Luft takeover bid for Condor
 

Looks like Lufthansa is looking at buying back Condor from Thomas Cook. No details on the price, but they want to keep it operating intact.

Good for the Condor staff. For those who remember when DF was part of LH it was a good airline, they sold it away , and now buy it back with disgruntled staff and an obsolete old fleet. the name Condor was synonym to good German quality and praised by the average German pax, , what Thomas cook has made of it is a disgrace...

Concur, an aged fleet for certain, but there are quite a few 3 and 4 year old A321.

https://www.planespotters.net/airlin...-Cook-Airlines

With AirBerlin gone, it does make some sense. This mentions Condor, but doesnt mention the other TC subsidiaries.

all leased and most flying for Thomas cook UK.
@ Raski : Not at all. but used to have lots of friends on the old Condor though.

Managers are always keen to make short term profits.
The BONUS, you know?

Okay, so Luft seems to think it was a good thing to take bak Condor. Can we look at the postitives of this/ Condor employees, routes, etc?

Please?

It would be difficult for LH to justify keeping Condor as a standalone operational unit while having Eurowings and SunExpress DEU who pretty well serving the purpose. Keeping the brand - yes, keeping the airline - short term only until retirement of 757 and 767s.

CargoOne, I would argue that if Condor returned to the quality of old, which it was well respected for by a significant number of the German travel community, it would be a vastly different product to that offered by Eurowings and SunExpress DEU.

According to the aviation website, Condor no longer has any 757 or 767.

on a different note, Etihad is offering an investment in Jet!

It is not a rocket science to introduce a different service concept to Eurowings operated / Condor branded flights... Way cheaper than keeping a separate airline.

Don't trust aviation websites... There are 16x B763 and 16x B753 in Condor fleet. Average 75/76 fleet age is over 20 years.

Of course I may be wrong, but I doubt that the Condor name will disappear. Remember when they became part of Thomas Cook and the Condor name disappeared? The resulting loss of identity in Germany had them quickly do a 180 and paint CONDOR back on their aircraft. As I said above, the name is highly recognised and respected by the German public. Perhaps the name Eurowings will go walkies?

Which is exactly what I concluded with!

However, I think that Eurowings will concentrate on the European market and Condor will assume the long haul market, including that presently operated by Eurowings. We will see.

HT : That would make sense. also PR wise. Eurowings long haul is ex Air Berlin , itself ex LTU ,same planes and for part same crews. In the past Condor and LTU used to compete on long haul and Condor was branding itself as a quality product, At the time people were prepared to pay extra to fly Condor. Eurowings is in the mind of Germans too much connected with low cost and Germanwings .So rebranding Condor for long haul IT flights may work . But not with the old 75s and especially the 76s ..:rolleyes:

Old aircraft
 

Thomas Cook Group are chock full of old machines on cheap leases. That very much includes Condor, the union-dominated German carrier.

Why any airline would want to acquire Condor is beyond me. There is no room for a so-called "quality" long-haul carrier in the German market, let alone one with a militant workforce and old aircraft. Living on past "glories" is a nonsense.

The militant workforce, flying old aircraft, living on past glories works well for BA though......

What I find amusing is that some of you harp on about old equipment etc., as if their intention would be to continue operating them. I'm of the opinion that, under the DLH umbrella, Condor would be acquiring not new but younger aircraft for the long haul market and disposing of the A321s and 753s since that market would be taken care of by EWG and their A319/320s. It would also not surprise me to see the Condor A321s transferred to EWG.

Logical 767 replacement is 330/330NEO which also quite naturally can be operated by... EWG again.