Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) is to close its Munich base at the end of the Summer 2020 season, with the airline's capacity to be re-distributed to other airlines in the Lufthansa Group, according to a report on airliners.de. The low-cost carrier opened its base at the South German airport in 2017.
"The Munich location will probably no longer be a Eurowings base at the start of the 2020/2021 winter timetable," said an airline spokesman. He continued to add that the airline will move its activities and resources to Cologne/Bonn, Düsseldorf, Hamburg Helmut Schmidt, and Stuttgart Manfred Rommel. Eurowings is currently talking with affected staff about working elsewhere for the carrier or another airline within the group, either in Munich or an alternate location. The airline has six A320-200s based at Munich - two of them flown by germanwings (4U, Cologne/Bonn) and four operated by Eurowings Europe (Austria) (Vienna).
Despite the base closure, Eurowings will continue to fly to and from Munich in winter. "No flights are cancelled, they are only distributed differently within the LH Group," said the spokesman.
The shift of services within the group has already started. Lufthansa announced that it will commence services from Munich to Thessaloniki (3x weekly), Tenerife Sur (2x weekly), Fuerteventura, and Gran Canaria (both 1x weekly) from the end of October 2020. All four destinations are served by Eurowings during the Winter 2019/20 season.
According to the ch-aviation capacities module, Eurowings currently flies to 15 destinations from its Munich base. Nearly 59% of the airline's weekly capacity from the airport is presently flown to three of its other bases - namely Düsseldorf (23%), Cologne/Bonn (18%), and Hamburg (18%).
