Discover Airlines has high ambitions with fresh brand identity

Lufthansa has rebranded its leisure subsidiary Eurowings Discover to Discover Airlines and unveiled a new livery for the airline. The airline has been active for just over two years but has plans to grow its fleet and network in the coming year. Eurowings Discover was established at the start of the pandemic in July 2020 as a dedicated leisure airline within the Lufthansa Group. It launched long-haul services on July 24, 2021, with a fleet of Airbus A330s from its sister airline Eurowings, before adding short- and medium-haul services with A320ceo’s from October 31 that same year. The philosophy of Discover is similar to that of Edelweiss, the subsidiary of SWISS: it wants to offer a quality leisure product to customers in the German home market. It’s not a coincidence that CEO Bernd Bauer acts as CEO of both Edelweiss (since 2014) and Discover (since October 2022). The current fleet consists of ten A320ceo’s and thirteen A330-200s and -300s, but another five A320ceo’s and one A330 will join Discover before the 2024 summer season. This brings the fleet to 28 aircraft. Last year, the airline was short of aircraft and had to wet-lease capacity from airBaltic and Finnair. While Discover has Frankfurt Airport as its main hub, the carrier will base five A320s at Munich Airport to operate to 23 destinations on around sixty daily flights. The network from Frankfurt will include 33 short-haul and seventeen long-haul destinations. All long-haul destinations to the US, Canada, Latin America, and Africa are served from here. In early 2025, Discover plans to resume long-haul from Munich as well. Discover Airlines offers three classes on its long-haul fleet: Business, Premium Economy, and Economy. The short- and medium-haul fleet has no Business Class. Profitable after two years As Eurowings Discover, the airline has carried over four million passengers since the first service in 2021. According to CEO Bernd Bauer, his airline has been profitable, although Lufthansa doesn’t specify the financials for Discover and includes them in the results of the parent airline. “We have built up our airline in a record time of two years, hired around 2.000 employees, phased in 22 aircraft, and today are flying to over sixty destinations around the world. The fact that we are already profitable after two years is thanks to the enormous commitment of the team. This same enthusiasm is now driving us forward,” Bauer said in a media statement. “The start-up phase is behind us and we are working on sharpening our profile as well as a clear positioning in the segment of higher-value leisure travel. This is also expressed by the brand identity which at the same time underlines our affiliation with the Lufthansa Group. Discover Airlines stands for quality, joy and ease, after all, people fly with us to the best time of the year.” New brand livery With the new profile comes a new livery that was officially unveiled today at Frankfurt Airport with the arrival of the first A320 from the paint shop in Bratislava. Where the airline used to share the livery of Eurowings with the exception of ‘Discover’ on the forward fuselage, the new livery stands out from all other liveries within Lufthansa Group. Economy Class on the rebranded Discover Airlines Airbus A330. (Discover Airlines) While the fuselage shares the white of all Lufthansa liveries and the tailplane has a similar dark blue at the bottom, this changes to different shades of blue going up the vertical tail fin. At the top of the fin is a yellow lining, which reflects the sun and beach. When Lufthansa introduced the current livery, it was criticized for dropping the yellow in the crane bird logo. Discover seems to have made up for that in a different way. There is also a yellow dot behind the ‘Discover’ name on the fuselage. The first A320 with the new livery entered service late afternoon today, one day earlier than the airline said in its press release, to Palma de Mallorca. The repainting of the rest of the fleet will take some more months. Only aircraft that are due for a fresh paint, have a partial livery, or will join the fleet will be repainted. The changeover to the new brand identity at airports will follow step by step, with the crew receiving their new uniforms in December.

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