In late June, Qatar Airways announced their intention to buy up to a 10% stake in American Airlines. Per a filing at the time, Qatar first wanted to acquire an $808 million stake (~4%) in American, and was considering increasing that at a later point. While I’d usually call Qatar’s bluffs, the airline has purchased…
Continue reading: Qatar Airways Still Wants To Invest In A US Airline
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Thinking JetBlue too. They have a partnership with Emirates which an investment by Qatar could significantly influence if that continues or not.
Or maybe...Frontier or Spirit! The lower end of the market is where the most growth is likely going to be!
JetBlue has partnerships with both Emirates and Etihad, I wonder how it will go down with them, considering Qatar would have a stake in the airline and that would mean business with Qatar.
Baltia would be more than willing to accept money from anyone willing to give it.
Who wouldn't want to invest in US airlines? Look at United's profit despite beating and dragging passenger, not to mention basic economy fare. Its a lucrative market with promising profits and low cost. Look at hard products and service quality in US3 compared to Jal, ana, eva, etc. Or maybe spirit and frontier with airasia and peach.
Low service quality means low cost but yielded high profits.
Well, clearly then the US3 are not hurting at all, if one of the ME3 airlines wants to invest in them. They evidently believe they will get returns on their investments otherwise no way in hell would they invest in something that would be tantamount to pissing money away.
@Emirates4Ever
I'm not sure I share your confidence. An example: "pissing money away" is the best description I can think of for Etihad's "investment" in Alitalia.
As someone who is well versed with Alaska Airlines, I would LOVE to have a new mileage partner such as Qatar. With Alaska's recent Acquisition of Virgin America, we will be gaining Etihad as a partner too hopefully soon enough. And already being a partner with Emirates would have us well covered with the Gulf community.
@Paul
Being flag carrier of a country there's more benefit than financial in airlines alone. Offcourse some of those deals happened behind closed door and would never made public unless maybe wikileak.....
@Paul, I see your point, and normally I would agree with you. However, as James points out, Alitalia is Italy's national carrier, and in spite being a brutally inefficiently ran airline, national pride will keep it from going insolvent for at least the near future.
It's more of the other partnerships Etihad has done, that have not paid off (well for Etihad anyway), that pissed money away.
@Emirates4Ever (and for @James, too)
I think you're now putting forward a different argument than before (when you wrote "no way in hell would they invest in something that would be tantamount to pissing money away"), but, in case you still disagree with me about the case of Alitalia, have a look at today's news about Air Berlin, which benefited from massive "investment" by Etihad...
@Paul I stand by my point. The incident with airberlin shows that the days of Etihad throwing money around are over, it even states the previous CEO got fired, most likely because the partnerships were not providing any returns for Etihad. airberlin isn't going to be kept afloat by Germany, hence, Etihad pulled out.
Alitalia, on the other hand, is the flag carrier of Italy, Italy will keep it propped up, until it goes bankrupt of course.
Qatar Airways however has been more cautious with partnerships, not tossing money like Etihad has done in the past. Clearly they see potential for good returns in US airlines, and why not? The publically available financial reports shows the US3 being very profitable, not to mention the other US carriers too.
@Emirates4Ever
I'd agree with you that Qatar seems to have been far and away the most financially successful of the ME3 (they're part-owners of the massively profitable IAG, a sharp contrast to Etihad's games with Alitalia and Air Berlin). I know Lucky seems to seriously dislike their CEO, but it looks to me like Al Baker has been a very sharp manager.
But my original objection was to what you seemed to be saying - that, *because* an ME3 airline was investing in it, it was clearly a sound investment (I hope that's paraphrasing, and not putting words into your mouth). Etihad's own financial results this year, let alone the current status of Alitalia and now Air Berlin, suggests that not all ME3 airlines are equally canny when it comes to investments.