Lufthansa Group has confirmed it will indeed shutter its germanwings (4U, Cologne/Bonn) AOC as part of a set of measures aimed at cutting costs across the group's various airlines.

Following a board meeting on Tuesday, April 7, the German holding said only that germanwings' flight operations would be discontinued to consolidate the number of AOCs Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) uses into one.

"The implementation of Eurowings' objective of bundling flight operations into only one unit, which was defined before the crisis, will now be accelerated," it said in a statement. "Germanwings' flight operations will be discontinued. All options resulting from this are to be discussed with the respective unions."

Trade unions and worker associations such as VC, UFO, Verdi, IGL/TGL and ACA had jointly appealed to management to safeguard germanwings jobs earlier on Monday.

According to the ch-aviation fleets module, germanwings operates twenty-two A319-100s and six A320-200s all for Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) and all of which will be added to Eurowings' AOC. As Lufthansa group's low-cost subsidiary, Eurowings also draws service from its wholly-owned subsidiary Eurowings Europe (Austria) (Vienna) in Austria (nine A319-100s and ten A320-200s) and LGW - Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter (Dortmund) (sixteen Dash 8-400s) which is a sister carrier of logistics firm Zeitfracht-Gruppe's WDL Aviation (Cologne/Bonn).

In tandem with its capacity rationalisation, Eurowings' headcount is also expected to be reduced in line with the reshaping of its network to focus on short- and medium-haul routes. As such, Eurowings will reduce the overall number of aircraft it contracts. In the short-haul segment, an additional ten A320-200s are planned to be phased out while its longhaul business, which is run under the commercial responsibility of Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International), will also be reduced.

LGW's future with Lufthansa is also at stake given the group said it had now terminated "almost all" wet-lease agreements with third-party carriers. At present, the list includes: