Lufthansa effective Jan. 1, 2013, will merge its direct European services with all-German domestic subsidiary Germanwings to form a new airline brand,

the airline group announced. Headquartered in Cologne, Lufthansa expects the new carrier, for which a name has not been announced, next year to carry more than 18 million passengers across Germany and Europe. "Combining our domestic German and European point-to-point services has enormous potential to improve efficiency," according to Lufthansa chairman and CEO Christoph Franz. "Our aim is to once again fly these services profitably under the umbrella of a single company."