Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) has announced its first base outside of Germany will be in Vienna where, beginning this autumn, the revitalized Lufthansa Group budget operation will base two A320-200s. In addition to operating on Austrian Airlines's Air Operator Certificate, both aircraft will also be staffed by Austrian crews.

"This partnership is possible as a result of Austrian’s new collective agreement, which was entered into in December 2014 and offers additional prospects to the 900 pilots and 2,300 flight attendants," Austrian said in a statement. "The agreement also means that employees are making an important contribution to the future viability and competitiveness of Austrian Airlines."

The Eurowings initiative is the Lufthansa Group's response to competition both in local European and the intercontinental markets. Currently, it faces opposition from Ryanair and easyJet in its home markets of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium while in the intercontinental market it competes with Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Etihad Airways.

As part of its integration with Eurowings, germanwings has announced that starting October 25, all its flights scheduled to be operated by Eurowings with its A320-200 (sl) and CRJ900 aircraft from Düsseldorf and Hamburg Helmut Schmidt, will be switched from germanwings to Eurowings flight numbers.

"With the new Eurowings, we are ramping up our offensive in Vienna as well and taking on our low-cost competitors,” Oliver Wagner, manager of the Wings project at Lufthansa and Managing Director of germanwings, said.

Eurowings' long haul operations are also set to make their début on October 15 of this year with a trio of SunExpress Deutschland A330-200s to be based out of Cologne/Bonn.