Lufthansa has just rebranded one of its low cost carriers, and I’m not sure what exactly to think…
In this post:
Discover Airlines, Lufthansa’s rebranded low cost carrier
Effective immediately, Eurowings Discover will be branded as Discover Airlines. For context, Eurowings Discover is Lufthansa’s low cost carrier that that was launched in mid-2021. The airline has a fleet of nearly two dozen A320s and A330s, which operate to North America, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. I’ve reviewed the carrier’s A330 business class product.
Nothing is changing about the substance of the airline, but it is simply being rebranded as Discover Airlines, featuring a totally new livery and branding. Here’s how the airline describes the new branding:
It’s not only the name of our airline that’s changing – it’s our whole look. Our new, contemporary, fresh, and yet still sophisticated design conveys precisely this feeling. Fittingly for an airline, it’s inspired by a view of the horizon. More specifically, by the various lines and color nuances that emerge when the blue of the sky meets the landscape. These “skylines” are the most important design element of our brand and arise from various blue tones as well as a sunny yellow. The overall look is clear and sophisticated, but it always reflects most of all the brand’s core in its versatility. That is the joy of travel.
For context, below is what Eurowings Discover’s livery looks like.
Below is what Discover Airlines’ livery looks like.
Do I find the new Discover Airlines livery to be super inspiring and interesting? No. But I actually find that the design is pretty cohesive with Lufthansa’s branding, and it’s almost just a more playful version of it. It’s also interesting to note how prominently “Member of LUFTHANSA GROUP” is written along the back of the fuselage.
Previously the branding of Eurowings Discover was based on the Eurowings branding, which didn’t bear much resemblance to Lufthansa’s branding.
So, what should we expect from the rollout of the new Discover Airlines branding?
- The first Airbus A320 with the new livery is already flying as of today
- Over time, aircraft that are new to the fleet, have only received part of the new livery, or are due for a standard livery refresh, will be rebranded
- Due to production lead times, all aircraft cabins and onboard products will only feature the new Discover Airlines branding as of December 2023; furthermore, disposable items will be completely used up first, and then reordered with the new design
- Of course all Eurowings Discover tickets will be honored, and the airline will continue to use “4Y” as its two letter code
I don’t understand Lufthansa’s low cost carrier strategy
While I think the branding of Discover Airlines is fine, I still can’t make sense of Lufthansa’s overall low cost carrier strategy, which seems to be all over the place:
- First Lufthansa had Germanwings, a short haul low cost carrier
- Then that was rebranded as Eurowings, partly due to the horrible crash
- Then Lufthansa launched Eurowings Discover, a primarily long haul low cost carrier
- Now Lufthansa is rebranding Eurowings Discover as Discover Airlines
I’ve never been able to understand why Lufthansa doesn’t merge Eurowings and Eurowings Discover (or Discover Airlines now). What’s the point of having two separate low cost carriers? Wouldn’t it be more logical to have a single low cost carrier, offering easy connectivity with less brand confusion?
Bottom line
One of Lufthansa’s low cost carriers, Eurowings Discover, has been rebranded as Discover Airlines. Personally I think the new branding is perfectly fine but nothing too exciting. It at least does a good job of drawing a connection to Lufthansa.
What I still don’t understand, though, is Lufthansa’s overall low cost carrier strategy, and the constantly changing branding.
What do you make of the Discover Airlines branding?
IT IS SIMPLE AND OBNOXIOUS CHEATING BY LUFTHANSA !!! I have just flown Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Orlando and back (September 2023). The ticket has been purchased through the LH Website, giving (falsely) an impression that I was buying Lufthansa services, as I knew them for many years. What a big and blunt FRAUD !!!. The DISCOVER Airline is not anything but CHEAP ECONOMY AIRLINE, the same or even worse than many cheap airlines flying...
