Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International) group chief executive Carsten Spohr has told German news magazine Spiegel that he believes its low-cost carrier Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) and easyJet (London Luton) could become partners in the future.
With elaborating how the two carriers would cooperate, Spohr said easyJet had already shown interest in the past in working together with Lufthansa Group and that consolidation in the European LCC market had to take place at some stage. The British low-cost carrier did not want to comment to a Reuters request for comment and only said it would constantly look at options to expand its route network without making its operations more expensive or complex.
Lufthansa is currently in the process of restructuring its business with plans to operate all LCC services under the Eurowings brand slowly retiring the germanwings (4U, Cologne/Bonn) brand instead. Eurowings will launch A330-200 long haul services later this fall with Lufthansa CityLine (CL, Munich) starting to operate some of the lower yield long haul A340-300 services on behalf of Lufthansa.
As part of its restructuring efforts, Lufthansa has also announced a new management structure that will see the Chief Commercial Officers of Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines (OS, Vienna) and Swiss (LX, Zurich) each taking over functions across all three brands in future. Lufthansa CCO Jens Bischof will oversee sales, Austrian CCO Andreas Otto will oversee product management, Swiss CCO will oversee distribution and revenue management while Steffen Harbarth will be moved to a new Lufthansa role to oversee the carrier's Munich hub as well as marketing for all three carriers.
