Do you Remember Germanwings???
This report is another throwback, but I found some images from a flight I took from London Stansted to Cologne/Bonn in October 2016 and it was flying with now retired airline Germanwings, a budget airline that operated from 2003 to 2020 and spent most the last decade of its career flying as part of the Lufthansa Group before fully integrating into Eurowings.
Germanwings took on most of the Lufthansa routes outside their main two hubs of Munich and Frankfurt Main in the 2010s, which meant you could fly Germanwings as one of very few low cost airlines from London Heathrow… A practice that has been passed over to Eurowings. However until the end of operations, Germanwings did provide some routes to Germany from London Stansted, something that pre-dated the integration into the Lufthansa Group.
In 2016, it was possible to fly Germanwings from London Stansted to some of their larger bases including Berlin Tegel, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Cologne/Bonn- where Germanwings was head quartered and had their largest base. From Summer 2014, the airline competed head to head on the London Stansted-Cologne/Bonn route with Ryanair whilst being complimented by regular services from London Heathrow.
Its been a while since Germanwings left the skies, so I hope this allows a little throwback to this once major German Airline!
Flying Germanwings from London Stansted
I had done a day trip to Gothenburg with Ryanair this same day, and booked a second trip to Germany with Eurowings & Germanwings a little later, so I had to change flights at London Stansted- luckily my previous flight was on time and I had left a gap of nearly 3 hours to get through passport control then back track into departures to get this Germanwings flight.
Once I got to the "Crucible of Stansted" I found I would be doing a Monorail trip to Gates 1-19 for my flight over to Cologne/Bonn.
Getting off at this Gate area, I was greeted with a massive billboard advertising Germanwings at London Stansted. One benefit of flying Germanwings over Ryanair in 2016 is you could have gotten Lufthansa Frequent Flyer Miles for your custom if you were part of their Miles & More program- which is handy for people flying regularly on Star Alliance members.
Flying Germanwings in 2016 (STN-CGN)
The flight for this evening was to be flown on Germanwings Airbus A319, D-AGWD. This aircraft was delivered to Germanwings brand new from Airbus in January 2007, it has spent its entire life flying with Germanwings and Eurowings and is still flying as of January 2026 with Eurowings. It was delivered in Germanwings striking Silver-Yellow livery before being painted into the livery introduced once it was taken over by Lufthansa Group, on a side note I did spot this aircraft at London Heathrow in April 2018 and by then it had been repainted into the Eurowings livery.
Germanwings A319, D-AGWD above pulling on stand to take me to CGN from STN in October 2016, and the same aircraft below arriving into London Heathrow in April 2018 after being transferred to Eurowings.
The Germanwings cabin is pretty basic and what you'd expect off a low-cost airline. The "BEST" Cabin offers more legroom and complimentary service from the inflight menu as well as extra baggage and priority boarding/security. I was in the standard seats which basically is the same seat but with less legroom, but I had enough legroom for this 1hr flight.
Eurowings employ the exact same seats as do the mainline airlines of the Lufthansa Group in their Airbus A320-family aircraft, though the overhead sign in the photo below is not used on current Eurowings flights.
I chose Seat 14F, a window seat overlooking the right wing. There's hardly much more inflight photos I got on this flight as most were likely lost when I had a hard drive crash, but the flight was short and sweet. It was at night and during the inflight service I just bought a can of Cola to pass the time. The video above will likely show a bit more detail for you.
Once the flight was over and done with, we landed and parked up on a remote stand, which is standard at Cologne/Bonn for Germanwings and we disembarked onto a bus that took us to the main airport terminal to clear passport control.
A Night at Cologne/Bonn!
I spent the night "roughing it" in Cologne/Bonn Airport's Terminals as I had a late(ish) arrival and a morning departure over to Hamburg the next morning. I did this a lot then as I didn't have a lot of money being 19 years old at the time. I did a little plane spotting where it was possible, but I quickly found the Viewing Deck was left open, so I went up to have a nose at the Cargo activity.
One of my favourite parts of Cologne/Bonn is the airport has a section of the Berlin Wall on display in the departures area!
The airport was mostly quiet, but as you can see there were some holiday flights due out early in the day, mainly from the then major three airlines flying from Cologne- TUI Airways Germany, Germanwings & Air Berlin.
The REWE City shop was open 24hrs which is great for airport workers and people arriving on delayed flights or coming to CGN for early departures before the main café and restaurants open up.
Seeing major Airports this late at night (or early in the morning, alternately) is weird, but also somewhat fascinating, of course this was before the pandemic by four years- so the sight of nearly abandoned airports was very weird unless you are used to it, but it allowed me to get some candid shots around Cologne/Bonn Airport.
Overall this is the end of the Flight Report, I hope you enjoyed this look into Germanwings, sorry it was brief and I also hope you enjoyed a look at a very quiet Cologne/Bonn out of hours as I had the time on my hands!
