German leisure airline Condor has announced some interesting route additions within Europe for the summer of 2025, as we’ll see the airline increasingly fly between major cities. This is great news for competition, and for consumers.
In this post:
Background on Condor’s unusual route network
It’s probably useful to start by providing a bit of background. Condor has reinvented itself quite a bit in recent years. For one, the airline has massively modernized its fleet:
- For long haul flights, the airline has replaced Boeing 767-300s with Airbus A330-900neos, featuring a much improved passenger experience
- The airline is also continuing to refresh its short haul fleet, by taking delivery of Airbus A320neo family aircraft
It’s not just planes that have gotten an overhaul at Condor, but also the carrier’s route network. Historically the airline almost exclusively flew to destinations that were heavily leisure focused. However, in recent years the airline has increasingly gone head-to-head against German flag carrier Lufthansa in many long haul markets, as the airline now flies to destinations like Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, etc.
But here’s the thing — even as Condor has expanded its long haul network, the airline hasn’t done much to connect major cities within Europe. Condor’s short haul network is almost entirely to destinations that are leisure focused. We’re talking places like Antalya, Corfu, Ibiza, Tenerife, etc.
Condor has otherwise had an agreement with Lufthansa to provide it regional feed. This isn’t because Lufthansa wants to cooperate with its competitor, but rather because the government has required it, in order to ensure competition.
The companies are currently renegotiating their agreement and are having a hard time coming to an agreement, so Condor has just made an interesting announcement.
Condor is shifting its Europe strategy as of 2025
As of the summer of 2025, Condor will massively be shaking up its European route network:
- The airline will start operating flights within Germany, including from Frankfurt (FRA) to Berlin (BER), Hamburg (HAM), and Munich (MUC)
- The airline will start operating flights from Frankfurt to other major cities in Europe, including Milan (MXP), Prague (PRG), Rome (FCO), and Zurich (ZRH)
- Due to the high cost of basing aircraft in Germany, Condor will start basing some aircraft abroad, with plans to station one aircraft in Milan, Prague, Rome, Vienna, and Zurich (so that’s a total of five aircraft based abroad)
Here’s how Condor CEO Peter Gerber describes this development:
“With the eight new city connections, each of which is included in the summer flight schedule once a day, Condor is expanding its offering to include exciting city destinations where you can have a fantastic time. After all, Condor has long since ceased to be a classic vacation airline: we are consistently developing our flight schedule in line with the needs of our guests. Added to this are the exorbitantly rising location costs in Germany, which have prompted us to relocate a total of five aircraft to Zurich, Vienna, Prague, Milan and Rome in order to grow economically there.”
If you ask me, it’s super exciting to increasingly see competition on short haul routes both within Germany, and to destinations in nearby countries. Lufthansa’s short haul pricing is just terrifyingly high, so some competition will help.
Admittedly all of these routes will initially operate once daily, but hopefully they’ll beef up over time. It should help to feed into Condor’s route network, and also to give Lufthansa some much needed competition.
Bottom line
As of the summer of 2025, Condor will begin competing in more traditional city markets within Europe. The airline will start operating domestic flights within Germany, and will also operate between major European cities, like flying from Frankfurt to Milan and Rome. Anything that adds competition for Lufthansa is a good thing, as I see it, and should lead to lower fares.
What do you make of Condor’s Europe strategy shift?
I’ve checked the schedules and to me those flights seem like pure feeders for Condors longhaul operations in FRA rather than any form of competing against Lufthansa.
The flights from HAM/MUC/BER->FRA depart in the morning at around 09:00 and the return flights are at around 15:00.
Not ideal for business travelers. Besides, those routes are short and have to compete with Autobahn and Deutsche Bahn. MUC->HAM, MUC->DUS and MUC->BRE would make more sense...
I’ve checked the schedules and to me those flights seem like pure feeders for Condors longhaul operations in FRA rather than any form of competing against Lufthansa.
The flights from HAM/MUC/BER->FRA depart in the morning at around 09:00 and the return flights are at around 15:00.
Not ideal for business travelers. Besides, those routes are short and have to compete with Autobahn and Deutsche Bahn. MUC->HAM, MUC->DUS and MUC->BRE would make more sense competition-wise.
Fares are comparable if not higher than Lufthansa.
But it’s a first step and better than nothing.
Interesting as they just completed a complete rebranding to reinforce their identity as a leisure carrier (the beach towel stripes, etc.).
I just flew in condor‘s prime business seat, one night after flying in Singapore business class. The condor seat itself was much, much better. But everything else was substandard compared to Singapore, including the food, the flight attendants, and the cleanliness of the aircraft. Still, condor business class can be a great value. I just wanted to sleep well overnight, and I did.
