Like a celebrity mismatch, the rumored Lufthansa-Etihad merger flooding news feeds was bound to disappoint, and now Reuters reports that \u201ca financial stake is out of the question at the moment,\u201d citing a source close to the plans. But given the move towards code sharing, and the Gulf-carrier\u2019s proclivity towards investing in other European carriers, there is a grain of truth in to the story. Etihad is, indeed, looking to cooperate on more routes as Gulf carriers eat up the last of the low-hanging fruit for easy growth.
\nIl Messaggero reported earlier this week, without citation, that both carriers had been examining the possibility of Etihad buying a 30- to 40-percent stake in Lufthansa, through a sale of new shares to the Abu Dhabi state-owned airline. The sale was regarded as a precursor to a potential merger. However, Etihad now denies any such intentions.
\nAn Etihad spokesman told the media that it was \u201cnot looking to take a financial stake in Lufthansa.\u201d
\nMeanwhile, president and CEO James Hogan, in a speech yesterday, said that Etihad Aviation Group\u2019s partnership strategy remained a core element of the group\u2019s growth strategy. Hogan pointed to 5.5 million connections to the Etihad Airways network from code shares and partners in 2016. \u201cOur investments had an immediate impact on the revenue side, delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenues and allowing us to fill our onward connecting flights,\u201d he said. \u201cThose benefits have been replicated in all our minority investments \u2013 in airberlin, Alitalia, Jet Airways, Virgin Australia, Air Serbia, Air Seychelles and Etihad Regional.\u201d
\nSo, while Etihad isn\u2019t (publicly) making moves on Lufthansa\u2019s ownership, the two signed a ground-breaking agreement to code-share, in a deal that signaled \u201ca much closer relationship between the two national carriers.\u201d
\nHogan added: \u201cIt is very clear to us at Etihad Airways that Lufthansa is a like-minded, forward-thinking organization with which we can do strong, meaningful and mutually beneficial business.\u201d Sounds like the pas de deux is not over yet\u2026
\nSource: aircargoworld<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like a celebrity mismatch, the rumored Lufthansa-Etihad merger flooding news feeds was bound to disappoint, and now Reuters reports that \u201ca financial stake is out of the question at the moment,\u201d citing a source close to the plans. But given the move towards code sharing, and the Gulf-carrier\u2019s proclivity towards investing in other European carriers,[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49],"class_list":["post-2125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-airport-code"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.actlogistics.vn\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}