Austrian low-cost carrier Laudamotion will rebrand as Lauda and plans to launch at least 21 new winter routes, including three to the UK.
The UK routes will run from Vienna to Liverpool twice weekly, to Birmingham three times weekly and to Edinburgh three times weekly. All are due to start at the end of October.
The airline has a fleet of narrowbody A321 and A320 aircraft.
‘Motion’ will be dropped from the name for marketing reasons, CEO Andreas Gruber said at a presentation showcasing new uniforms, according to Aviation24. The company will continue to officially operate as Lauda Motion GmbH.
A new livery featuring the Lauda name was unveiled in August 2018.
The Ryanair Group acquired 100 per cent of shares in the airline in January. It said it would increase Lauda’s fleet to 25 aircraft from 19 by summer 2019 and grow it to 30 by summer 2020. Gruber said he would aim to grow passenger numbers from four million to ten million by 2022.
The airline was established in 2018 by ex-Formula 1 driver Niki Lauda following the purchase of the assets of grounded carrier Niki from bankrupt parent company Air Berlin.
The full list of new routes being launched from Vienna, per Routes Online, is as follows:
- Agadir from October 29, twice weekly
- Alicante from October 30, twice weekly
- Athens from October 27, daily
- Birmingham from October 29, three times weekly
- Bordeaux from October 29, three times weekly
- Brussels Charleroi from October 27, six times weekly
- Edinburgh from October 27, three times weekly
- Eindhoven from October 28, four times weekly
- Gothenburg from October 27, twice weekly
- Lisbon from October 27, four times weekly
- Liverpool from October 28, twice weekly
- Marseille from October 29, three times weekly
- Muenster from October 28, four times weekly
- Porto from October 28, twice weekly
- Riga from October 27, four times weekly
- Sandefjord from October 28, twice weekly
- Sofia from October 28, five times weekly
- Stockholm Skavsta from October 27, twice weekly
- Tel Aviv from October 27, daily
- Thessaloniki from October 29, three times weekly
- Vilnius from October 28, three times weekly
Last month, Ryanair announced that it would a move to a group structure similar to that of IAG (parent company of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Vueling and Level), with members pursuing separate development goals under their own management teams.
Its Polish subsidiary, formerly called Ryanair Sun, will be rebranded as Buzz from autumn 2019.
The Ryanair group also includes Ryanair DAC and Ryanair UK.
