Welcome back from the holidays. It’s that awful first day when everyone is back working and nobody wants to be. So, let’s pretend we’re all still on vacation by talking about a holiday-focused airline. Today, it is time to discuss Condor and its recent massive change in its long-haul network.
Condor is a fairly remarkable leisure airline. I mean “remarkable” in the sense that it is still flying despite having multiple opportunities not to be. At one point it was a part of Thomas Cook, but we know what happened there… Thomas Cook failed. After a government bailout from its home country of Germany, Condor got back on its feet as a standalone airline and began a big expansion.
On long-haul — which is what we’re talking about today — it replaced its ancient 767s with brand new A330-900neos, and it really leaned heavily into the North American market. Pre-pandemic, it toyed with some of that flying from Munich, but post-pandemic it was entirely focused on Frankfurt (except for a handful of Dusseldorf – New York flights each year).
After years of trying to serve markets that didn’t have much long-haul service, Condor decided to throw larger markets into the mix. Los Angeles and San Francisco started in 2022. Edmonton joined a year later, and in 2024, Cabo, Miami, and San Antonio were added. As George Martinez might say, only the Condor would be so bold. (I’m guessing 99.9 percent of you won’t get that reference, but if you happened to have loved The Brak Show 20 years ago, then welcome to this very small and irrelevant club.)
The A330s weren’t just new airplanes. They had a much nicer onboard product, and Condor was betting on some of these bigger markets working thanks in part to a nice, inexpensive flat bed experience to and especially beyond the Frankfurt hub.
The only real problem with that plan is that Condor wasn’t really providing its own feed beyond Frankfurt. The competition authorities in Germany had forced Lufthansa to provide an interline agreement to carry Condor passengers beyond Frankfurt, so this was a great way for Condor to fill its long-haul airplanes. It used its own short-haul airplanes to fly mostly north-south leisure routes in Europe and Africa. But now things are changing.
July 2025 vs July 2024 Condor Narrowbody flying from Frankfurt
Green is new in 2025, Maps generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz, Data via Cirium
The courts have struck down this deal, so Lufthansa no longer has to provide interline connectivity, and that means Condor is in a world of hurt. It has to make big changes in light of this shift.
So, what is happening? Well, it did add some nonstops from Frankfurt to those cities in green on the map above. Berlin, Hamburg, Milan, Munich, Prague, Rome, Vienna, and Zurich are all the kinds of cities that are likely to provide a decent amount of long-haul feed for North Americans traveling to Europe. But that wasn’t enough.
Over the Atlantic, six markets are being dropped: Baltimore, Edmonton, Halifax, Minneapolis/St Paul, Phoenix, and San Antonio. Why those? Well, let’s take a look.
Condor US/Canada Market Data for July 2024
ARC/BSP Data via Cirium, lighter colors are being dropped
The first three on the left are pretty easy in that they have the largest percent of traffic that connected over Frankfurt. It’ll be harder to fill those airplanes without Lufthansa. Toronto, however, is staying, and I’m a little surprised about that one. Maybe it’s just that it’s a primary, large city, so Condor thinks it can generate enough local traffic. Anchorage and Calgary both stay, but they both drop from 5x to 3x weekly.
I’ll admit that of everything in the network, I’m somewhat surprised that Portland sticks around with such a high percentage of that beyond-Frankfurt traffic originating in North America. I’d think that would be tougher to replace. It looks somewhat similar to MSP and Phoenix which do go away.
With all these flights culled, what is Condor going to do with all that airplane time? It’s adding three new routes to start, and none of them are in the US or Canada. Next summer will now get 5x weekly to Bangkok, 3x weekly to Johannesburg, and 2x weekly to Panama City (Panama). Presumably these are markets that Condor thinks can generate a lot of local traffic.
These routes will now fly through fall, unlike some of the canceled ones, so that’s a benefit, but Condor is still underutilizing its fleet in summer.
A330-900neo Block Minutes by Month
ARC/BSP Data via Cirium
That may mean that Condor is planning on shifting some of its maintenance into summer instead of fall, or it could mean that Condor isn’t done remaking its network just yet.
As we head into the prime summer booking season, Condor is lucky that it could at least act quickly and shift over the holidays before it would really fall behind on the booking curve. But this is a big change for an airline that has had quite an odyssey over the last several years, and it is far from certain that it will work. Undoubtedly this will be fought on two fronts… in the courts where Condor will hope to get back that Lufthansa deal, and in the skies where Condor is not feverishly looking for a viable strategy in a new world.
38 comments on “Condor Quickly Remakes Its Summer Network”
I would believe the move to keep Canada instead of US destination this summer is the repeat of what happened & years ago when Trump was first voted in office ! If I remember well, European tourism dropped in the US and soared in Canada at that time.
But maybe you can pull some data to quantify that !
