German leisure airline Condor has evolved its route network massively in recent years, as the airline has increasingly started competing head-to-head against Lufthansa. We’ve seen quite a bit of growth at the airline, especially across the Atlantic. There’s now an interesting update, as Condor has just slashed half a dozen transatlantic routes for next year.
Condor cuts service to six North American cities in 2025
As reported by @IshrionA, Condor is canceling service to six airports in North America for the summer of 2025. Specifically, the airline will no longer fly from Frankfurt (FRA) to the following destinations in the United States and Canada:
- Baltimore (BWI)
- Edmonton (YEG)
- Halifax (YHZ)
- Phoenix (PHX)
- Minneapolis (MSP)
- San Antonio (SAT)
While seasonal, non-daily service might not sound like that much, these are all still pretty significant cuts for their respective markets:
- For San Antonio, Condor provided the only transatlantic flight
- For Baltimore, Edmonton, and Phoenix, Condor provided the only nonstop link to Germany
- For Halifax and Minneapolis, there’s direct competition, as Discover Airlines operates the same route (Minneapolis was first operated by a Lufthansa jet, but was downgraded)
The factors causing Condor’s route network to evolve
Back in the day, Condor’s route network was heavily leisure focused, as the airline flew almost exclusively to long haul destinations not served by Lufthansa mainline aircraft.
But Condor has greatly improved its passenger experience, and its long haul fleet now consists exclusively of Airbus A330-900neos, which have a better business class product than you’ll find on a vast majority of Lufthansa jets.
In recent years, we’ve seen Condor expand to markets like Boston (BOS), Los Angeles (LAX), Miami (MIA), New York (JFK), San Francisco (SFO), Toronto (YYZ), etc. This strategy seems to be working, given that most of these routes have stuck around.
Condor’s biggest challenge is that Frankfurt isn’t actually that huge of an origin and destination market (unlike London, Paris, etc.), but rather it’s a huge connecting hub (primarily due to Lufthansa). The thing is, Condor doesn’t have that huge of a regional route network.
Up until now, the German government has required Lufthansa to provide feeder traffic to Condor, in order to maintain competition, enabling Condor to grow its long haul network. Obviously Lufthansa doesn’t want to enable the growth of the route network of its most direct competitor, but the airline had no choice.
However, this has been litigated endlessly, and it now looks like this agreement will come to an end, thanks to Lufthansa winning a court battle. That seems to be why Condor is cutting these routes, since they were the most reliant on connecting traffic.
We are seeing Condor start to expand its feeder network within Europe, adding flights from Frankfurt to places like Berlin (BER), Milan (MXP), Prague (PRG), Rome (FCO), Zurich (ZRH), etc. However, it’s unlikely that the airline will be able to scale the network to the point that it can replace feeder traffic lost by Lufthansa.
I’m very curious to see what kind of service Condor adds with the A330-900neos that are being made available here.
Bottom line
Condor is cutting six routes between Frankfurt and North America, with four being to the United States, and two being to Canada. Interestingly, all of these cuts are to airports that wouldn’t necessarily be considered very competitive transatlantic markets (either due to the dominance of one airline, or due to the lack of transatlantic flights).
Condor is continuing to focus more on major markets, where it can compete head-to-head against Lufthansa. The challenge is that with Lufthansa no longer having to provide Condor with feeder traffic, filling planes is going to get a lot more complicated.
What do you make of the markets that Condor is cutting?
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