New low-cost airline expects entry into market

LOW-COST carrier Hapag Lloyd express, a TUi subsidiary and sister company of Britannia Airways, will operate at the beginning of December from Cologne and Bonn Airports. The new airline’s flights will be operated by Boeing 737-300s, covering European destinations including Barcelona, Milan, Paris and Rome. Potential destinations within Germany expected to be served by the carrier are Berlin, Dresden and Munich. Reports say that the new airline will fly eight planes leased from TUi’s partner, Germania, whose existing Frankfurt-Berlin and Cologne-Berlin services are expected to become fully integrated with the Hapag-Lloyd Express programme. According to aviation expert, Dieter Schneiderbauer at Mercer Management Consulting, the air travel market is becoming increasingly competitive and with the new low-cost carrier having to face Lufthansa as a rival, the whole TUi operation of entering the air travel market is ‘highly risky’. However, a TUi spokesperson argued that TUi’s new subsidiary airline was not expected to take on Lufthansa and that “the booming market for low-cost travel offered massive growth potential”. (Heather Ruddock)