The Lufthansa Group is working hard to restore flights across its network which includes cities served by its partner and affiliated carriers, several of which fly E-Jets. By the end of October, over 90 percent of all its short and medium-haul destinations and over 70 percent of the Group’s long-haul destinations will be back online.
Three of those E-Jet partner airlines are Air Dolomiti, Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa CityLine.
Air Dolomiti
Lufthansa’s Italian affiliate resumed flying early last month between Florence and Sicily and Sardinia. Florence is home to the airline’s new maintenance centre which allowed it to accelerate the restart of E195 operations, especially to Lufthansa’s Frankfurt and Munich hubs. By early July, Air Dolomiti will serve those two German cities from Florence, Bologna, Venice, Turin, Milan Malpensa, Rome, Catania, Palermo, Lamezia Terme, Verona, Bari, Cagliari and Olbia. Air Dolomiti just launched new E195 flights between Florence and Bari.
Austrian Airlines
The Austrian carrier expects to fly to roughly 50 network cities this month, also operating its 120-seat E195s. Those E-Jets will be deployed between Vienna and Brussels as well as other destinations to supplement frequencies by other aircraft types.
The airline expects to have 20% of all flights restored compared to last July given that it will only have half of its entire fleet back in service. Austrian Airlines already resumed some long-haul flights and it anticipates good summer demand for holiday destinations as well as major European cities.
Lufthansa CityLine
The wholly-owned subsidiary currently has E195s and E190s that fly to/from Lufthansa’s Munich and Frankfurt hubs.
These aircraft, and other types in the CityLine fleet, will be used to restore flights between Frankfurt and European cities, including Warsaw, Florence, Billund, Basel, and Linz, before October. By then, service will also have resumed between Munich and Brussels, Olbia, Dubrovnik, or Copenhagen.
I love this kind of good news for many reasons. Regional air mobility (RAM) has been shunned by airlines and airframers at the detriment of passenger services. This put 95% of aviation resting on the shoulders of Airbus and Boeing while Bombardier and Embraer tackled that market with success. I’m happy to see the new leadership at Embraer and happy to see the Boeing deal didn’t go through. We need more competition, not more buy-outs which leads to less competition.
I think Embraer is on the right track. RAM is what will rekindle the aviation market and be an incremental part of advanced air mobility (AAM).