German budget airline Eurowings considers new routes in the Middle East

Carrier, which has suspended flights to Tel Aviv and Beirut, is redeploying their planes to other destinations, chief executive says

Eurowings is growing capacity in Dubai and will also introduce new services to Jeddah and Cairo. Photo: Eurowings

Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings is considering new destinations in the Middle East after expanding its services to Dubai and announcing routes to Jeddah and Cairo as part of its 2024-2025 winter schedule.

The German budget airline is studying the potential of new routes to Red Sea coastal cities in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to cater largely to leisure travellers, Eurowings' chief executive Jens Bischof told The National. Other possibilities include cities in Oman, the UAE and the wider Gulf.

“As a principle, we're looking at routes which are overpriced or underserved,” he said. “It's the Red Sea and the Gulf region … there are possibilities all the way through to Oman and there are possibilities in the Emirates which are still unexploited.”

The airline is also working with German tour operators and tourism boards in the region to identify where capacity is needed and how to curate attractive packages with “competitive” services, he added.

“Certainly nobody wants to spend a holiday on a construction site, there needs to be a certain maturity level which we need to find and it's all dependent on how these big projects will evolve over time to become a real solid piece of the destination portfolio,” Mr Bischof said, referring to Saudi Arabia's tourism projects along the Red Sea coast.

The airline is balancing its appetite for Middle East expansion with the availability of aircraft. The introduction of the A320 Neo to Eurowings' fleet will open more possibilities for the airline to fly non-stop and with a full payload to the Middle East.

“The bottom line is we want to develop the region in our route portfolio and we want to make use of our A320 Neos … having a good value for money product in the market is a perfect fit for tour operators, people visiting friends and relatives, price-sensitive business travellers and cost-conscious travellers.”

Eurowings, which marked 30 years of operations last year, flies to more than 100 destinations in 50 countries with an all-Airbus fleet of A319s and the classic and Neo versions of the A320 and A321 single-aisle jets.

It operates from five bases in Germany including Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Stuttgart and Berlin. The company has a fleet of about 100 aircraft and a workforce of about 5,000.

Israel-Gaza war

Eurowings has suspended flights to Tel Aviv until December 15, due to Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon. It has also suspended flights to Beirut until further notice.

“If we look at our operation, we, of course, see a revenue impact since we are not able to fly to Tel Aviv and Beirut. But our exposure is fairly limited. We are not losing millions and millions. It's a single-digit million number in revenue that we're seeing, which makes the overall impact on our results and our network overseeable,” Mr Bischoff said.

“We are developing the region, so we have alternatives. We do have possibilities to fly somewhere else and that is helping us mitigate this painful situation.”

The airline is redeploying these aircraft to other destinations such as Erbil, Hurghada, Morocco and the Canary Islands, he said.

After starting flights to Dubai from Berlin and Stuttgart in October last year, the airline will double its flight frequencies to the emirate from Germany as part of its winter schedule.

Eurowings will introduce daily flights from Berlin to Dubai and up to four weekly flights from Stuttgart. Cologne-Bonn will be added as a new departure point to Dubai, with three flights per week.

Starting this winter, Eurowings will also operate three weekly flights from Berlin and Cologne-Bonn to Jeddah, with the new service expected to cater to passengers.

“There's a good chunk of business travel, especially related to the expansion projects, be it Neom or AlUla, there are lots of developments that are very attractive for business travellers,” Mr Bischoff said.

There is also “a very touristic curious crowd here in Germany” that will help fill planes to Jeddah, as will a chunk of passengers from Berlin that are visiting family and friends, he added.

The load factor, a measure of how well an airline fills available seats, is “beyond the 75 per cent mark”, which is “more than promising” for this introductory period, and there is room for improvement, he said.

Eurowings has also begun serving Cairo, with two weekly flights from Dusseldorf.

“This region is so super-attractive and there are so many possibilities,” Mr Bischoff said.