In a few days, the new Lufthansa branch Eurowings Discover will take off for the first official scheduled flight. The ambitious project has been sharply criticized by employee representatives because it is flying outside of the Lufthansa group wage agreement. To be precise: EW Discover has no collective agreement at all.

The first flight is scheduled to take place on July 24, 2021 with an Airbus A330 from Frankfurt am Main to Zanzibar via Mombasa. The “inner workings” of the machines are largely identical to the previous Eurowings product. It is only noticeable that the logos have been expanded to include the addition “Discover”. Otherwise there are no significant surprises for the passengers.

Replacement for former daughter Condor

Lufthansa wants to bundle tourism under the Eurowings Discover brand. To put it simply, a “replacement” is being built for the former Condor vacation flight department. These were sold many years ago and thus largely withdrawn from the tourist business. It is obvious that one is looking for a confrontation with the former daughter. Lufthansa tried - initially in vain - to terminate the feeder contracts and "double" numerous routes.

Eurowings Discover is expected to grow extremely quickly, as the ten Airbus A2021 and eleven Airbus A320 will be operated by mid-330. First of all, long-haul flights will be started before medium-haul flights - initially from Frankfurt - will be served from November 2021. Five A2022s will initially be stationed in Munich from May 320.

A spokesman told Aero.de that the A320 fleet of five should be distributed between Frankfurt am Main and Munich. With these, destinations like the Canary Islands are to be controlled. It is still unclear to what extent this will have an impact on the previous services offered by Lufthansa and Eurowings. In any case, the sister companies are also used as feeders for the EW-Discover long-haul route.

Start-up, but little new

At first glance, the new establishment looks like a copy of the previous Eurowings long-haul offer. This failed and resulted in heavy losses for the crane group. SunExpress Deutschland flew some A330s for Eurowings, but the company was closed in the wake of the corona crisis. The sister company Germanwings also only exists on paper.

At Lufthansa it is very important to emphasize that Eurowings Discover, which is formally called EW Discover GmbH, is a start-up. The carrier was completely rebuilt, starting from a blank sheet of paper. With regard to the on-board product, however, they haven't made too much effort to offer something completely new. Ticket sales are currently carried out by Eurowings and Lufthansa. Your own homepage is more of a calling card for potential applicants.