Lavdumperer,
quite amazing: if aviation news break - you have īem first.
Your information is quite correct though.
My personal opinion:
Lufthansa needed to do something about the increasing low cost competition in Germany (DBA, Ryanair, Germania...)
Using Eurowings as "their" lowcost airline makes a lot of sense. Much lower cost structure then LHmainline/Condor/Cargo and even CityLine. LH owns 24.9 % of EW with an option for another 24,9%.
EW itself is actually two companies: Eurowings "mainline", operating scheduled regional services with ATRīs and BAE146 and Eurowings Flug, operating 5 A319 on behaf of var. tour operators to dif. holiday dest.. Since the charter biz. is somewhat slow for the indepentent airlines like EW and Germania, this is a low risk move for LH/EW to do.
Generally, Condor/Thomas Cook, and Hapag Lloyd are in pretty good shape, backed up by very large tour operators.
Gemania is also suffering from the mentioned slowdown in charter business and is therefore offering a couple domestic low routes cost, but remains a niche player.
DBAīs new low cost model is doing pretty well. Passenger numbers have incrased by 14% compared to last year and easyJet has just now finally signed the option to aquire DBA within the next 12 months.
Ryanair is not very popular amongst business travelers in Germany I believe and may find the german market to be more dificult then they thought it might be.
As for Virgin Express, I am unsure. If easyJet does buy DBA in the not to distant future, invests in more aircraft and routes, it will be hard for Virgin to keep up. DBA is allready flying 3 mio pax/year.
Letīs not mix up scheduled and charter airlines in the whole discussion though:
The traditional charter airlines (Hapag Lloyd, Aerolloyd, Air Berlin...) make most of their money, selling capacity to tour operators who in turn sell complete vacation packages to the consumer. They do sell seats themselves, too, but thatīs not their main business.
So with the exception of people who might have a house in Mallorca and have always flown with Air Berlin and might now be able to fly on a low cost carrier, itīs mainly two different groups of people these airlines target.
So I think, in the long run there should be room for Lufthansa, aswell as Easy, Ryan and maybe Virgin, and the traditional charter carriers.
I do believe only two big LCAīs bill be dominating europe in a few years time, though