Eurowings details wet-lease plans to replace Air Berlin lift

Eurowings (EW, Dusseldorf) will wet-lease two A340-300s from Belgian sister carrier Brussels Airlines (SN, Brussels National) starting from the end of March 2018. The plan has been confirmed by Brussels Airlines to Belgium's De Tijd after details leaked to the Belgian press following a meeting between Brussels Airlines management and trade unions.

The two aircraft will be sourced from Lufthansa's current fleet and be based in Dusseldorf for new routes to destinations such as Los Angeles Int'l and New York, routes which were previously served by bankrupt Air Berlin (AB, Berlin Tegel). Eurowings currently does not operate long-haul services itself, but instead wet-leases six A330-200s from Sun Express Deutschland (XG, Frankfurt Int'l), with a seventh such aircraft due soon. The Lufthansa Group low-cost carrier is planning to launch long-haul services from Dusseldorf to Punta Cana on November 8 using a B767-300(ER) aircraft operated by TUI fly (Germany) (X3, Hanover). It plans to serve Punta Cana twice weekly and Varadero weekly this winter season.

According to schedule data, Eurowings will also wet-lease PrivatAir (Switzerland)'s single B767-300(ER) HB-JJF (msn 27613) for the Punta Cana route from Dusseldorf between March 25 and April 29.

Regarding Eurowings' short-haul plans for the upcoming winter season, chief executive Thorsten Dirks told Süddeutsche Zeitung on October 17 that it would only wet-lease seven B737 aircraft from TUI fly instead of the fourteen the German leisure carrier currently operates on behalf of Niki (HG, Vienna). In general however, Dirks expects major difficulties ahead given Eurowings will have to replace the capacity of 32 Air Berlin (AB, Berlin Tegel) A320 family aircraft currently operating on its behalf during the months of November and December as Lufthansa Group waits for European Commission approval for the proposed transaction to take over 81 former Air Berlin group aircraft and subsidiaries Niki and LGW - Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter (HE, Dortmund). Unlike parent Air Berlin, which is due to completely suspend operations by the end of next week, Niki will continue to operate leisure routes in cooperation with tour operators in the meantime and might also wet-lease some aircraft to Eurowings.

While LGW will start operating at least ten Dash 8-400 aircraft on behalf of Eurowings next week, Dirks also expects to be forced to lease in whatever equipment is available on the ACMI market to fill the gaps: "There will be aircraft with different liveries and many different uniforms. The goal now is to get as much capacity as possible into the market and to use aircraft from wherever we can find them. Not everything will work as planned."
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Meanwhile, Oneworld has announced that both Air Berlin (AB, Berlin Tegel) and Niki (HG, Vienna) will leave the alliance by October 27.