Didn't see this one coming:

This morning, some top brass of Lufthansa were visiting Brussels Airlines headquarters.

A first surprising decision came out of this meeting in the early afternoon: Brussels Airlines would get two Airbus A340 aircraft to be operated on long-haul routes on behalf of Eurowings. These aircraft, coming from the Lufthansa fleet, will be painted in Eurowings colours and will be based in Dusseldorf. However, the cockpit and the cabin will be staffed by Brussels Airlines crew, who will need to have a good knowledge of German language.

Source
http://www.aviation24.be/airlines/break ... -aircraft/

In the german press, there was recently something about 2 340 Cityline (Jump) due to fly for Eurowings. I wonder if they are these aircraft ?

Hopefully LH will be able to oversee their complicated pilot situation. At least for the customer it stays simple, seeing only LH and EW, so from a marketing perspective there seems to be no problem.
We have classic LH mainline. Then the A 340s operated by Cityline under LH brand. EW operated by AB. EW longhaul operated by SunExpress. Then normal EW. I guess Germanwings is stil a thing. And now EW operated by SN? Of Course they are in the middle of massive expansion and acquisition, but they should soon streamline everything.

According to some sources on luchtzak.be, Eurowings will adapt to the hybrid Brussels Airlines model. LH noticed that SN is very successful and will change Eurowings into the sort of airline that Brussels airlines is at the moment, a hybrid airlines with both low cost and full service on board, therefor Eurowings will announce a true business class in the near future.

Eurowings by Brussels Airlines will start initially with 2 A340's based in DUS but operated with the SN AOC and Belgian registered planes, each IATA season 2 additional planes will be added so they'll have 6 A340's at the start of IATA S19.

Is anybody else confused by the sheer number of special operating structures within the various entities at LH?

Cityline
Jump
Brussels airlines
Tyrolean airways
LH mainline
Austrian
Air Berlin wet lease
Eurowings
Germanwings
Air Dolomiti

Revenue management must be a headache!

Seems ripe for some consolidation and simplification.

SuperTwin wrote:

Is anybody else confused by the sheer number of special operating structures within the various entities at LH?

Cityline
Jump
Brussels airlines
Tyrolean airways
LH mainline
Austrian
Air Berlin wet lease
Eurowings
Germanwings
Air Dolomiti

Revenue management must be a headache!

Seems ripe for some consolidation and simplification.

Tyrolean doesn't exist anymore it was merged into Austrian. Jump and LH Cityline are the same entity (Jump doesn't exist).

You're also missing:

Eurowings Europe
Swiss International Air Lines
Swiss Global Air Lines
Edelweiss
+LGW on the Air Berlin side

SuperTwin wrote:

Seems ripe for some consolidation and simplification.

Each country loves their brands, rebranding each single airline to Lufthansa or Eurowings wouldn't sit well.

Which A340? 300 or 600?

Slash787 wrote:

Which A340? 300 or 600?

300

Then there is also SunExpress and (soon) Niki.

I believe this setup with SN is an effort to simplify things. Instead of creating a new AOC, they are building on an existing one, which makes more sense in my opinion (also considering, EW and SN will be merged in due course, but it is not priority number 1 at the moment).

Are there any destinations where Belgian AOC would make it harder to get rights to fly from Germany? Or will they use the SN planes only to fly to destinations where it wouldn’t be an issues (USA for example)?

konkret wrote:

Are there any destinations where Belgian AOC would make it harder to get rights to fly from Germany?

Most Africa, a good market for SN.

As you say, a Belgian airline can fly from Germany to the US and some other places, so they need to retain the Belgian AOC

GianiDC wrote:

Hopefully LH will be able to oversee their complicated pilot situation. At least for the customer it stays simple, seeing only LH and EW, so from a marketing perspective there seems to be no problem.
We have classic LH mainline. Then the A 340s operated by Cityline under LH brand. EW operated by AB. EW longhaul operated by SunExpress. Then normal EW. I guess Germanwings is stil a thing. And now EW operated by SN? Of Course they are in the middle of massive expansion and acquisition, but they should soon streamline everything.

I do not have a link, but in one LH thread someone mentioned with the pilot tariff negotiations solved long haul CityLine would be returned into mainline LH, but at the moment I have no reference for this.

I'm bummed that the planes will be in Eurowings livery.
While it's a nice livery, I'd much prefer to see them flying in Brussels paint!

AA737-823 wrote:

I'm bummed that the planes will be in Eurowings livery.
While it's a nice livery, I'd much prefer to see them flying in Brussels paint!

