Germanwings

If you stood on the terrace at Cologne Bonn, Stuttgart or Hamburg between 2002 and 2015, you almost always had Germanwings in front of your lens: white Airbuses, the lowercase titles and an astonishing number of special liveries. Today no aircraft flies under this name anymore. This page shows you how an Eurowings offshoot became the low-cost brand of the Lufthansa Group, which aircraft Germanwings flew, what Flight 9525 means and how to reliably recognize the airline in old photos and logbooks.

Germanwings at a glance

Germanwings was a German low-cost airline based in Cologne that flew from 2002 to 2020. It was one of the first budget carriers from Germany and for years the low-fare brand of the Lufthansa Group. Its home was Cologne Bonn Airport, where the first flights took off on October 27, 2002.

Its profile changed fundamentally twice along the way. Until 2013 Germanwings was a classic low-cost provider with direct flights from German airports to cities and vacation regions in Europe. Then it took over the direct flights of Lufthansa outside the hubs Frankfurt and Munich. From fall 2015 the brand finally stepped back behind Eurowings, and Germanwings flew only on behalf of its sister.

In April 2020, in the middle of the coronavirus crisis, Lufthansa announced the end of flight operations. How the budget carrier business model works in general is explained in the post How budget airlines work.

The history in stages

The roots of Germanwings lie with Eurowings from Dortmund. In the mid-1990s it founded a subsidiary of its own, Eurowings Flug GmbH, which at first flew charter. When budget airlines emerged in Europe, Eurowings turned it into a low-cost offering of its own in 2002 – under the new name Germanwings and with Cologne Bonn as its starting point. Almost at the same time TUI launched a direct competitor with Hapag-Lloyd Express, also with a base at Cologne Bonn.

The first years were marked by growth. Germanwings opened bases at many large German airports and at times served around 130 destinations in Germany, Europe and North Africa. Until 2012 passenger numbers were around seven to eight million a year. The big leap came only with the restructuring in the Lufthansa Group: in the first year of the “new Germanwings” from July 2013 it was more than 16 million according to group figures. Plans to merge Germanwings with Eurowings and TUIfly were discussed around 2008 but never carried out.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code 4U: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and departure boards, for example on 4U9525.
• ICAO code GWI: used by air traffic control in the flight plan.
• Callsign GERMANWINGS: how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

After the transition to Eurowings, the airline’s own codes lost importance. Flights were sold under EW numbers, even if a Germanwings aircraft with a Germanwings crew sat up front. From the end of 2017, at the latest from the end of March 2018, Germanwings flew only under Eurowings flight numbers; afterward its own codes essentially appeared only on ferry flights. Why callsigns and codes sometimes diverge confusingly is shown in the post on airline callsigns.

From Eurowings to Lufthansa – and back

The relationship between Germanwings and Eurowings is one of the most confusing corporate stories in German aviation. First Germanwings was Eurowings’ subsidiary. Then Lufthansa bought both, and Germanwings became the more important brand. In the end Germanwings was absorbed into Eurowings again.

Period	Germanwings’ role	What you see on photos
2002–2008	Low-cost subsidiary of Eurowings	Germanwings design, its own A319s
2009–2012	Lufthansa subsidiary, independent low-cost airline	Germanwings design, fleet grows slowly
2013–2015	Takes over Lufthansa direct flights outside the hubs	New design, many former Lufthansa Airbuses
2015–2020	Wet-lease operator for Eurowings	Increasingly Eurowings design on Germanwings aircraft
from 2020	No more flight operations	Aircraft keep flying at Eurowings

Behind the restructuring from 2013 was a Lufthansa problem: the direct flights between German cities and Europe that did not run via Frankfurt or Munich were losing money. Germanwings was tasked with flying them more cheaply. Around 30 Lufthansa aircraft moved to the subsidiary for this, and aircraft from Eurowings were added. At the end of 2014 the fleet consisted of well over 80 aircraft. What lies behind such multi-brand concepts is put in context by the post on multi-brand strategies.

The course did not last long. In December 2014 Lufthansa announced another restructuring in the budget segment, and in January 2015 came the decision to replace the Germanwings brand with Eurowings. From October 25, 2015, Eurowings was the contracting party for passengers, and from November 1, 2015, Germanwings flew on wet lease – aircraft and crew came from Germanwings, the brand from Eurowings. From early 2016 the Germanwings website also redirected to Eurowings.

The Germanwings fleet

Germanwings was an almost pure Airbus airline. The backbone was the Airbus A319, with which the airline started in 2002. From 2003 the slightly longer Airbus A320 joined, and its numbers grew markedly with the Lufthansa restructuring in 2013. Both types come from the manufacturer Airbus.

In March 2020, when flight operations ended, the fleet comprised 34 aircraft according to reference works, with an average age of just over 15 years, mostly A319s.

Type	Use at Germanwings	Spotter note
Airbus A319	2002–2020	Backbone of the fleet, many registrations D-AKN.. and D-AGW..
Airbus A320	from 2003	Many came from Lufthansa from 2013

In the early years Germanwings at times needed more capacity than its own fleet provided. It then leased aircraft with crew from other airlines:

• Boeing 717-200: two aircraft from the Spanish Aebal, in 2004 and 2005.
• MD-80 family: one each of an MD-81, MD-82 and MD-83 from Scandinavian providers, in 2007.

Such wet-lease aircraft are true rarities in the archive today. If you have a Boeing 717 with a Germanwings flight number in your logbook, you can be pleased. Whether your photo shows an A319 or an A320 is best decided by fuselage length and emergency exits, as the guide Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart shows.

