It seems to be increasingly common for the Gulf carriers to buy stakes in foreign airlines. For example, Etihad owns a stake in several airlines, including airberlin, Alitalia, Jet Airways, Virgin Australia, etc. Meanwhile last year Qatar Airways bought a 9.99% stake in IAG, the parent company of British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus. Earlier…
Continue reading: Qatar Airways Buying A 10% Stake In LATAM
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By distance, JNB is the fastest way to Asia from S. America, but in the past years ME3 are dominating the market in GRU.
About the news... UOW! That's unexpected! Much of the new JNB flight launch by Latam is to provide connections to Africa and Asia, so at least in short term I don't see a huge code-share with Qatar.
What peerage or honor does the Qatar CEO hold to be awarded the "His Excellency" title?
Very interesting as just last week the new government started defending a more open aviation sector in Brazil. They believe (and I agree) foreign investment in both airports and airlines is the only way to get through the economic downturn, and just yesterday added that LCCs would bring benefits to the economy. I wonder how coincidental this announcement today is.
The LAN-TAM merger has had a horrible effect on LATAM's books; local financial papers put losses at US$100M a day. This is a much-needed boost for the group, but I know that wasn't at the heart of QT's decision.
I think this is basically a way of blowing off / showing off profit in good QR manner.
They have according to their balance sheet tons of cash money, but no actually assets.
Short-term, they will rule the market in / and out of South America,
Long-term their investments will close down one of the major alliances.
Woohoo! I like to see closer co-operation between oneworld members. I wonder if QR have the stomach to take a stake in AA - that'll ruffle some feathers! If QR won't do it directly, I'd like to see IAG do so, as well as their own stake in LATAM. I don't mind QR buying more of IAG either...
@BR - not sure if His Excellency has a princely title of any kind, but his bio page on the QR website titles him as His Excellency: http://www.qatarairways.com/us/en/ceo-message.page Perhaps he's considered a kind of Qatari ambassador?