3 European flights to relaunch at Las Vegas airport

Those looking to travel between Las Vegas and Europe will have three additional options beginning this weekend.

Eurowings Discover is set to relaunch nonstop service between Las Vegas and Munich on Sunday after a two-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, the airline, a subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group, will resume flight service between Harry Reid International Airport and Frankfurt, Germany.

Also on Monday, another airline under the Lufthansa umbrella, Edelweiss, is launching flights between Las Vegas and Zurich.

“We see actually now the market returning, the demand returning, particularly on the leisure side, less on the corporate side,” said Don Bunkenburg, Lufthansa Group’s senior director of sales for the U.S., Central, West and Central America. “We’re actually in the middle of ramping up our flight schedule. … We’re pretty bullish because Las Vegas flights always ran very well.”

With the relaunch, Eurowings Discover also is increasing flight frequency over what it previously offered to and from Las Vegas. The airline will offer four flights a week between Frankfurt and Las Vegas and twice-weekly flights between Las Vegas and Munich.

Bunkenburg said the Frankfurt flights will be year-round, and the Munich ones will be offered only in the summer.

Eurowings Discover mainly caters to the leisure traveler, offering three classes, business, premium economy and economy.

Edelweiss also mainly caters to vacation travelers. Its three-times-per-week seasonal summer service will be carried out on Airbus A340-400 planes, which seat 314 people.

Most of the demand for these flights is coming from travelers originating in Europe and flying into Las Vegas, Bunkenburg said.

“After this pandemic, people just want to travel,” Bunkenburg said. “We’re very happy with the bookings. It’s pretty much as we expected in what we thought would come, but in some cases, maybe even a little better.”

Between the three flight services, travelers can also connect to other areas in Europe, including Italy, Spain, Hungary and Austria.

The return of these flights comes on the heels of Condor relaunching its service between Germany and Las Vegas and Virgin Atlantic restarting its service between Reid Airport and London.

Lufthansa is also restarting service to Austin, Texas, and introducing flight service to St. Louis and Salt Lake City. But Las Vegas is getting more frequency out of the gate.

“In terms of Las Vegas, we’re putting in quite a bit of capacity compared to those other cities,” Bunkenburg said. “For example, St. Louis only starts three times a week, and that’s very similar to Austin. Whereas in Las Vegas, we’re coming in with 10 flights a week in the summertime. It goes down to three in the winter, but that’s connected with the leisure demand.

“But you can see by the number of flights that we’re putting in fairly quickly that we’re pretty bullish on Las Vegas right now.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.