How to recognize Germanwings

The look changed several times over the 18 years. In the first phase the Airbuses wore the “germanwings” titles in lowercase, a metallic-looking gray paint scheme and strong accents in yellow and burgundy. With the Lufthansa restructuring a new look arrived in July 2013: white fuselage, gray belly, a “W” made of two stylized contrails and the addition “Lufthansa Group”. From 2015 more and more Germanwings aircraft received the Eurowings design, even though Germanwings continued to operate them.

The most reliable feature therefore remains the registration. Many of its own A319s carried registrations from the D-AKN.. and D-AGW.. series. The Airbuses that came from Lufthansa in 2013 and 2014 kept their Lufthansa registrations such as D-AIP.. or D-AIQ… How German registrations are structured is explained in the post on German aircraft registrations.

Special liveries

Germanwings was known for eye-catching special liveries. Some well-documented examples:

Period	Design	Note
before 2013	“Bearbus”	City advertising with a motif from the Berlin coat of arms
before 2013	T-Mobile	Advertising livery in pink
Summer 2014	“Vicky the Viking”	Cartoon motif
from August 2014	“Maya the Bee”	on an Airbus A320

The best way to check which aircraft wore which design is through photo databases and the registration. The early city and advertising liveries disappeared with the new look in 2013. If the topic appeals to you, you’ll find more in the posts on special liveries of German airlines and on advertising liveries.

Bases and routes

The heart of Germanwings beat in Cologne Bonn. Everything started here in 2002, and the administration was based here. In September 2003 Stuttgart was added as the second big base; Stuttgart Airport remained one of the most important locations to the end. Later came Hamburg, Berlin Tegel, Hanover, Dortmund, Nuremberg, Munich and – with the Lufthansa restructuring – Düsseldorf, among others.

In March 2020 the fleet was spread, according to reference works, across Cologne Bonn with seven aircraft, Stuttgart and Berlin Tegel with five each, Hamburg with four, Munich with three and Dortmund with one aircraft. Destinations ranged from German cities through European metropolises to classic vacation regions on the Mediterranean.

If you visit the old Germanwings locations today, you mainly see the successor Eurowings there. Good places for this are the observation deck at Cologne Bonn Airport, the observation deck at Stuttgart Airport and the observation deck at Hamburg Airport. For Cologne Bonn the guide Plane spotting at Cologne Bonn also helps.

Flight 9525

On March 24, 2015, a Germanwings Airbus A320 registered D-AIPX took off from Barcelona, destination Düsseldorf. On board were 144 passengers and six crew members. About 40 minutes after takeoff the aircraft crashed in the French Alps near Prads-Haute-Bléone. Nobody survived.

The French investigation authority BEA led the investigation, with support from the German BFU. The final report of March 13, 2016, concluded that the first officer had locked himself alone in the cockpit and deliberately put the aircraft into a descent. Among the victims were 16 students and two teachers from a high school in Haltern am See.

The disaster had consequences beyond Germanwings. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) temporarily recommended that two people should always be in the cockpit; German airlines introduced this rule. Later a risk-based approach replaced the rigid requirement. Germanwings never used the flight number 9525 again. Memorials to the victims stand in Le Vernet near the crash site and in Haltern am See.

The end: absorbed into Eurowings

After 2015 Germanwings was practically invisible to passengers: bookings were made with Eurowings, flights ran under EW flight numbers, and more and more aircraft wore the Eurowings design. In October 2019 Germanwings still took over the Munich base of Eurowings Europe.

How the Germanwings case compares with real bankruptcies is worth a look: unlike Air Berlin or Germania, Germanwings did not go insolvent but was shut down by its own group. The framework is provided by the post on major airline failures in Europe.

Germanwings in spotters’ everyday life today

For your logbook, Germanwings is mainly an archive topic. If you photographed at a German airport between 2002 and 2020, you very likely have Germanwings aircraft on your memory card. It’s worth sorting these pictures after the fact: type, registration, place and date turn a souvenir photo into a clean logbook entry.

Tracing what became of them is exciting too. Because many aircraft kept flying at Eurowings, you can still see some former Germanwings aircraft in everyday life – just in Eurowings design. Many of the older Airbuses have since been retired. The best way to follow an aircraft’s life story is through registration and serial number, as the guide How old is this aircraft? describes.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Germanwings and Germania – Germania was an independent Berlin airline, Germanwings a Lufthansa subsidiary from Cologne.
• Taking Germanwings for a 2015 Eurowings creation – it was more the other way around: Germanwings emerged from Eurowings in 2002 and was absorbed back into it in 2015.
• Taking every Eurowings Airbus from 2015 to 2020 for a Eurowings operation – many flew on wet lease for Germanwings.
• Taking Lufthansa registrations for Lufthansa flights – from 2013 numerous D-AIP.. and D-AIQ.. flew for Germanwings.
• Mixing up Germanwings and Lufthansa CityLine – CityLine flew as a regional subsidiary for Lufthansa, while Germanwings was the low-cost brand.

Conclusion

Germanwings is an airline with several lives: budget carrier pioneer from Cologne Bonn, low-cost brand of Lufthansa, wet-lease operator for Eurowings. Added to that is Flight 9525, which will forever mark the airline’s history. For spotters, what remains is mainly the archive: A319s and A320s with clear registrations, a series of colorful special liveries and aircraft that kept flying at Eurowings.