I found the condor biz hard product beds hard as a rock uncomfortable and dirty poorly cleaned
Sludge and grime all over the seats and armrests
The worst of it is their inedible slop they call dinner / food
Boarding was a mess to with economy boarding ahead of business class
They would be far from my choice unless a killer deal
Curious...the routing?
Totally agree.........recently looked at a Paris to Leipzig flight and the price was so ridiculous and the time to travel so bad that I will be taking the train......should have never even considered flying and fouling the environment...........
Reducing costs by basing an aircraft at Zurich?! German airport charges must be totally out of control.
Not just airport charges. Also taxes, mandatory (anti-)’social’ welfare scheme contributions, bureaucracy costs & duration, unpredictability of the ideological politics, …
The company Stihl e.g. has been shifting production from Germany to Switzerland due to lower total costs, so it’s not just about airlines.
I just flew them last week longhaul and I came away with the opinion that they catually offer a much superior experience over Lufthansa standard business prodict. I found the seats sooooo much better than the bigger sister company.
LH and Condor have no relationship whatsoever besides the fact that they are both German
True “today”. But Condor was originally a predominantly charter subsidiary of Lufthana.
At one time LH owned DE but that was long ago.
They have a long history and this mostly changed when Lufthansa started growing Eurowings as a leisure airline to cut costs.
As recently as 2019 or was it 2020 Condor was still using Miles&More as its frequent flyer program.
Will the new flights be year-round or seasonal?
I'm having a hard time seeing how basic an aircraft in Zurich will save money!
Who would have thought Zurich a relatively 'low cost' place to operate
Even Swiss business people have budgets and take the train to Frankfurt rather than fly LH. But if there’s now a cheaper flight……
I’ve checked fares and DE is not cheaper than LH from ZRH->FRA.
Schedules are also not business friendly.
To me it seems like pure feeder flights.
But still better than nothing.
Unfortunately Air Berlin was allowed to be acquired by Lufthansa and essentially became a monopoly in central Europe.
Air Berlin was not acquired. They just went bankrupt.
@Bjarne
They didn’t ‘just went bankrupt’, Lufthansa massively pushed for this. E.g. by using their political lobby influence to stop the competition regulating authorities from doing their work, by hindering the construction of the new airport in Berlin, by using ‘ruinous competition’ as a tactic, …
@Max...you make me laugh...
I hope this is the start of more. LH is an awful airline - very subpar product and zero customer service. Quite the opposite actually, Lufthansa is actually hostile to its customers. The more competition within and to Germany, the better.
Yeah - I wouldn't take it at face value that Condor actually intends to operate these flights....I would look at it in context of being a negotiation ploy aimed at LH...
It seems like AS has increased the price of Condor Biz redemptions from U.S. gateways to FRA from 55K to 255K. Has anyone else noticed this?
I’ve noticed it. Quite a bummer.
The 255k J Condor award is for anytime availability. Not saying I would pull the trigger at that price, but it's better than zero availability. Condor still does release 55k/70k seats. You just gotta be lucky to find them.
The Condor saver awards are selling for 45-70k Miles. 45k can be found from YHZ for example.
This has changed for all AS partner awards in Marc 2024, not just Condor.
Crazy how Condor's Prime seats are still the best business class seat flying from Germany even after the Allegris rollout.
They're winning my wallet with their superior hard product.
Right now the issue as a leisure airline, they lack is schedule and frequencies.
Depending on timing, we might get some interesting AS rememptions beyond FRA.
German protectionism is the only reason Lufthansa survive. No one loves that airline, except perhaps Lucky.
I certainly don't love them, but their network is nothing short of amazing, nobody comes close for intra-Europe travel. They have a lot more frequencies than the low-costs, and their timings and fares work really well for European travel (whereas the likes of IAG mostly care about long-haul feed).
Traveling to Romania (other than OTP)?
Then Lufthansa/Austrian is basically your only choice…
I hope those once daily flights are timed well, in terms of the international connections.
Maybe the first step towards OneWorld...
Long overdue, LH has had the German market to itself for too long and their pricing is criminal.
Anything to get more competition into the German market is worth it atp
They don’t have it to themselves: on domestic flights, they have to compete with Autobahn and DeutscheBahn.
On international flights they have to compete with Skyteam, Oneworld etc.
There is a reason why Easyjet stopped its domestic flights: they were not sustainable.
This certainly changes the dynamics of the negotiations very likely because LH had the EU wrapped around its little finger not allowing Condor to do what is in Condor's best interest.
It also is an indictment of the high cost of operating in Germany and proves that LH (the core airline) cannot move its assets but not only Condor can but they also can move them into LH Group key markets which are financially performing better than core LH
These must be the destinations with the most volume of feed from LH to/ from their long haul flights. Without the feed to/ from these cities, the long hauls wont work. And it's possible that the German courts might no longer require LH to provide the feed. So this is imperative to preserve their long haul flights.