Expensive Hamburg: Eurowings Cuts 2025 Network

DALLAS — Today, Lufthansa Group LCC subsidiary Eurowings (EW) announced it would reduce operations at Hamburg Airport (HAM) by 1000 flights for 2025.

This means that EW will move the flights to other locations to tackle the airport’s “disproportionate” increase in charges, which left the airline with “no choice,” said EW’s CEO, Jens Bischof. She also added that flying to and from HAM would be “noticeably more expensive.”

The HAM-Cologne Bonn (CGN) route, popular among business travelers, will also have to be sacrificed, as it will not be part of the upcoming Summer 2025 schedule due to cost-associated issues. Apart from domestic German cancellations, the change will affect EW's operations in Europe and Africa. The airline will axe six destinations from Hamburg, despite being the market leader at HAM, with 16 aircraft currently based there operating to 70 destinations.

Eurowings also stated that it was being “forced” to consider closing more domestic routes at other German airports in favor of other EU flights due to rising location and infrastructure costs hitting German airlines, making their routes to and from Germany less profitable. 

Mr Jens Bischof lamented the move, saying that the “development could have been avoided. But the airport's plans for a completely disproportionate increase in charges leave us no choice. It is very regrettable that no viable solutions have been offered here. The ones who are now suffering are leisure and business travelers from the region.”