You're not the only one who would love to see these in SN livery but they're not birds for SN (ok technically they are for SN but they wont operate for SN), they are for EW so it makes sense to have them in their livery. I think at this moment we can be fortunate enough that the SN brand is quite strong and that it's going nowhere (at least for the foreseeable future) here in Belgium and that EW will be turned into an SN kind of airline rather than SN into an EW kind of airline. Even in an EW livery it will be nice to have some A340's on the Belgian register again.

Apparently 6 of the a340-300 of Lufthansa will be transferred to Eurowings. What will those routes be replaced with? They only have 10 and are now left with 4? I know San Diego will be using the a340-300 next year..so I was curious to how many and which routes will be affected?

I am confused, one question, why?

What benefit is there to operate a Belgium registered plane with a Belgium crew (up front and in the back) from a German airfield? What are we missing here? Especially since this is a new set-up, it is not that SN had these planes laying around and now they are being used productively.

Yahnih wrote:

Apparently 6 of the a340-300 of Lufthansa will be transferred to Eurowings. What will those routes be replaced with? They only have 10 and are now left with 4? I know San Diego will be using the a340-300 next year..so I was curious to how many and which routes will be affected?

They have 18 A340-300s with 2 currently parked according to https://www.lh-taufnamen.de/lufthansa/
6 of those are currently operated by LH Cityline with fewer premium seats in Star Alliance livery. So I guess the 6 A340s to be transferred are the high density ones operated by Cityline.

Dutchy wrote:

I am confused, one question, why?

What benefit is there to operate a Belgium registered plane with a Belgium crew (up front and in the back) from a German airfield? What are we missing here? Especially since this is a new set-up, it is not that SN had these planes laying around and now they are being used productively.

SN has a really low cost base and is part of LH Group, so they use the lowest cost base for EW longhaul. I don´t know if SN has lower costs than Sun Express which currently operates EW. I think LH Group makes this move to quickly fill the void left by AB.

Sorry if I am late . Do we get a chance to see one A343 in SNB colours ?

I'm booked to hopefully fly on it in March, VIE-DUS

dennys wrote:

Sorry if I am late . Do we get a chance to see one A343 in SNB colours ?

No, both A343 will have the EW-Livery. The first one was spotted yesterday in the new livery in Rome.

EW livery, as reported elsewhere. http://skyliner-aviation.de/viewphoto.m ... icid=10107

We have classic LH mainline. Then the A 340s operated by Cityline under LH brand. EW operated by AB. EW longhaul operated by SunExpress. Then normal EW. I guess Germanwings is stil a thing. And now EW operated by SN? Of Course they are in the middle of massive expansion and acquisition, but they should soon streamline everything.

And you missed a few others. The customer only sees the EW brand but for us enthusiasts it is extremely confusing. EW is basically the brand under which LH is throwing pretty much everything right now, as airlines operating under wet lease on behalf of EW.

What benefit is there to operate a Belgium registered plane with a Belgium crew (up front and in the back) from a German airfield? What are we missing here? Especially since this is a new set-up, it is not that SN had these planes laying around and now they are being used productively.

Given that LH cityline already operates A343's, I don't see the operational benefit either. But that's probably the wrong way to look at it. This is likely a labor negotiating tactic by LH management versus Cityline pilots. Sending the message that, if you don't accept this or that cut, we'll just shift your jobs to SN. Ultimately that's IMO the underlying idea behind the operational puzzle that EW is - play airlines & pilot groups against each other.

I really don't understand how Eurowings will be able to make money from old, fuel-guzzling A340-300s. The margins are far tighter.

SKAirbus wrote:

I really don't understand how Eurowings will be able to make money from old, fuel-guzzling A340-300s. The margins are far tighter.

The (implied) inefficiencies of A340-300s are greatly exaggerated on airliners.net

Aaaaaand booked!

Here's a good photo of the EW livery on the A340



https://twitter.com/eurowings/status/952850452844089344

qf789 wrote:

https://twitter.com/eurowings/status/952850452844089344

Nice!!

Registrations for the first 2 Brussels Airlines operated Airbus A340-313 deployed from DUS will be:

OO-SCW
OO-SCX

In line with the Sabena-based registration system in use at SN.

Have they announced any other routes for the two 343s besides DUS-JFK at this point? I think I saw DUS-LAX mentioned in some article a while ago, but nothing has been loaded.

Maybe Eurowings will use these A340's on the CGN-SEA route this summer.

