knowledge Overview
Flixbus was founded in 2011 by Daniel Krauss, Jochen Engert and André Schwämmlein as a startup in Munich and began operations in February 2013 – immediately after the liberalisation of the German long-distance coach market – with the first three lines in Bavaria. Through the takeover of its competitor MeinFernbus in January 2015, Flixbus became the undisputed market leader in Germany. In August 2016 followed the takeover of the Postbus of Deutsche Post, giving the company control of around 80 % of the German long-distance coach market; in July 2016, Flixbus also acquired the European activities of Megabus.
The company operates on a platform model: the buses are run on behalf of more than 1,000 regional bus partners, while Flix takes care of network planning, timetables, pricing, distribution, marketing and customer service. In April 2022, the corporate structure was converted from a GmbH into the Flix SE. The Flix group also includes FlixTrain (since 2018), the US company Greyhound Lines (since 2021) and the Turkish operator Kâmil Koç. The network covers around 45 countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Oceania with over 300,000 daily connections to more than 8,700 destinations; in total, more than 500 million passengers have used the service since it launched.
Routes
In Germany, Flixbus operates a nationwide long-distance coach network; important hubs are the Zentraler Omnibusbahnhof (ZOB) Berlin am Funkturm, the ZOB Hamburg at the Hauptbahnhof, the ZOB München an der Hackerbrücke, the coach terminal at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof as well as the coach stops at the main stations of Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Leipzig and Stuttgart. Important German domestic trunk routes include Hamburg–Berlin, Berlin–Munich, Cologne–Berlin, Düsseldorf–Frankfurt and Berlin–Dresden.
Note: timetables and stops are subject to frequent change, see flixbus.de.