The strength of the USD is what will impact tourism inbound to the United States from Europe and not the second Trump Administration. The world has turned right anyway, so the political situation in the US is no less toxic, problematic, and disgraceful than it is in many parts of Europe.
One US annoyance is that it doesn’t do transit, like other countries. If you are flying from say Europe with a transit stop in the US and then on to South America, and never leaving the US airport, you still have to go through US immigration. That adds uncertainly and hassle to trips that many want to avoid, hence Canada being a good alternative transit point.
Canada isn’t pain free for transit either, most Europeans would need a Canadian transit visa if connecting to another country (like the US).
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/visit-canada/transit.html
I discovered this when checking in to a flight to Canada just for a transit. It was fixed in less than an hour, but it was a bit stressful.
Thanks for the summary.
To be clear, though, Lufthansa doesnt get to completely drop its interline feed. It’s just that, up until the court judgement, it had to provide a special prorate to Condor for that feed, which presumably made the feed/ ability to add an LH shorthaul segment to a DE longhaul segment, cheaper. The new deal makes this feed more expensive, and it looks like DE figured out it would be uneconomical in those markets. Sad to see this happen. Though I’m not surprised. San Antonio was new last year and supported by a revenue guarantee and had pretty low load factors all season. BWI is sad as I had used it a few times. But I did see it when I flew it – it was all Americans on that flight, all connecting on Lufthansa to places across Southern Europe. I connected to Barcelona, and there were a good number of people from my Condor flight on that connection. Alas. I did enjoy it though – their business class was superb (even on the 767 I was on) and service/food better than on comparable LH flights. I wish them well – they’re a good airline.
Condor’s survival will depend on reinstating a partnership with LH. Yes, LH has many leisure airlines in its cluttered portfolio, but Condor’s product are a significant cut above, and would work for many routes that don’t for LH, across the Atlantic.
Is Condor significantly better than LHG’s Discover? We have Discover here in Tampa and they are doing fine with an A330, combining leisure with business travelers with ample connections in Frankfurt.
Condor was the first international carrier to return to Halifax after the pandemic, so it will be tough to see them leave our market. However with Discover having a sizable schedule in town and Edelweiss starting this year there is still plenty of lift from Germany/Switzerland to and from the Maritimes.
In PHX, Condor used to have the only “European” service during the summer months with American/BA focused on LHR 2X a day, but things changed last year when Air France entered the market 3X a week and is running year round with expansion to 5X a week during the summer and moving to larger aircraft. BA also went year round with the A350-1000 and while AA went seasonal the seat drop in the winter months makes sense. So Condor could no longer compete with BA/AA and DL/AF and PHX connectivity improved greatly. Let’s hope IAG adds Spain to the summer mix in ’26.
CF,
With Austin, TX (and mid-Texas) having a very large German population could Condor succeed there?
Angry Bob – I doubt it. Condor was in there until Lufthansa decided to come in, and then Condor walked away. That was awhile ago, but I still don’t imagine it’s a market that needs two airlines flying to Frankfurt.
Yeah. We couldn’t support two full service airlines to LHR (though BA is going nearly double daily this year), and if there was more demand to Germany Lufthansa would go daily, potentially with an A359 rather than a 787-9, to absorb it.
Fun game: what’s the most successful second-place national airline in Europe (that isn’t or wasn’t at the time owned by a parent group like IAG — so Vueling and Transavia don’t count, and not the EU-spanning LCCs like Ryanair, Easyjet and Norwegian that are arguably more successful than the national carriers)? BMI and Virgin in the UK, Condor in Germany, Air Europa in Spain, Corsair or Air Caraibes or French Bee* in France, maybe the TUI airlines like TUI Airways in the UK…
Being a second carrier in Europe is tough!
*Only in here to point out that there are at least three French leisure carriers for some reason.
“Corsair or Air Caraibes or French Bee”
French Bee is a sister company of Air Caraibes.
There is also Air austral.
The basis of their passenger volume is linked to the overseas “départements” of France, which may help… or not…
Air Tahiti is also technically French as well
About 3 weeks ago, Condor announced they were increasing seasonal BWI – Frankfurt from 3-4x a week and then it gets dropped outright? Very odd.
Maybe they’re using Frontier to help them with their route planning in the U.S. :-)
Why is this odd? The increase presumably came before the court ruling.
Maybe Condor should focus on DUS/BER and leave FRA to LH. Air Berlin was reasonably successful in those markets and LH doesn’t do a whole lot in those cities. AB failed for a myriad of reasons but DUS/BER weren’t the major causes.
Air Berlin failed for many reasons. The DUS and TXL hubs were part of it. AB couldn’t lift enough meaningful corporate traffic out of DUS, arguably the richest part of Germany. TXL (now BER) long haul is very challenging and generally does not work.