IT IS SIMPLE AND OBNOXIOUS CHEATING BY LUFTHANSA !!! I have just flown Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Orlando and back (September 2023). The ticket has been purchased through the LH Website, giving (falsely) an impression that I was buying Lufthansa services, as I knew them for many years. What a big and blunt FRAUD !!!. The DISCOVER Airline is not anything but CHEAP ECONOMY AIRLINE, the same or even worse than many cheap airlines flying crammed passengers for summer vacation on short distances from European ports to Canary Islands, Egypt or Turkey, etc. I was flying the Economy, but that certainly was not the economy class of regular airlines. It was way below the previous Lufthansa standards but for the premium price of the "original" Lufthansa flights. I have flown on the same route several times in the past and this time it was simply a shock for me. I am 170 cm tall and that turned out to be too tall to fit in Lufthansa seats on that bloody Discovery Airline Economy Class flight. Service on board - non existent; not in a way that it should be for the price I have paid. If nothing changes, and I hope this is just temporary screw-up by Lufthansa executives' fault decision, it would be a time to re-discover other airlines. 10 hour flight on Lufthansa's Discovery Economy Class to Orlando from Frankfurt and back was like 10 hours ride inside German Panzer tanks during the war (I guess).
I agree that the livery & branding looks like a playful, leisure version of Lufthansa's. It's not bad IMO, and the livery is a bit more interesting than LH's.
Also, am I the only one who thinks that the brand colors look like the old Condor?
The real problem here is that LH is replacing existing services with EW, sometimes after the ticket is sold, and changing how you earn and what benefits you get. This further devalues their branding. I actually think the name Eurowings is quite a good one and makes sense to use, but maybe they are looking at doing a bigger overhaul.
At least "Eurowings" gave you SOME idea of what they were and where they'd take you....
I agree with BK, while confusing, I believe Discover is the leisure focused, full(ish) service subsidiary (aka "Edelwings"), modelled after Swiss' successful leisure brand Edelweiss...
Now, you might ask, why wouldn't they just expand Edelweiss or replace Eurowings Discover and Edelweiss with Discovery??? Who knows, probably politics, timing and/or operational/location issues...
Looks like United's Rising Blue. I guess we won’t be seeing it on United planes anytime soon
A name change every few years, same lousy product.
They wanna be Condor so bad
In fairness, LH isn’t alone in this. IAG/Iberia also has a bit of a mess with Iberia Express, Vueling and LEVEL. Not to quite the same level since they have their roles (IB Express especially) but definitely in the split between LEVEL and Vueling (both having their home base in Barcelona). Especially pre-pandemic when they transferred a bunch of A32X to LEVEL for short-haul ops that are now back with Vueling but in the LEVEL livery.
I agree IAG branding is a bit of a mess, but there was a bit of logic and some of it is legacy that is being wound down...
Iberia Express for Madrid is like BA Euroflyer at Gatwick. Serving low-cost destinations but basically for customers it is Iberia, but separate AOC and branding for labour contract reasons. Still leverage the Iberia brand and infrastructure.
Level is the one I don't really understand. IAG's Barcelona based...
I agree IAG branding is a bit of a mess, but there was a bit of logic and some of it is legacy that is being wound down...
Iberia Express for Madrid is like BA Euroflyer at Gatwick. Serving low-cost destinations but basically for customers it is Iberia, but separate AOC and branding for labour contract reasons. Still leverage the Iberia brand and infrastructure.
Level is the one I don't really understand. IAG's Barcelona based long-haul low cost airline. I assume it is kept separate from Vueling due to labour contracts and AOC reasons. They don't seem to be growing or expanding it. Just seems to be opportunistic from Barcelona. Will be interesting to see what happens to it when Air Europa joins.
They did flirt with Level being a low cost short haul brand outside of Spain when they had ambitions to have pan Euro low cost (eg Amsterdam base) and they didn't think the Vueling brand could be strong outside Southern Europe. I assume the livery still exists because its not worth paying to repaint them.
The original (post-GW/EW merger) distinction between Lufthansa and EW was that all flights not in/out of a hub (FRA, MUC, ZRH, VIE, BRU) would be EW. Then EW started running leisure flights out of the FRA hub. I think what Lufthansa is trying to do is return EW to be the non-hub carrier.
Discover will then become the Lufthansa parallel to Edelweiss Air for Swiss and operate out of the FRA and MUC hubs.
There...
The original (post-GW/EW merger) distinction between Lufthansa and EW was that all flights not in/out of a hub (FRA, MUC, ZRH, VIE, BRU) would be EW. Then EW started running leisure flights out of the FRA hub. I think what Lufthansa is trying to do is return EW to be the non-hub carrier.
Discover will then become the Lufthansa parallel to Edelweiss Air for Swiss and operate out of the FRA and MUC hubs.
