The holiday airline Condor is adding more city connections in Germany and Europe to its program.

"We have already seen that our city connections are very popular, and we are now responding to this development by expanding our route network," explained airline boss Peter Gerber on Friday. Starting in March, the Lufthansa competitor will offer morning and evening flights from Frankfurt to Berlin and Hamburg in order to attract business travelers. There are also new connections to Rome, Milan, Prague and Paris.

The unresolved dispute with Lufthansa over quotas and conditions for the German market leader's feeder flights to Condor's long-haul flights is playing a role here. For a long time, the holiday airline enjoyed preferential treatment compared to other long-haul providers. Lufthansa wants to end this, which has met with resistance from the Federal Cartel Office and, more recently, the European Commission as the competition watchdog. The dispute in court could last for years, as Gerber explained. He would still prefer an out-of-court settlement. Discussions about this are also continuing, but so far without any rapprochement.

According to Gerber, the new, less favorable conditions for Condor introduced by Lufthansa on December 25 will not result in higher ticket prices, but there will be fewer seats available on Lufthansa feeder flights. Condor brings customers with its own domestic flights to Frankfurt, but can only partially fill the gaps with them. That is why the airline is shifting capacities on long-haul routes. After strong growth last year, it removed some destinations in the U.S. and Canada from its program – instead of 80 percent of long-haul capacity to North America, Condor is now only deploying 65 percent in this market. Capacity was redistributed to destinations such as Bangkok, Johannesburg, Mauritius and Panama. The important North Atlantic market is a cluster risk, said Gerber. If things don't go so well on these routes, the wrinkles of worry will be deep.

(Report by Ilona Wissenbach. Edited by Olaf Brenner. If you have any questions, please contact the editorial team at frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com)