GERMANY: Eurowings To Fire 300 Staff At Head-Office

Eurowings, the low-cost airline owned by Lufthansa , said it would cut a third of the jobs at its headquarters as part of wider efforts to return the German airline group to profitability after a major state bailout.

We have around 1,000 staff at head office and of those we will reduce 300, Eurowings Chief Executive Jens Bischof told a briefing in Duesseldorf.

Germany threw Lufthansa a 9 billion euro ($9.8 billion) lifeline on Monday, agreeing a bailout which gives Berlin a veto in the event of a hostile bid for the airline.

Bischof, in remarks did not give figures for job reductions in other operational areas at Eurowings, which employs a total of around 4,000 staff.

He said the outcome would depend on negotiations with staff representatives and how work is allocated in future between Lufthansa and Eurowings. It would likely take until 2023 before activity returns to last year's levels.

GERMAN airline Eurowings is reactivating its base in Spain holiday island Mallorca in another good sign for the recovery of the Balearic Island tourism sector.

The airline, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, will be taking off from Mallorca capital Palma next Saturday June 27 with a flight to German city Hannover following a break of some three months due to the Covid-19 crisis.

The company will be operating more than 50 flights a week from Palma, going up to nearly 170 by the end of July, with connections to 16 airports in Germany and Austria.

To begin with Eurowings will operate with two A-320 aircraft stationed at Palma’s Son San Joan airport, going up to three over the summer

We are very pleased that Eurowings Europe is able to take off again, commented Eurowings Europe Managing Director Robert Jahn.

He also thanked company employees, who he said had had to endure a lot of uncertainty and show staying power in the past weeks.

Eurowings will take off again at the end of June with its international flight operation Eurowings Europe. The first flight after a break of around three months will take place on 27 June at 07:45 from Palma to Hanover.

With the reopening of the Mallorca base, Eurowings is underlining its position as Germany’s largest holiday airline. With the additional aircraft stationed on the Balearic island, Eurowings is operating a flight schedule that supplements numerous Mallorca connections at major Eurowings locations such as Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Cologne/Bonn with additional destinations in Germany and Austria.

Eurowings primarily operates flights from Mallorca to Berlin, Bremen, Dresden, Hanover, Leipzig, Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden, Munich, Munster-Osnabruck, Nuremberg and Saarbrucken. In Austria, Eurowings connects Salzburg and Innsbruck with Mallorca.

With the beginning of the summer holidays in some German federal states, Eurowings will again offer more than 50 Mallorca flights per week. During the peak holiday season from the end of July, the number of flights will then increase to 168 weekly Mallorca flights.

A total of 16 airports in Germany and Austria will then be connected to Mallorca with Eurowings again. The airline had opened its first location in non-German-speaking countries in 2017 on Mallorca.

Eurowings thus became the leading carrier for flights to Mallorca to Germany and Austria.

With the end of the worldwide travel warning and the lifting of travel restrictions for Spain, customer interest in sunny destinations is growing by leaps and bounds. Therefore the airline has decided to reactivate its crews based in Palma.

Eurowings Europe will initially start operations with two Airbus A320s and increase to three aircraft over the summer. The airline also operates additional international stations for Eurowings in Salzburg (Austria) and Pristina (Kosovo).

We are very pleased that Eurowings Europe is able to take off again, said Robert Jahn, Managing Director of Eurowings Europe. I would like to thank our guests for their patience and understanding during this difficult phase.

And I would especially like to thank our Eurowings Europe team, who had to endure a lot of uncertainty and show staying power in the past weeks.

We are all the more pleased that we can now start again and be there for our holiday guests.

Mallorca is booming with Eurowings, which uses A330 wide-body to Palma Airport.

Eurowings is offering more than 160 additional flights by Airbus A330 from Cologne/Bonn, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf over the next three months.

Eurowings is strengthening its position as Germany’s largest holiday airline. The Lufthansa subsidiary is expanding its route portfolio in the direction of South-East Europe and will be flying to Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast on a large scale for the first time in summer 2020.

The two new up-and-coming holiday destinations being offered are Varna and Burgas.

Flights will be available from six German airports from 6 July. In addition to the major Eurowings stations in Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Stuttgart, the airports of Munich, Hanover and Leipzig will also be directly connected to the Bulgarian coast from July.

The airline’s programme will then include more than 20 weekly flights to Burgas and Varna. Among the European sunshine destinations, Bulgaria is becoming the new holiday favourite for inexpensive summer holidays, both for families and for the younger public.

BULGARIA: Nikola Todorov Is New Executive Chef At Kempinski Hotel Grand Arena Bansko

Nicholas' childhood dream was to become a chef and he has not stopped pursuing his goal.

