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.
Continue reading: Condor Shifts Europe Route Network In Exciting Way
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
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.
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
Long overdue, LH has had the German market to itself for too long and their pricing is criminal.
I hope those once daily flights are timed well, in terms of the international connections.
Maybe the first step towards OneWorld...
German protectionism is the only reason Lufthansa survive. No one loves that airline, except perhaps Lucky.
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.
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?
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...
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.
Unfortunately Air Berlin was allowed to be acquired by Lufthansa and essentially became a monopoly in central Europe.
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.
I'm having a hard time seeing how basic an aircraft in Zurich will save money!
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 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
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.
@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, …
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...........
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
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).
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.
Interesting as they just completed a complete rebranding to reinforce their identity as a leisure carrier (the beach towel stripes, etc.).
True “today”. But Condor was originally a predominantly charter subsidiary of Lufthana.
Traveling to Romania (other than OTP)?
Then Lufthansa/Austrian is basically your only choice…
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.
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.
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.
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.