I must admit I was a bit surprised to see routes like LHR - Alicante on BA
being launched, but I wouldn't be surprised if BA can make these routes work, especially at certain times where demand for 'business routes' is weaker.
Germanwings (part of the Lufthansa Group) and Vueling (46% owned by
IAG) are both at LHR for similar reasons. LH uses Germanwings as a lower-cost operator on certain LHR-Germany routes and expect to see a lot more of them as Germanwings will be taking over ALL of LH's non-hub routes (LHR-HAM/DUS/STR e.t.c) out of LHR. I suspect that IAG (well, IB) is looking at similar strategy with Vueling (although IB already has Iberia Express).
Why can’t they rebrand Germanwings flights (while retaina separate AOC/operations) as “Lufthansa” flights, I means the difference between them and LH Short-Haul is falling as part of their transfer of P2P European routes to that airline (the only difference by the end of 2013 is that Germanwings offers a LCC Economy fare as well as full-service Economy and now Business fares)
In fact Lufthansa really need to get their branding (and products) together (I know they need to retain OS, LX and SN as subsidiaries for bilateral reasons, but not enough to brand them separately asif they have nothing to do with LH), and rebrand the operations of Swiss International Airlines, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines as “Lufthansa”(along with Austrian Arrows and Swiss European Airlines as “Lufthansa Regional”
In other words Lufthansa needs to chance their organisational structure from this:
Mainline:
Austrian Airlines
Brussels Airlines
Lufthansa
Germanwings
Swiss International Airlines
Regional:
Air Dolomiti*
Austrian Arrows (Tyrolean Airways)
Eurowings*
Lufthansa CityLine*
Swiss European Airlines
*Trading as “Lufthansa Regional”
To this:
Mainline
Lufthansa
Lufthansa Austria (Trading as “Lufthansa”)*
Lufthansa Belgium (Trading as “Lufthansa”)*
Lufthansa Switzerland (Trading as “Lufthansa”)*
Germanwings (Trading as “Lufthansa”)
Regional:
Lufthansa CityLine (Trading as “Lufthansa Regional”)
*Once the bilateral issues are sorted, they can be folded into Lufthansa itself
What this means is that apart from in legal form, the entire group has the same image, service, standards, T&C (and pretty much everything else) so that it’s all appears as one airline
Also Iberia Express was nothing more than a waste of time (and led to strikes), when all they had to do was buy the shares it does not own in Vueling (which they at last doing) and quietly move unprofitableservices to Vueling
Now that Vueling is 100% owned by IAG, Iberia Express’s days are numberd, most of all since the relevant courst has forced the end of transferring staff and routes from Iberia to that airline