He graduated from the Professional School of Tourism in his home-town of Varna, majoring in Culinary Arts. He began his professional career as a chef in 2005 at the newly opened Kempinski Hotel Grand Arena Bansko.

Due to his tenacity and talent, the young chef rose through the ranks of Demi Chef de Partie, Chef de Partie, Chef de Cuisine, Junior Sous Chef and Sous Chef.

In the meantime, the culinary specialist has spent several months supporting four sister hotels as a part of a task force program; namely the former Kempinski Hotel Zografski Sofia, Kempinski Palace Portorož in Slovenia, Kempinski Hotel Ishtar Dead Sea in Jordan and Kempinski Hotel Barbaros Bay Bodrum in Turkey.

In 2009, during the National Culinary Cup competitions organised by the Bulgarian Association of Professional Chefs, Chef Todorov and his team won first place in the culinary team category.

In the same year he joined the Bulgarian national team for the International Culinary Competitions in Istanbul. In 2015, he had the opportunity to hone his skills in Russia.

There he worked at the famous Kempinski Grand Hotel Gelendzhik as Executive Sous Chef, overseeing four restaurants and banquet rooms with a capacity of up to 1000 people.

After two and a half years of this exciting experience, Chef Todorov returned to Kempinski Hotel Grand Arena Bansko as Executive Sous Chef and as a member of Chef Trevor Portelli's team.

Last summer, Chef Todorov successfully completed six weeks of intensive training with Chef Rémy Giraud at one of the most renowned restaurants in France, Les Hauts de Loire, awarded with 2-Michelin star for over 25 years.

In addition to his mother tongue, Chef Nikola Todorov speaks fluent English and Russian.

Nikola Todorov takes on his new role as Executive Chef of Kempinski Hotel Grand Arena Bansko from Chef Trevor Portelli, who has headed the hotel's culinary team for the past two years.

The Maltese culinary professional will continue his career at home at Kempinski Hotel San Lawrenz Gozo.

FINLAND: Finnair To Fly To Four New European Destinations In 2016

The airline Finnair will launch next year four new routes from Helsinki to northern Europe or East And it will convert into eight routes previously operated scheduled flights only charter flights.

As of April 4, 2016, the national carrier of Finland will offer a daily flight between the airport of Helsinki-Vantaa and Billund, operated by Embraer 170 seats 76 by ​​its subsidiary Nordic Regional Airlines (eg Flybe Nordic). Departures are scheduled at 8:05 (8:55 arrival) or 4:10 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (arrival 17:00) are return flights leaving Denmark respectively at 12:10 (2:55 p.m. arrival) and at 20:10 (10:55 p.m. arrival). No competition on this route for Finnair, already poses five times a day in Copenhagen.

As of April 18 and throughout the summer season, the airline alliance will offer three and four weekly rotations between its capital and Edinburgh, operated by Airbus A319 of 138 seats again without competition. Departures Monday and Thursday are scheduled at 8:30 am (arrival 9:10), the one on Wednesday at 17:20 (arrival 18.00) and the Sunday at 16:30 (arrival 5:10 p.m.) Return flights will leave Scotland Monday and Thursday at 9:50 am (14:40 arrival), Wednesday at 18:40 (arriving 23:30) and Sundays at 18:15 (23:05 arrival). This road will allow "our Asian customers excellent opportunities to travel to Scotland on their travels in the UK, Scotland and connect the broad Asian network of Finnair, which has 13 airports."

From June 1 to August 27, Finnair will offer three flights a week between Helsinki and Svalbard, Longyearbyen airport accepting regular flights over the north of the planet. The E190 100 seats of its subsidiary will take off on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday 23:45 (arrival the next day at 1:55), and will leave the Norwegian archipelago Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday at 2:45 (6:45 arrival). Only SAS Scandinavian Airlines and Norwegian offer low cost scheduled flights to Svalbard.

Finally significantly further south, Finnair will offer from June 20 to August 12 two flights a week between Helsinki and Pula starts Monday at 7:45 (9:40 arrival) and Friday at 5:35 p.m. (arrival 7:30 p.m.) and return of Croatia respectively at 10:30 am (2:25 p.m. arrival ) and 8:25 p.m. (0:20 arrival). No competition there either for the company that already serves Dubrovnik and Split.

Finnair will convert to the other regular flights from the month of May 2016 eight routes to Greece, Italy and Bulgaria previously offered only as charter flights in almost every case with one flight per week in A319, A320 or A321: these flies to Preveza (two flights a week), Rimini, Mytilini, Santorini, Skiathos, Varna, Verona and Zakynthos.