FRA is centrally located in Germany and has excellent rail connections to every part of Germany as well as Switzerland, Benelux and France. DE can continue to serve most of Germany and parts of neighboring countries via rail connections in FRA. BER and DUS aren’t nearly as central and have much less long distance rail service. MUC suffers from that drawback as well – it’s almost an hour on local service to get to fast long distance service.
Cranky – Do you have the flight loads on Condor out of Phoenix before and after AF started their PHX-CDG route? I remember seeing someone post the flight loads on another site for Condor before AF started PHX, and I was somewhat surprised they weren’t higher.
Eric R – Kind of interesting. In 2023, it was June – 86.8%, July – 82.55%, August – 70%. In 2024, it was June – 74.85%, July – 78.45%, August – 78.38%. So in peak summer, it was notably down for sure. But August was better.
It’s been AvGeek fun to watch Condor evolve over the decades…definitely a different carrier from the one I flew DTW-FRA in June 1985 for my first trip to Europe…a jammed DC-10 and I was all kinds of excited!
How should I interpret the blue lines (“% of beyond US/Canada origin”) on your first chart? Is it saying that 65% of passengers on the SAT-FRA flight are merely connecting in SAT, flying something like IAH-SAT-FRA? That seems much higher than I would have expected.
James – Those are the % of US/Canada origins that go beyond Frankfurt.
Sorry, it’s kind of messy.
Re: PDX – Condor has a partnership with Alaska, and Alaska is growing it’s connecting hub in Portland. This is different from Minneapolis and Phoenix, where Condor presumably has no US feed. Condor already has service to Seattle (and probably good data on the amount of feed Alaska is able to provide), so I imagine it’s willing to take a chance on Portland esp. as Alaska ramps up service.
Not trying to imply you are wrong, you may very well be right.
But feed is one thing, profitability is another. Connecting traffic is lower yielding than O&D, generally speaking. If PDX relies on that much connecting traffic for that route, I cannot imagine it performs all that well.
Yeah, that’s fair. My point is mostly that PDX likely survived the cut while MSP/PHX don’t because of the AS feed on one end. I guess it’s probably enough of a difference that maybe DE believes it can make the economics more worthwhile.
Also – PDX has less trans-Atlantic connectivity than MSP (and probably even PHX), which probably also helps.
The thing that I don’t understand about PDX/SEA is how the Alaska network helps Condor, in the context of the court ruling. There are plenty of smaller cities in the Pacific Northwest and California that Alaska can provide connections to, but I doubt there’s much demand out of Germany to visit, say, Medford. (And similarly, the demand from those cities is likely to destinations in Europe other than Frankfurt.)
The beyond-Frankfurt destinations that Condor is adding may provide enough opportunity to make PDX work, and my guess is that Alaska is making sure that the revenue picture for codeshare flights works. And between BA to LHR and DE to FRA AS has Europe connections decently well covered. PDX is about the size of AUS but with a hub right now and a banked hub coming soon, so given that AUS supports LH with no US-side connecting fees it stands to reason that PDX can support DE.
The shadows of heat, how they flicker! [0.1% here.] Thanks for the Brak reference.
ramcm7 – YES! I wasn’t sure there would be even one person….
We flew them when they had their brief service to San Diego, connecting through Frankfurt from Prague. Great experience and price in the J cabin. If we can make it work we wouldn’t hesitate flying them again. Hope they make it!
What about a code share type arrangement with TUIfly? If I’m reading flights from correctly, they have 24 nonstop destinations from FRA, most being a couple times a week. Interestingly, Condor competes with them on 14 of them. With a little cooperation, they each might be able to steer a few birds elsewhere to create new opportunities for both of them.
Either that or LH should just inhale them. Makes more sense than alITAlia.
Condor needs a nationwide US partner in order to thrive in the US. Alaska or JetBlue can help in a few gateways but not enough.
Don’t rule out that Condor won’t transform itself into a Virgin Atlantic type carrier that also has narrowbodies.
Its A330-900s are very well equipped and have a fairly competitive business class product. Given that the EU3 have multiple brands, it isn’t unthinkable that Condor could transform itself into a medium to upper tier transatlantic carrier with a separate narrowbody leisure brand.
The AA/BA/EI/IB and the AF/DL/KL/VS JVs would love to have a stronger presence in Central Europe, esp. to the secondary cities which a lower cost carrier with plenty of feed from the US could support.
LH might have set off another round of realignment in the industry that they might regret in a few years.
Yeah, I don’t totally rule out Condor teaming up with one of AA, DL or even Southwest (as another commentator suggested) and their JV partners. There is definitely a potential fit with any of them given both geography and Condor’s fleet.
Could Condor be the second international relationship with Southwest this year?
I can see feed from LAX and LAS in the West and BWI and BNA with Iceland Air in the East.