Germanwings announces the launch of its fourth hub in Hamburg and the expansion of routes with new European destinations and new flights to Munich.Ê Germanwings will initially station two aircraft at Hamburg/Fuhlsbüttel, offering cheap flights from as little as £13 (including all taxes and fees) to a total of eleven destinations. Internet bookings for the new routes can be made from Wednesday 10 August at 17.00 GMT at germanwings.com.The two daily flights to London Gatwick will service the high demand for business travel between the two cities. The Stockholm and Oslo routes further expand the low-cost airline’s market presence in Scandinavia, which has traditionally had close business ties to Hamburg. With its existing hubs in Cologne/Bonn, Stuttgart and Berlin, Germanwings has established itself as the leading carrier to Eastern Europe, a trend which will be consolidated in Hamburg; flights will be available to the new destinations of Warsaw and Zagreb and also to Krakow, to which no scheduled flights from Hamburg were previously available.

The low-cost airline will be offering four flights a week between Toulouse, the headquarters of the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, and Hamburg, where an Airbus production site is located. This will be the first scheduled route between these two cities. This southern French city in the foothills of the Pyrenees will also prove a very popular destination for holidaymakers. Three flights a week to Istanbul have also been scheduled.

Domestically, Germanwings will be flying once daily to Munich. The existing Hamburg-Stuttgart route will be expanded in the winter schedule from two to three daily flights. In addition, Germanwings will soon be announcing an additional domestic route within Germany, with two flights daily from Hamburg. The low-cost airline will then be operating three planes out of Hamburg for its 2005 winter schedule, with two planes permanently based in the city.

The Hamburg base is the fourth such German hub to be established by Germanwings within a very short time. Since launching in Cologne/Bonn in 2002, Germanwings has also been flying out of Stuttgart since autumn 2003, and only two months ago opened its third base at Berlin-Schönefeld.Ê Germanwings’ Cologne/Bonn base now offers the broadest range of routes of any low-cost airline in continental Europe. Further existing Germanwings’ destinations are planned for future inclusion in the Hamburg schedule.

The airline conveyed 3.5 million passengers last year and achieved a turnover of 247 million Euros. This fourth base in Hamburg means that Germanwings will exceed its 2005 turnover target of 380 million Euros and, by the end of the year, will have conveyed far more than the anticipated total of 5.5 million passengers. The launch of the Hamburg base will create between 50 and 80 new jobs.
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