Lufthansa's Eurowings in talks to lease planes from Niki Lauda

Eurowings is in talks with former motor racing champion Niki Lauda and others to lease planes and crew to reach a goal of growing its fleet to 210 planes, Eurowings' CE said Tuesday. "Yes, we are also talking to Lauda about whether and to what extent he can provide us with capacity," Thorsten Dirks said. "There are many options," he added, but declined to say with which other parties Eurowings was in talks. Lufthansa had planned to grow Eurowings to 210 planes by buying Air Berlin's Niki and LGW units, but it ended up scrapping the Niki purchase after the EC indicated it would veto the deal. Niki was bought by Lauda instead. Even without the Niki deal, Eurowings is growing its fleet to about 190 planes from 160 this summer. It has hired 2,000 new crew over the past few months. <br/>