Eurowings Modernizing Fleet With Boeing 737 MAXs

In late 2023, Lufthansa Group announced a narrow body fleet modernization, whereby the airline group ordered Airbus A220s and Boeing 737 MAXs. When placing aircraft orders, Lufthansa Group often doesn’t initially reveal which specific airline an aircraft is intended for. So along those lines, there’s now an interesting update.

Eurowings replacing Airbus A320s with Boeing 737 MAXs

Lufthansa Group plans to modernize the fleet of Eurowings with Boeing 737 MAXs. Eurowings is the airline group’s Cologne-based regional low cost carrier, which has a fleet of Airbus A320-family aircraft.

Eurowings’ fleet currently consists of just over 80 Airbus A320-family jets, including the A319, A320, A320neo, A321, and A321neo. The plan is for Eurowings to take delivery of 40 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets, with deliveries occurring between 2027 and 2032.

The 737 MAXs are expected to replace the carrier’s A319s, plus the older A320s. Currently Eurowings has 28 A319s, which are an average of 16 years old, while the airline has 35 A320s, which are an average of 14 years old. So it sounds like Eurowings won’t be going fully Boeing, but rather will have somewhere around a 50/50 split.

This is the largest fleet modernization in Eurowings’ history, and the 737 MAXs have per seat fuel consumption that’s roughly 30% lower than the planes they replace. The planes are expected to be configured with 189 seats.

Here’s how Eurowings CEO Jens Bischof describes this development:

“Economic success makes Eurowings attractive for investment. At the same time, we have a responsibility to reconcile economic and ecological topics. With 40 state-of-the-art aircraft, we are laying the foundations for a successful Eurowings future that is geared towards ambitious sustainability goals. The largest investment in our company’s history shows that we are making rapid progress towards low-emission flying – through significantly lower fuel consumption, lower emissions and significantly less noise. The high cost efficiency of the new jets also enables us to continue to offer Eurowings customers fair and attractive fares. Without such a technological leap, an airline will hardly be able to operate successfully on the market in the 2030s.”

This seems like sensible fleet modernization

Historically, Lufthansa Group’s narrow body fleet has been heavily focused around the Airbus A320-family of aircraft. That’s not surprising, given that it’s a great jet, and it’s also European made. In the case of SWISS, the airline has also found success with the Airbus A220.

However, up until now, we haven’t seen many Boeing 737-family aircraft at Lufthansa Group carriers. So it’s interesting to see how this order is evolving. The 40 Airbus A220-300s are largely intended for Lufthansa City Airlines, which is Lufthansa’s new money-saving subsidiary. The airline operates flights that would otherwise be operated by Lufthansa, but with cheaper labor.

So I suppose it makes sense that the 737 MAXs are being allocated to Eurowings. I was a bit surprised when the airline group even ordered the 737 MAX. I’m just curious if Eurowings continues flying the A320-family of aircraft in the long run, or if we eventually see Lufthansa Group up its 737 MAX order, to fully refresh Eurowings’ fleet.

Bottom line

In late 2023, Lufthansa Group placed an order for Boeing 737 MAXs, though the airline group didn’t specify which airline subsidiary the planes would go to. We’ve now learned that Eurowings will be getting 40 737 MAXs between 2027 and 2032, as part of the carrier’s biggest fleet modernization in history. I can’t say this is terribly surprising, though it still doesn’t seem ideal to have a mixed Airbus and Boeing fleet in terms of the benefits of fleet commonality.

What do you make of Lufthansa Group allocating Boeing 737 MAXs to Eurowings?