Will IAG get a 50% discount on its purchase of Air Europa?

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• Nick says:

  30 Jul30 July 05:27

  Are competition concerns really valid any more? “Sure, we’ll happily accept moderations. Of course you’ll follow the model you established at FRA and MUC, won’t you?”

  And even if not, no one else would be queuing up to fly at the moment, so it’s an opportune moment to strike.

  Globalia should hold firm on price though, unless they’re desperate to sell. IAG is opportunistic and will pay.

  • Tim says:

    30 Jul30 July 08:32

    Perhaps if they don’t let IAG buy it they will let Lufthansa =)

    • Spaghetti Town says:

      30 Jul30 July 09:42

      now that’s more like it

  • insider says:

    30 Jul30 July 09:00

    I think Globalia will want whatever they can get right now, they can’t be far from going bankrupt, and in that case they would get zilch, and Iberia still benefits from the loss of a competitor

• Julian says:

  30 Jul30 July 08:39

  The strange thing about Air Europa is how it ever survived at all after the demise so long ago in 1991 of its parent, Intasun Leisure. Yet survive it did and with a very large and prominent office base at Mallorca Airport (nee Son San Juan Airport).

  I suppose if it is swallowed up in to IAG then questions will clearly arise as to its role in addition to the existing two IAG Spanish low cost operations of both Vueling and Iberia Express.

  As it already didn’t make much sense to have two lost airlines owned by IAG (other than that the function of Iberia Express seemed to be to turn loss making Iberia Main routes in to profit making low cost ones without it being too obvious that had happened as would have been the case with direct Vuelingisation) the question surely has to be how it can make sense for IAG to have a third Spanish low cost operation when it doesn’t have one in the UK. That is apart of course from British Airways Basic European short haul economy fares with no luggage and travelling at the very back of the plane, which effectively amount to a low cost steerage carrier sharing the same aircraft as one also operating expensive Club Class seats, which is probably a far more logical solution for an airline that has so many fewer domestic regional routes, or at least in passenger number terms, than in Spain.

  So perhaps IAG will learn from the BA model and shortly collapse its four Spanish airlines back in to one with lower cost seats at the very back of the plane (and often you will only be allocated a middle seat at the back on BA if travelling alone and also not paying extra for an allocated seat) for those insistent on buying a steerage class level ticket competing directly on price with Ryanair and Jet2………..

  • Nick_C says:

    30 Jul30 July 11:53

    “sharing the same aircraft as one also operating expensive Club Class seats”

    You mean expensive Club Class tickets. The seats are cheap (and nasty). 😉

• southlondonphil says:

  30 Jul30 July 09:07

  Spamish-language site Preferente.com reports that the Unite union in the UK are attempting to frustrate this deal with threats of a complaint to the European Commission if it gets anf Spanish government aid, as part of their (quixotic?) battle with BA management.

  https://www.preferente.com/noticias-de-transportes/noticias-de-aerolineas/iberia-air-europa-ofensiva-para-frustar-la-operacion-302263.html

  • Lady London says:

    30 Jul30 July 13:37

    Have Unite got nothing better to spend their time on?

• JdeW says:

  30 Jul30 July 09:32

  If IAG do succeed in buying Air Europa, I hate to think what will happen to future Spanish domestic flight pricing…

• Tony says:

  30 Jul30 July 10:45

  Air Europa are a poor quality airline in my experience making Vuelling seem good.
  My guess is IAG want it for its South American destinations which rarely overlap with Iberia and then they will dump one way or the other the majority of the domestic routes.

• Noah Bowie says:

  30 Jul30 July 13:35

  The plan was for IAG to give a large number of slots and possibly some aircraft to Volotea in order to pass the competition regulators. However for domestic travel in Spain it’s much easier to take the high speed AVE trains rather than flying

  • Rob says:

    30 Jul30 July 14:11

    Volotea is tiny though. Realistically it needs the planes AND a huge amount of cash. It was Volotea I was referring to in the article – it has an operating licence so IAG could technically inject a pile of cash, planes and routes into it. Volotea would grow by 5-10x however I imagine.

    • Marcw says:

      30 Jul30 July 22:07

      Volotea is not that small: 33 airplanes in total. They are very small in Spain though.

• Claire says:

  31 Jul31 July 05:21

  Hopefully IAG will spend some of there money to treat the British Airways staff with dignity, this company should be ashamed and be stripped of Heathrow slots for what it has done to its staff. Absolutely disgusting.

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