The new airline Eurowings Europe Ltd. will start with Maltese certificates in the 2021/22 winter flight schedule. The new company will succeed the Austrian company Eurowings Europe GmbH, which will be closed after a transition phase. Barring unforeseen delays, the first Airbus jets will switch to the Maltese register in November 2022.

For a short period of time, both Eurowings Europe GmbH (Austria) and its successor Eurowings Europe Ltd. (Malta) are active in parallel. Similar to the relocation of the Austrian Laudamotion GmbH to the Maltese Lauda Europe Ltd. the aircraft will be successively re-registered. The Ryanair Group completed this process within a few weeks and then returned Laudamotion AOC and operating license to the Austrian authorities.

The Lufthansa Group is taking more time for the “AOC move” of Eurowings Europe. It is currently planned that the 19 machines will be re-registered between November 1, 2022 and April 1, 2023. In the summer flight schedule of 2022, the current Austrian aviation company no longer be active as an airline, but the Maltese successor have taken over the services completely.

In the first step, it is envisaged that the six Airbus A319 and 13 A320 that are currently entered in the OE register on Eurowings Europe GmbH will switch to the 9H register and then be taken over by Eurowings Europe Ltd. operate. Any newcomers should no longer be registered in the Alpine Republic, but in the Mediterranean country. Gradually, the fleet of the Austrian EW offshoot will drop to zero.

The Eurowings Europe bases in Salzburg, Pristina, Prague, Stockholm-Arlanda, Palma de Mallorca and Vienna are affected by the changeover. There are currently no plans to set up a base at Luqa Airport (Malta), but it is at least not ruled out in principle that Eurowings could start flights to Malta at some point. This destination is currently not on the route network.

In a second step, further aircraft are to be transferred to the future AOC of Eurowings Europe Ltd. switch. These are needed for the planned growth in Stockholm-Arlanda, Prague and at new bases that are planned to be built but have not yet been communicated. It is still completely open whether it will be a brand new A320neo/A321neo or whether one or the other aircraft will be taken over from the German sister company.

For regulatory reasons, Eurowings Europe Ltd. maintain the company headquarters in Malta. This is located in Swieqi - around 15 minutes drive from Luqa Airport. In the future, those employees who have to be on site for official reasons will do their work there. Some tasks for which there is no such regulation are to be carried out by a small team from Vienna.