AIRWAYS FEATURE
to acquire its shares little by little until it became majority partner .
The industry saw Condor ’ s transition to a subsidiary of Thomas Cook as an intelligent move . The new owner was a company entirely dedicated to package vacations and leisure travel , while Lufthansa had a completely different perspective about its own traffic out of Frankfurt International Airport , with a focus on premium passengers .
Condor then adopted another livery , one that not only severed all remaining ties with Lufthansa , but also erased every symbol and personality Condor had had until then . In fact , its name briefly disappeared between March 2003 and January 2004 , its planes branded as ‘ Thomas Cook powered by Condor ’.
However , in operational terms , the airline did nothing but grow in terms of both routes and airplanes . In the 2010s , Condor made the modern and popular Airbus A320 family the backbone of its short-haul fleet , reserving the Boeing 767 for intercontinental flights .
It used the smaller 757 as a hybrid alternative both on slightly longer trips to the Canaries and Egypt and as a high-capacity plane on its most popular flights to Palma de Mallorca , Greece , and other destinations .
In 2013 , the entire Thomas Cook Group adopted the ‘ Sunny Heart ’ as a universal logo for all its subsidiaries , including Condor .
Overall , despite its operational success , Condor Flugdienst faced a significant problem . It was an airline with a clear objective and great business
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perspective , but that had always been under the influence and control of other , larger groups . On one hand , this had provided Condor with a strong shield against any drops in demand and external crises , as the parent company could protect it during tough economic periods .
On the other hand , if tough times came for the whole Thomas Cook Group , nothing would save Condor from sinking along with the whole ship . And that ’ s exactly what happened on September 23 , 2019 .
THOMAS COOK COLLAPSES IN 2019
The air travel segment in which Condor chose to introduce itself in 1955 is a very high-risk , highreward market . This is because , in Europe , unlike in North America , leisure travel suffers from an astronomically higher seasonality , which translates
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