Eurowings

Is Eurowings safe?

Yes. Eurowings has never had a fatal accident caused by its aircraft or the way it flies them, and it has not written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary an aircraft. It carried 23.7 million passengers in 2025 on 170,000 flights under German and Maltese certificates, both within the EU's EASA system. We score it 88, a point above its parent Lufthansa and a point below low-cost rivals easyJet and Ryanair.

The question most people really have is about Germanwings.

What happened to Germanwings flight 9525?

On 24 March 2015 an A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf as Germanwings 4U9525 descended from cruise and hit a mountainside near Prads-Haute-Bléone in the French Alps. All 144 passengers and six crew died. France's BEA found that the co-pilot had locked the captain out of the cockpit and set the autopilot to descend on purpose. He was suffering from a mental disorder with psychotic symptoms, and the medical certification system, which relies on pilots reporting themselves, did not stop him flying.

Germanwings was then a separate Lufthansa Group airline with its own operating certificate. Its routes were being moved to the Eurowings brand at the time, and today Eurowings flies the network Germanwings once did. We describe the crash here because it is what readers search for, but our method leaves deliberate acts by crew out of the accident score, as it does hijackings and bombings. The BEA also pointed to unclear German rules on when public safety outweighs medical confidentiality.

Who flies Eurowings flights?

Eurowings is not one airline in the legal sense. According to the Lufthansa annual report, it has two flight operations:

• Eurowings GmbH, certified in Germany, flies from German bases such as Düsseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Berlin.
• Eurowings Europe, a Maltese company that took over from an Austrian one in October 2022, flies from Palma de Mallorca, Salzburg, Graz, Prague and Stockholm. Its aircraft carry Maltese 9H registrations but fly on EW flight numbers.

On top of that, Eurowings wet-leases aircraft with crews from other airlines in busy months. In July 2025, for example, a Smartwings 737-800 operating EW658 from Cologne to Kos diverted to Rhodes with a damaged tyre. Wet-lease partners fly under their own certificates; their record is theirs, not Eurowings'.

How old is the Eurowings fleet?

This is the weakest part. At the end of 2025 Eurowings had 98 Airbus jets: 29 A319s, 50 A320s, 6 A321s, and just 8 A320neos and 5 A321neos. Neither Eurowings nor Lufthansa publishes an average age for Eurowings alone; the group figure is 14.4 years. The A319s and the classic A320s belong to the previous Airbus generation.

Help is coming, slowly. In January 2025 the Lufthansa Group assigned 40 new Boeing 737-8s to Eurowings, its largest fleet renewal, with deliveries from 2027 to 2032. They will replace the A319s and older A320s. Until then, expect the type of technical events older jets produce: AeroInside lists hydraulic leaks, smoke and fume events and rejected take-offs, all handled without injury.

Serious incidents

We found none that pointed at the way Eurowings crews fly. The two closest calls were caused by others. In July 2018 an ultralight crossing the Düsseldorf control zone passed within 0.4 nm of an A320 climbing out, and the A320 crew followed a collision-avoidance climb command. In January 2024 a Eurowings A319 and an Emirates 777 came within about 200 feet and 0.6 nm of each other on approach to Barcelona; Spain's CIAIAC blamed the approach controllers' sequencing.

Turbulence is the main way people get hurt. In September 2019 an A319 descending towards Berlin hit severe turbulence, injuring three crew members and five passengers, one of them seriously. In May 2026 an A320 climbing near Sarajevo met turbulence and wake from an Emirates A380 ahead; four passengers and a flight attendant were slightly hurt.

How to fly Eurowings safely

• Check "operated by". If a wet-lease partner flies your flight, look up that airline too.
• Keep your seat belt on in your seat. Turbulence caused both injury events since 2019, and a fastened belt is the best protection against it.

How we scored it

The accident record (95) and oversight (90) carry the score: no fatal accident of its own and full EASA oversight in Germany and Malta. Incidents (84) are rare and mostly caused by others. The fleet (70) is the weak spot until the 737-8s arrive. Environment scores 85. Overall 88.