Eurowings retires Bombardier fleet

Eurowings has retired its last Bombardier CRJ-900 jet, ending the airline’s chapter as a regional airline.

The airline is now unifying its fleet towards the larger Airbus A320.

Flight EW 4187 from Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden to Hamburg operated by the last 90-seater of this type with the registration D-ACNM was its last scheduled flight for Eurowings. The airport fire service greeted the aircraft at Hamburg airport with a blue light salute before it was dismissed from the fleet.

In line with its historical operations area, the Eurowings Bombardier fleet was designed as a regional airline within the Lufthansa Group. The aircraft is available in 200, 700 and 900 versions and all have been in service at Eurowings during the intervening period. The airline’s first Bombardier flight using the smallest version, the Bombardier CRJ-200, took place on 6 April 2001. The company subsequently had 23 aircraft of this type in the fleet with the last CRJ-200 leaving the company in May 2012.

Instead, the airline finally moved via two larger CRJ-700 with 70 seats to the longer CRJ-900 which flew for the first time on 23 April 2009. Eurowings also had 23 jets of this version in the fleet. With one of the largest, most consistent and fastest fleet renewal programmes of all the European airlines, within a few months the airline then replaced this aircraft with 23 Airbus A320 that are twice the size. At the same time, the switch made it necessary to schedule appropriate retraining of the pilots and cabin crews.

The whole project is now complete. After 560,400 accident-free flight hours, there are no longer any Bombardier jets in active service and the technicians are now preparing the last three aircraft with Eurowings registration for service with another airline.