Eurowings to make Namibian debut on 13 July

By Business Reporter
THE Namibia Airports Com­pany (NAC) has announced that European airline, Eurow­ings, will make its much-anticipated maiden flight to Windhoek on 13 July, which is expected to land at the Hosea Kutako International Airport at 09h25.
NAC Strategic Executive: Commer­cial Services, Toska Sem, said the new route will operate twice a week, with direct flights on a Monday and Thurs­day, using an Airbus A330-200 that accommodates 310 passengers.
According to Sem, in efforts to al­leviate infrastructural overload and create a favourable atmosphere for the customers, NAC, in collabora­tion with their airport stakeholders, has introduced portable check-in counters to ease the dreaded queues, amongst others.
Sem confirmed Eurowings entry into the Namibian market this week, during an update on some of the ac­tivities undertaken by the NAC dur­ing the first quarter of the financial year (April to June).
Eurowings currently offers flights to more than 140 destinations in over 40 countries worldwide. It is a low-cost airline specialising in affordable direct flights within Europe, and from its Cologne/Bonn location, to attrac­tive long-haul destinations.
Thus far, airlines calling at Ho­sea Kutako International Airport, include Air Namibia, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Qatar Airways, Ethi­opian Airlines, Condor, South Afri­can Airways, South African Express, British Airways (Comair) and TAAG Angola.
Eurowings GmbH is a German airline headquartered in Düsseldorf, and is a fully-owned subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group. It serves a net­work of domestic and European des­tinations, as well as some long-haul routes, and maintains bases at Berlin Tegel Airport, Cologne Bonn Air­port, Düsseldorf Airport, Hamburg Airport and Vienna International Airport.
Eurowings has gone through a ma­jor transformation in recent years. It was part of Lufthansa Regional until October 2014. At that time, it began operating on behalf of Germanwings, within their network. Since spring 2015, Eurowings has been redevel­oped into a low-cost carrier, for short and long-haul flights. By October 2015, it had also started to incorpo­rate Germanwings’ route network, as part of the merger of the two brands.