FSDan wrote:

Have they announced any other routes for the two 343s besides DUS-JFK at this point? I think I saw DUS-LAX mentioned in some article a while ago, but nothing has been loaded.

EWR, PUJ and CUN from DUS

Someone83 wrote:

FSDan wrote:

Have they announced any other routes for the two 343s besides DUS-JFK at this point? I think I saw DUS-LAX mentioned in some article a while ago, but nothing has been loaded.

EWR, PUJ and CUN from DUS

When does EWR start? I don't see anything on Wikipedia (generally a decent source for airline routes) and in looking at the summer schedule it still appears DUS-EWR will be operated by a LH 333.

Someone83 wrote:

FSDan wrote:

Have they announced any other routes for the two 343s besides DUS-JFK at this point? I think I saw DUS-LAX mentioned in some article a while ago, but nothing has been loaded.

EWR, PUJ and CUN from DUS

If there are only two frames, DUS-JFK and DUS-EWR will take both, unless more are planned. It would make more sense to operate EWR with an A359 in a W pattern (MUC-EWR-DUS-EWR-MUC); MUC-EWR is switching to an A359 beginning in S18. From what I have seen, a lone A333 is still at DUS to fly DUS-EWR.

As for why these A343s, they have roughly the same fuel economy as a B772ER, but the A343s are likely owned unencumbered. What are the lease terms for the ex-BR and QR A332s flown by SunExpress Germany?

That said, even though I want to see the A343 at JFK, I'm surprised that DUS-JFK isn't being flown with an A332 of SunExpress Germany with the A343s deployed on longer routes. That said, it does say that the number of A343s used could be increased to six, perhaps allowing the Cityline A343 ops to be folded fully under EW, although a problem is that neither JFK nor LAX appears operable in a W configuration to get them to and from FRA.

Regarding the registrations---those two registrations were once former Sabena A342s last flown by Royal Jordanian until they timed out.

zkojq wrote:

SKAirbus wrote:

I really don't understand how Eurowings will be able to make money from old, fuel-guzzling A340-300s. The margins are far tighter.

The (implied) inefficiencies of A340-300s are greatly exaggerated on airliners.net

Exactly this. If A340-300 is on the air 12 hour/day/25 days/month and use 1000 litre extra fuel/hour versus 789, it cost about 200 000$/month extra fuel. You still have extra 500 000$ for other costs after lease payments.

LH knows exactly how well paid for 343's work at Edelweiss, hence this deployment with Eurowings. No cheaper way to operate longhaul than this. Frames are in immaculate technical condition and paid for.

There is a rumour that the A340 won't now be starting the DUS-VIE flights until sometime in March. My ticket still shows A340 but can anyone confirm?

opticalilyushin wrote:

There is a rumour that the A340 won't now be starting the DUS-VIE flights until sometime in March. My ticket still shows A340 but can anyone confirm?

Just our luck. Are you around about the 17th Feb as well?

March 5th. On other websites it still shows as A340. I would cancel my ticket but i don't think they do refunds for most tickets :/

currently all the A340 flights from EW (inner EU) are gone from booking platforms! is there any info on the flights and if they actually are operated with 343?

i remember they first were extremely expensive, then they were cheap and now they are gone.

any info welcome!

Here's what's been reported by routesonline. Interesting to see a DUS-VIE flight operated by a wide-body.

Dusseldorf – Palma Mallorca
EW9574/9575
08MAR18 – 17MAR18 Day x127
18MAR18 – 24MAR18 Day x1

EW9568/9569
23MAR18 – 24MAR18

Dusseldorf – Vienna
EW9778/9779
14MAR18 – 22MAR18

EW9780/9781
19MAR18

https://www.routesonline.com/news/38/ai ... arch-2018/

Why the route to Vienna? What's the point of this?

I booked the original DUS-VIE flights for Feb so was gutted when the delay was announced.

Training flights for the crew are the reason why they’re using them on european routes.

I tried to book in this period but the website is still is a mess ... it shows a 737-800 operated by Brussels Airlines ... and as I would have bought a BEST fare, when I go to the seat selection step, it shows the typical European business class arrangement of 12 seat in the first 3 rows. Happy to pay for a return trip but would not do it while the booking process continues to be a joke ...

As far as why these routes: I think this is also capacity driven. At least on VIE DUS, EW operates multiple returns per day and every time I have travelled the flights were full (including in BEST).

DUS-VIE delayed yet again. Now due to commence mid April.