Condor, once a strictly leisure carrier, is now a growing threat to Lufthansa’s dominance over the wider German market. With the addition of domestic and regional flights, Condor is laying the foundation to more robustly challenge Lufthansa.
Condor Adds Domestic German Flighs, Regional Routes
Condor is in the midst of refreshing its shorthaul and longhaul fleet, with delivery of A320neo family and A330neo jets. I’ve detailed the new A330-900neo and its improved business class product, but the carrier has now announced plans to grow its feeder network, expanding from simply serving leisure destinations like Corfu and Palma de Mallorca to domestic and regional routes that will more robustly challenge Lufthansa.
Condor’s New Domestic Flights From Frankfurt
Condor will add domestic flights from its Frankfurt (FRA) hub to:
- Berlin (BER)
- Hamburg (HAM)
- Munich (MUC)
These routes will initially operate once per day and start in summer 2025.
Condor’s New European Regional Flights
In addition to the trio of new domestic routes, Condor will operate flights to five major cities in Europe:
- Milan (MXP)
- Prague (PRG)
- Rome (FCO)
- Vienna (VIE)
- Zurich (ZRH)
Interestingly, Condor intends to base at least some of these aircraft at the outstations rather than in Frankfurt because of the “high costs” of Germany. Since when is Switzerland cheaper than Germany?
These routes will also operate once per day, at least initially, and begin next summer.
We have seen this already in Condor’s longhaul network, with flights added to major cities in the United States and Canada that directly challenge Lufthansa (and competitive fares to boot).
Steady Wins The Race
Condor CEO Peter Gerber described the move from classic away from being a “classic vacation” airline:
“With the eight new city connections, each of which is included in the summer flight schedule once a day, Condor is expanding its offering to include exciting city destinations where you can have a fantastic time. After all, Condor has long since ceased to be a classic vacation airline: we are consistently developing our flight schedule in line with the needs of our guests. Added to this are the exorbitantly rising location costs in Germany, which have prompted us to relocate a total of five aircraft to Zurich, Vienna, Prague, Milan and Rome in order to grow economically there.”
As a consumer who travels to Germany several times per year, I am thrilled by this development.
Condor must carefully grow: steady wins the race. But adding these connections over Europe will put fare pressure on the Luthansa Group and feed in nicely to its longhaul and leisure network (all those leisure destinations will continue as well).
CONCLUSION
Condor will add domestic and regional flights as its business model evolves, providing a direct challenge to Luthasna on eight new routes.
I am genuinely excited about the future of Condor and how it might reshape the currently uncompetitive German aviation market, both domestic and international.
image: Condor
Your opinion of Condor’s livery?
I love it.
Isn’t the livery reminiscent of a Yellow-bellied sea snake?
Well who knows? The coalition is literally falling apart right now. This could be a golden moment for Condor to make a move while there are bigger issues at play than “protect LH at all costs.”
When will awards for these new routes become available?
On Alaksa? Not sure.
I’ve checked the schedules and to me those flights seem like 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 not too long 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.
Lufthansa’s start of MSP service followed on the trail of Condor already operating MSP-Germany. Both are welcome competition to/from the Delta fortress hub; and along with Aer Lingus and long-standing Icelandair service at MSP, they collectively provide Delta/Skyteam with more competition to get between the MSP catchment area and continental Europe.