Eurowings and the Spanish airline Volotea have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enter into a sales partnership. The cooperation is set to cover more than 140 European routes operated by both airlines without overlap, including more than 100 routes operated by Eurowings and around 40 operated by Volotea.
The connections also include plans for eight new routes flown by Volotea, connecting German airports such as Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Stuttgart directly with French and Italian cities. As a result, Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes, Florence and Verona will also be reached with direct flights in the future. With this, the two airlines are significantly broadening their pan-European portfolio for customers.
Volotea is one of the fastest growing airlines in Europe: founded in 2011, the Barcelona-based company now flies to more than 100 destinations in 16 countries. In Germany, the airline has been operating the weekly Airbus-internal factory shuttle between the Hamburg and Toulouse locations since 2019. With the sales partnership, Volotea is also offering scheduled flights in Germany for the first time.
At the same time, Eurowings intends to open its distribution channels to Volotea with its focus on smaller and medium-sized destinations in France and Italy. With the planned mutual distribution agreement, both Eurowings passengers and Volotea customers would benefit from the visibility of more than 140 connections on the websites of both airlines. This way, Eurowings and Volotea would improve the offer to their passengers, providing access to a significantly wider range of travel options throughout Europe.
New connections
In the context of the planned connections, Volotea will open eight new routes to/from Germany, connecting Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Stuttgart directly with its bases in Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes (all in France), Florence and Verona (both in Italy). These new routes will operate twice weekly and have a capacity of around 60,000 seats.
New routes from 26 May 2023:
- Berlin-Verona
- Düsseldorf-Bordeaux
- Stuttgart-Bordeaux
New routes from 10 and 12 October 2023:
- Berlin-Lyon
- Hamburg-Bordeaux
- Hamburg-Florence
- Hamburg-Lyon
- Stuttgart-Nantes
Volotea has announced that tickets on the newly established routes will go on sale today on the Volotea website www.volotea.com. Once Volotea and Eurowings have reached a binding agreement on the sales cooperation, tickets will also be sold on the Eurowings website www.eurowings.com and on all usual distribution channels. This is intended for the end of April.
Jens Bischof, CEO of Eurowings: “Step by step, we are strengthening the ‘Euro’ in our Eurowings brand name. Our roots are in Germany, but we are consistently expanding our pan-European presence with this partnership. Having developed Eurowings towards Eastern and Northern Europe with recently opened bases in Prague and Stockholm, the expansion of our route portfolio towards Southern Europe is the next step. The planned mutual sales cooperation with Volotea will open up numerous new destinations in France and Italy for our customers, as well as attractive connections within Southern Europe.”
Carlos Muñoz, founder and CEO of Volotea: “We are very pleased to launch our commercial activities in Germany with a strong distribution partner and important player in the country. The planned strategic agreement with Eurowings is significant and unique, covering more than 140 routes with no overlap and signals the potential of a stronger, long-term partnership. With eight new destinations, we can also present our distinctive offer to the German public. Volotea connects important but often underserved medium-sized cities without stopovers that make traveling easy. With connections from Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Stuttgart to cities such as Bordeaux or Florence, we are also responding to new customer requests.”
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