The proposed Eurowings link to Fort Lauderdale will be the first service from Cologne to Hollywood International Airport and only the second direct scheduled link from Germany alongside the seasonal offering of Condor from Frankfurt. Norwegian also links Fort Lauderdale to Europe with flights from Copenhagen, London, Oslo and Stockholm.
Cologne Bonn Airport welcomes a total of 20 new destinations for its 2015 schedule, including ten new long-haul destinations operated by Eurowings, as well as four new airlines and ten new services.
The low-cost carrier will increase its Cologne-based fleet from a single Boeing 737-800 to three aircraft from the start of the winter 2015/2016 schedules in late October. The seven new routes and additional frequencies on existing services will bring its network to 129 weekly flights to 17 destinations and will deliver around two million passengers per annum to the airport.
The airline, part of the Lufthansa Group, has been forced to cancel a number of its domestic and European short-haul routes as a result of the walkout by the Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) union which has failed to reach an agreement on working contracts for its members with the Lufthansa Group.
The new airline will operate under a revised Eurowings brand but will be flown under the air operator certificate (AOC) of SunExpress Deutschland using the latter’s cockpit and cabin crews. It will be based at Cologne/Bonn Airport and will initially launch operations from the end of 2015, serving destinations in Florida, Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean.
UK low-fare carrier Flybe has confirmed the identity of the new routes it will launch this summer from Southend Airport after agreeing a franchising agreement with Stobart Air: Rennes (France), Groningen (the Netherlands), Münster Osnabrück (Germany), Cologne Bonn (Germany), Caen Normandie (France) and Antwerp (Belgium.