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More airline consolidation: Lufthansa buys Austrian Airlines

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aethelbert

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 1, 2007
4,287
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Chicago, IL, USA
link (sorry it's in German, I'll find on in English soon)

Coming two weeks after our CEO expressed desire to see a "unified airline network" in Europe, another buyout occurs. Additionally, we've also started expansion into a new firm, Lufthansa Italia, to fill the void left by Alitalia at Malpensa airport in Milan. With Lufthansa having lots of say in the actions of TAP and Spanair (and owning Swiss) along with recent interest in buying British Midland, it seems as if the airline market in continental Europe is being eaten up with Lufthansa and KLM having at each other.

Seems that competition will be declining pretty quickly in the coming months. :(
 
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powerdave

macrumors regular
Apr 24, 2004
148
0
Hamburg
akonradi said:
link (sorry it's in German, I'll find on in English soon)

Coming two weeks after our CEO expressed desire to see a "unified airline network" in Europe, another buyout occurs. Additionally, we've also started expansion into a new firm, Lufthansa Italia, to fill the void left by Alitalia at Malpensa airport in Milan. With Lufthansa having lots of say in the actions of TAP and Spanair (and owning Swiss) along with recent interest in buying British Midland, it seems as if the airline market in continental Europe is being eaten up with Lufthansa and KLM having at each other.

Seems that competition will be declining pretty quickly in the coming months. :(
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Lufthansa have more than an interest in British Midland, a week or two ago they took over the company. Looks like a good deal for Lufthansa- BMI operate a lot of slots in Heathrow.. I think around 11% of total flights at the airport are BMI flights.

They have also expressed an interest in SAS or Scandinavian, but I believe I read that they have since pulled out of the talks in the last week.

PS akonradi, sounds like you work for the company. For the airline or another part of the group?
 
A

aethelbert

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 1, 2007
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powerdave said:
Lufthansa have more than an interest in British Midland, a week or two ago they took over the company. Looks like a good deal for Lufthansa- BMI operate a lot of slots in Heathrow.. I think around 11% of total flights at the airport are BMI flights.

They have also expressed an interest in SAS or Scandinavian, but I believe I read that they have since pulled out of the talks in the last week.

PS akonradi, sounds like you work for the company. For the airline or another part of the group?
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They haven't so much taken over BMI as they have put their foot in the door to control their slots at LHR. I haven't heard any talks of taking over SAS for quite a long time, either.

I used to work for Lufthansa logistik, but now I'm working with the carrier itself in fleet management.
 
takao

takao

macrumors 68040
Dec 25, 2003
3,827
605
Dornbirn (Austria)
since Lufthansa was more or less the only serious bidder and the choice of the AUA management from the beginning it's not surprising

at least we finally get the dead horse out of the news after like half a year of daily news about it
 
theBB

theBB

macrumors 68020
Jan 3, 2006
2,453
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KLM was the only serious bidder for Alitalia and we saw what happened. Do you think Austrian government or the unions will respond better?
 
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powerdave

macrumors regular
Apr 24, 2004
148
0
Hamburg
akonradi said:
They haven't so much taken over BMI as they have put their foot in the door to control their slots at LHR. I haven't heard any talks of taking over SAS for quite a long time, either.

I used to work for Lufthansa logistik, but now I'm working with the carrier itself in fleet management.
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Check out this article on the BBC. It says that Lufthansa are acquiring Michael Bishop's 50% stake in BMI so with the stake they already owned, it's up to about 80% I think.
 
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yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
3,002
St. Louis, MO
So, if I have a flight booked on Lufthansa (TXL-FRA-ORD, booked as a United codeshare) for March 2009, does this affect me in any way?
 
A

aethelbert

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 1, 2007
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yg17 said:
So, if I have a flight booked on Lufthansa (TXL-FRA-ORD, booked as a United codeshare) for March 2009, does this affect me in any way?
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No. It's quite a transition to merge two airlines together, it will take way more than six months to start affecting passengers. I think that OS will remain its own airline, but Lufthansa will restructure it. Kinda like what we did with Swiss.

Eraserhead said:
Theres still Airfrance/KLM and BA out of the big ones who are independent as well as Easyjet, Ryanair, Air Berlin etc etc.
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I mentioned KLM, but all of the others minus AB are based out of continental Europe and have networks focused elsewhere. Air Berlin doesn't compete with the same clientele that LH, BA, and KLM. Also, this will just give BA more reason to merge with American, which will consolidate the market even more, especially across the pond.
 
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