German budget airline Eurowings considers new routes in the Middle East

Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings is considering new destinations in the Middle East after expanding its services to Dubai and announcing routes to Jeddah and Cairo as part of its 2024-2025 winter schedule. The German budget airline is studying the potential of new routes to Red Sea coastal cities in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to cater largely to leisure travellers, Eurowings' CE Jens Bischof told The National. Other possibilities include cities in Oman, the UAE and the wider Gulf. “As a principle, we're looking at routes which are overpriced or underserved,” he said. “It's the Red Sea and the Gulf region … there are possibilities all the way through to Oman and there are possibilities in the Emirates which are still unexploited.” The airline is also working with German tour operators and tourism boards in the region to identify where capacity is needed and how to curate attractive packages with “competitive” services, he added. “Certainly nobody wants to spend a holiday on a construction site, there needs to be a certain maturity level which we need to find and it's all dependent on how these big projects will evolve over time to become a real solid piece of the destination portfolio,” Bischof said, referring to Saudi Arabia's tourism projects along the Red Sea coast.<br/>