Lufthansa buying ITA Airways

[PeteM]

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/lufthansa-ceo-heading-rome-discuss-ita-airways-deal-ansa-news-agency-2023-05-25/

Overall good news, I guess? Well, apart from the fact they will adopt Miles & More and join Star Alliance…

[AJA]

I have a sense of deja vu. Didn’t Lufthansa try something like that before with its Lufthansa Italia subsidiary?

What is it with Italian airlines that can’t operate profitably? ITA has already made a huge loss and it hasn’t been operating that long.

[JDB]

AJA wrote:

I have a sense of deja vu. Didn’t Lufthansa try something like that before with its Lufthansa Italia subsidiary?

What is it with Italian airlines that can’t operate profitably? ITA has already made a huge loss and it hasn’t been operating that long.

Principally because successive Italian governments never addressed the Alitalia problem and allowed it to exist on life support hobbled by the unions, politicians requiring the Rome hub and with its wings clipped by the EU because of the endless ‘last’ subsidies it received. While AZ was so weakened, EasyJet and Ryanair stole the domestic and European leisure market and LH (and partly AZ’s former partner AF) the premium traffic, so now LH can pick up the remains for peanuts, AF having previously walked away. Flag carriers SABENA, Swissair and Olympic were all allowed to go bust and have re-emerged stronger via different means. More recently SAS went bust, as TAP would have without a bailout and they will ultimately emerge stronger.

The fact the LH stake and ultimately control or effective control of ITA is expected to be allowed by the EU is fairly remarkable given the LH group will then control the national carriers of Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Italy plus add the Nordic countries via Star and its close friendship with SAS.

[PeteM]

The Portuguese government are apparently keen to sell TAP pronto, with IAG, AF-KLM and LH keen.

I suspect if the traditional European carriers are to compete with FR/EZ/W9 they’ll have to bunch up into 3-4 big groups like in the US.