German low cost carrier Eurowings will expand its presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the introduction of a new service between Dusseldorf and Sarajevo. Flights will run twice per week, each Thursday and Sunday, starting November 2 with a mix of Airbus A319 and A320 aircraft. Tickets are already on sale through the airline's website. It will mark the Lufthansa subsidiary's third route to the Bosnian capital following Cologne and Stuttgart. Previously, the budget airline also maintained flights from Berlin to Sarajevo, however, the service was terminated in 2015 as a result of poor loads following a year of operations. Eurowings is also looking into the possibility of launching flights between Stuttgart and Mostar at the start of the 2017/18 winter season.

Sarajevo has had difficulty in capturing a larger number of low cost flights due to a double tax surcharge. Apart from a standard eighteen euro fee per passenger, travellers are also subjected to an additional ten euro Federal tax, introduced in 2005. However, earlier this year Wizz Air launched flights to Budapest, while Eurowings has been operating to the Bosnian capital for almost a decade (formerly as Germanwings). Apart from the new service by the German carrier, next week, both Atalsglobal and Nesma Airlines will launch flights from Istanbul Ataturk Airport and Riyadh respectively. Furthermore, both Wataniya Airways and Qatar Airways plan to introduce services from their respective hubs. Brussels Airlines and SAS Scandinavian Airlines have also expressed their interest in serving Sarajevo in the near future.

Complementing its new service to Sarajevo, Eurowings will also introduce flights between Dusseldorf and Zagreb, as well as Munich and Skopje on October 31. In addition, its new seasonal service between Munich and Split, as well as from Dusseldorf to Split and Pula, have been extended to run on a year-round basis. Lufthansa has made Eurowings its main focus in the battle with market leaders Ryanair and easyJet for passengers in Europe and a vehicle for consolidation. It is set to become Europe's third largest low cost carrier after deals to lease 33 crewed planes from Air Berlin and to take over Brussels Airlines, which will lift its fleet to 180 planes from 93 by 2018. The carrier has tripled in size over the past three years.

Flight details for Eurowings' new Dusseldorf - Sarajevo service can be found here.