Germanwings Rebranding As Eurowings This Fall

This is true. It was announced late last year in 2014 that Germanwings would transition into Eurowings, so it had no role at all to do with the crash. Headquarters will be in Cologne.

http://www.heute.de/lufthansa-baut-billigsparte-aus-36196010.html

I suppose they'll be gradually rebranding the planes, too?
Also, what surprised me is that they'll be opening a base in Vienna. Does it mean they will get to fly to / operate on Lufthansa's behalf flight to new/existing destinations?

I guess Lufthansa will have the two carriers in Service. Eurowings will serve the international and also long haul routes but I think Germanwings will continue its service.

Lufthansa has got to be one of the worst corporate messes ever. They have no plans whatsoever, Spohr says one thing one day and then something else the week after. I am a Lufthansa/Star fanboy but I think they're business model is killing them (they need a better fleet policy, they should've retired their A340s and 744s ages ago, though they do have a bunch of A350 orders) They are very much Europes SQ and they need to act like they are a premium company and to focus on connecting traffic. They also need to reduce their companies down to three (Lufthansa, Swiss, and Austrian)

As announced on 4 Dec 2014 Germanwings was to rebrand. 4.5 months prior to the crash.

http://www.abendblatt.de/wirtschaft/article135005188/Neue-Billiglinie-Eurowings-soll-Germanwings-ersetzen.html

@ Mattias:

While I do agree that Lufthansa is very confusing in terms of corporate affairs, I think that the sheer size of the Lufthansa should take the most blame. It's just about impossible to manage around 540 subsidiaries to the point where they're all running anywhere near perfect operations in each of their respective fields, at least what I think. While yes, there are indeed disorganized messes that can be fixed, I think that the operation is far too large to fix quickly.

@Keith +1 - your comment hadn't loaded up when I posted.
@Jan - No.

Hm, operating outside your own country with a local name. I'm sure Big Gris Kjos wish he had named his airline something else considering Norway is now a small part of his empire.

Big GRIN Kjos

I was at DUS today and saw that at least one plane had already received the new EUROWINGS repainting.... I didn't think too much of it, as I already knew it was coming.... I guess I should have taken a pic for you guys....

Hey Lucky, did you watch Season two of Ultimate Airport Dubai? I liked season one a lot more, as there were more "in house" story lines, rather than all the tarmac renovations in Season two.

Surely they could have spent more time to research and find a stronger name than Eurowings.
It is a very poor brand, cheap product and sloppy marketing work.

@Massimo a "very poor brand, cheap product " with "sloppy marketing" which has successfully been operating since 1994.....

Although Germanwings/Eurowings don't technically have Business Class they do have what they call "BEST" fare. This gives you:
Preferred seating in rows 1–3 with more legroom (across the whole Airbus fleet)
​Adjacent seat free
​Lounge access (subject to availability)
​Increased miles
​Priority check-in, access to the security fast lane (subject to availability) and priority boarding
​Reserved hand luggage compartment
​À la carte catering
​2 bags up to 23 kg each included
​2 items of hand luggage

So basically the same services you have in European business class plus a seat with substantially more legroom which is not the case for most inter-European business class as they just use economy seats.

I'm also confused by Eurowings opening a base in Vienna: The logic is that Germanwings/Eurowings operates all flights from Germany that are not originating or arriving in Frankfurt or Munich, the Lufthansa hubs. As Vienna is the Austrian hub (Austrian being a full-service airline and a subsidiary of Lufthansa as well), by the same logic Austrian should operate all services from Vienna and Eurowings could operate flights from other Austrian airports to European destinations.

would have been helpful to have recieved the information germanwing > eurowing beforehand. Apparently management decisions were implemented way before the rebranding took place on the round, i.e. germanwings signs everywhere still, but no eurowings. But maybe another rebranding to hansawings or worldwings will come, and then another one, and another one.