airbus A319s. During the past year, the low-cost airline carried around eight million passengers and achieved a turnover of around 630 million euros. The company was launched only six years ago with five Airbuses and has since managed to build up and secure market leadership in several locations.
Eurowings currently operates a fleet of 35 aircraft, 15 of the type BAe and 20 CRJs. The regional airline carried 2.7 million passengers during the past year.
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