There is probably a strong union componenent to this. My guess is that EW crew will be paid less than LH crew, but Discover crew will probably be the same as LH crew.
Pictures of first repainted a320 here: https://twitter.com/fl360aero/status/1699049592275562603
Initially Brussels Airlines was also part of Lufthansa’s low cost strategy. They were going to integrate it under Eurowings, with a potential renaming to Brusselswings.
Fortunately the Belgians stopped that from happening.
Brussel Swings?
Eurowings Discover also flies to Africa - I’ve flown them from Frankfurt to Marrakech.
It was not a great experience - no lounge access even if in ‘Business’ and Star Alliance gold (since they’re not star alliance despite the LH ownership), the flight had no gate agents by the original departure time so we were obviously delayed but provided no information since there were no gate staff to provide updates nor did the app provide information.
Along that line...as I pleasantly discovered in May (no pun intended...but now I'm smiling:), they also from a roundtrip sector Windhoek, Namibia (WDH) - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe (VFA)...and they can sell seats on that sector....and then the flights arrives/departs to/fm FRA.
Looks like a pound (or euro) shop version of the Condor livery... Utterly uninspiring brand or name. I do not understand how there would've been more cost to set-up the company initially as Discover Airlines...surely if they were saving costs they would've just called it Eurowings not EWDiscover?
Actually Germanwings and Eurowings did exist in parallel, Eurowings being an older airline than Germanwings. They were both part of Lufthansa group, and even before the crash you mentioned, Lufthansa announced that they would merge the two under Eurowings brand. Therefore, it was merging, not rebranding, and the crash was not the reason for it at all.
In fact, the horrible crash slowed the merger down
They went back and forth as to which would merge with which and when. The crash made the decision for them.
I will never understand how 'The Lufthansa Group' operates or why it is so vaunted/picked apart by the blogger crowd. Not that I disagree with one thing Ben wrote. I just view this as typical for a conservative rudderless corporation that lacks vision in everything from seats to service.
I had no clue until maybe earlier this year that Eurowings and Eurowings Discovery were two different things to begin with, I thought it was...
I will never understand how 'The Lufthansa Group' operates or why it is so vaunted/picked apart by the blogger crowd. Not that I disagree with one thing Ben wrote. I just view this as typical for a conservative rudderless corporation that lacks vision in everything from seats to service.
I had no clue until maybe earlier this year that Eurowings and Eurowings Discovery were two different things to begin with, I thought it was one airline with some different branding on more leisure routes.
But I am tired of the whole airline, frankly. Had MUCH better service, MUCH more comfortable seating, MUCH better inflight entertainment etc etc. two weeks ago flying in the back of a UAL 777-300 from SFO to FRA than I typically get on mainline LH flights, even in Business.
I am sure flying on a 747 in F on LH complete with lounge and private car is wonderful. I'm also reasonably sure I'm never going to experience it nor is it on my aspirational travel list. And dealing with the LH Group as a normal person is just a very bland, boring and, usually, uncomfortable experience.
I made the same experience these days: Premium Economy (Premium Plus) on United, and the experience - in particular the soft product - was better than what I previously had with Lufthansa.
Launching a second leisure business based airline, then naming it after your first one was incredibly stupid. Eurowings was never handled properly as it is, then creating another airline and confusingly naming it "Eurowings Discover" was moronic. Who hires these people? The 2 airlines sound the same, the average customer will think they are the same airline; however, they are quite separate. What sense did that make to anyone with a brain? An F- in...
Launching a second leisure business based airline, then naming it after your first one was incredibly stupid. Eurowings was never handled properly as it is, then creating another airline and confusingly naming it "Eurowings Discover" was moronic. Who hires these people? The 2 airlines sound the same, the average customer will think they are the same airline; however, they are quite separate. What sense did that make to anyone with a brain? An F- in marketing here.
This move at least makes some sense. Changing the name to "Discover" differentiates it from Eurowings (which is still poorly marketed) and makes it clear that this is a different airline - and experience. The color scheme ties it to the LH Group (a rare case of corporate synergy in marketing on the part of LH) something that I also think was an uncharacteristically good move. It sees that LH Group is trying to make up some ground and correct some errors in the implementation of this *new* airline to the group.
I remember reading an article a while back claiming that 4Y was named Eurowings Discover to save on branding costs. Guess they have the budget to change it now ;)
I thought 4Y kind of only existed to substitute into LH routes at discounted labor rates..?
