Lufthansa, who recently announced new service to Tampa from Frankfurt is about to launch long-haul services with its low-cost Eurowings subsidiary. The new service to Tampa compliments existing Lufthansa service from Orlando to Frankfurt and from Miami to both Frankfurt (with an Airbus A380, the largest commercial plane ever built) and Munich. Eurowings will at least in theory compete with low-cost German carrier Air Berlin which flies to Miami and Fort Myers from Dusseldorf, Munich and Berlin as well as niche carrier Condor (an airline that tends to fly to big destinations Lufthansa doesn’t serve such as Seattle or Minneapolis/St Paul) which serves Fort Lauderdale from Frankfurt.

According to The Express a broadsheet based in Cologne, Eurowings who along with sister carrier Germanwings has taken on almost all Lufthansa flights that don’t touch Frankfurt or Munich will launch long-haul services to Fort Lauderdale, Bangkok, Dubai, Male, Havana and Phuket in the “near future.” Ironically when controversial low-cost carrier Norwegian began long-haul services the first destinations were Fort Lauderdale, New York (JFK), Bangkok and Dubai. Norwegian has since added services to Orlando, Los Angeles and Oakland/San Francisco.