Lufthansa City Airlines (VL, Munich) will launch during the Summer 2024 season with six domestic and three international routes out of its base at Munich airport, the parent holding Lufthansa Group said in a press release.
The initial network will comprise services to Berlin Brandenburg International, Hamburg Helmut Schmidt, Bremen Hans Koschnick, Düsseldorf, Cologne/Bonn, and Hannover, as well as Birmingham, GB, Bordeaux Mérignac, and Manchester International. It will "gradually expand" in the ensuing months.
Without disclosing the specific launch date, the company said it would begin selling City Airlines tickets through its normal channels at the end of April 2024. City Airlines has yet to file its schedules and Lufthansa did not reveal the exact launch date.
City Airlines plans to operate four A319-100s transferred from its sister carriers this year. The first two units, D-ABGH (msn 3245) and D-ABGK (msn 3447), are ex-Eurowings and ex-Lufthansa CityLine, respectively. Both have already been painted into City Airlines' livery and are under pre-induction maintenance at Munich. The other two units are ex-Eurowings aircraft. More narrowbodies are planned in 2025, with a tentative schedule to add one per month, according to AeroTELEGRAPH sources. City Airlines is due to start taking the first of its forty A220-300s in 2026.
The new carrier will operate purely as a technical capacity provider for Lufthansa as a sister carrier to Lufthansa CityLine. It will initially focus on feeding the Munich hub before launching operations from Frankfurt International in 2025. The new unit was certified already in June 2023 but its launch was delayed by labour talks.