I totally don't get what Eurowings Discover was and why was it called just that. When I tried to get it, I looked for some flights of theirs on Eurowings website to no success. I then went over to Lufthansa website and found those. What's the point of that?
Here's the thing...I think the premise of this post is a little confused, as is basically all coverage of this airline since it was founded -- and Lufthansa Group itself has caused the confusion with one of the most disastrous branding strategies ever.
I've seen various blogs and industry publications refer to 'Eurowings Discover' as a 'low-cost carrier,' but don't see any evidence that Lufthansa Group itself has ever actually publicly framed this airline that...
Here's the thing...I think the premise of this post is a little confused, as is basically all coverage of this airline since it was founded -- and Lufthansa Group itself has caused the confusion with one of the most disastrous branding strategies ever.
I've seen various blogs and industry publications refer to 'Eurowings Discover' as a 'low-cost carrier,' but don't see any evidence that Lufthansa Group itself has ever actually publicly framed this airline that way. Press releases for Discover talk about "the new leisure airline of the Lufthansa Group." Ditto the rebrand announcement tweet. Nowhere is there mention, that I can find, of 'low fare,' 'budget,' or any similar terminology. Contrast that with the straightforward (and, I'll point out, still current) description of "Eurowings is the Lufthansa Group’s low-cost airline," written in the singular.
As you note, they've operated Discover as a completely separate company to Eurowings, and it offers three distinct cabins including Premium Economy and Business. The standard Economy fare includes a checked bag and carry-on. Yes, it's clearly a cut-price alternative to mainline LH service, but the intent seems to have been to create another Condor instead of a LCC...
...which makes it even more incomprehensible that they would have attached the Eurowings brand to the new airline while intending to operate it as a separate company with a completely different structure and market positioning, with quite literally no affiliation to Eurowings beyond the (misleading) name.
It's only natural that everyone, even well-informed people, would then attribute known characteristics of Eurowings to the new airline.
So, bottom line -- I don't think it's technically accurate to refer to 'Discover' as a low-cost carrier. Eurowings is a LCC, Discover is a standard fare (no pun intended) medium-and-long haul leisure airline. To that extent, the rebrand is actually the one thing that has made sense with this venture.
Ah, thank you for an excellent clear explanation which resolves confusion I had.
I thought "Eurowings" was one airline, doing short- and long-haul.
Looking at the destinations, it seems that Discover does have a whole lot of short-haul destinations in Greece/Croatia/Bulgaria /Italy/Spain- the difference from Eurowings is that Discover flies from Frankfurt/Munich (the Lufthansa hubs) while Eurowings is out of Dusseldorf + other German airports.
The distinction between Discover and Lufthansa seems to...
Ah, thank you for an excellent clear explanation which resolves confusion I had.
I thought "Eurowings" was one airline, doing short- and long-haul.
Looking at the destinations, it seems that Discover does have a whole lot of short-haul destinations in Greece/Croatia/Bulgaria /Italy/Spain- the difference from Eurowings is that Discover flies from Frankfurt/Munich (the Lufthansa hubs) while Eurowings is out of Dusseldorf + other German airports.
The distinction between Discover and Lufthansa seems to be that all the Discover destinations, both short- and long-haul are holiday destinations (E.g. Cancun rather than Mexico City)
That actually does have some sense E.g. in the "Business" cabin for leisure travellers it makes sense to have a seating arrangement that works for couples, while for business travellers it makes sense to have one more suitable for solo travellers.
Why merge them if they already have the same name?
Isn't Eurowings Discover simply the long-haul arm of Eurowings and the discover name reminds you it's long haul because you can discover more exotic destinations?
Doesn't seem that confusing
You might be surprised just how easy it is to brand-confuse the traveling public... hell, there's plenty of experienced road warriors who STILL couldn't tell you the difference between a Holiday Inn and a Holiday Inn Express.
The (previous) name is the only thing this airline has in common with Eurowings. Different company, different leadership, different IATA and ICAO codes, different customer service staffs, different fare structures...literally everything.
I just wrote a thesis on how Lufthansa Group completely mismanaged the branding for this venture in another comment.
@Chris W - well, they have confused you (their fault; not yours) - they were always separate, but now they are removing the branding which confused customers to think they were part of the same thing.
Eurowings Discover - discover how long your flight is delayed for