Global aviation in Europe is very much controlled by the big three European airline groups — Air France-KLM, IAG, and Lufthansa Group. These airline groups strategically try to buy up independent airlines, largely in order to prevent competitors from doing the same.
Continue reading: Lufthansa Invests In airBaltic, Buys 10% Stake: What’s The Motive?
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Will this group ever stop buying stakes in independent airlines that are doing well? Next thing you know Spohr and Co. will have bought stakes in TAP and Aegean as well.
Funnily enough, airBaltic used to have a partnership (shareholding?) with SAS in the past.
Fortunately Aegean is listed on the stock market and unlikely to be interested in going private, but the TAP privatisation is a huge issue and, unless the buyer isn't one of the big 3, it's very likely to undermine competition across the Atlantic.
I find using the LH/AC/UA JV transatlantic to various European gateways like Amsterdam or Paris and then taking Air Baltic from there to the baltics is generally a great option pricewise and connection-wise on through tickets. I'm glad to see further cooperation.
I don't know about airBaltic, but this much is clear: everything Lufty touches turns to $h1t.
Here’s my small grammar point, which you can feel free to ignore. Many brands have a name that begins with a lower case letter, like air Baltic and iPhone. But if that word begins a sentence, the first letter should be capitalised no matter. So “Lufthansa is buying airBaltic” is fine but it would be “AirBaltic is being bought by Lufthansa” if the sentence begins with that airline name. Lower case letters at the start of sentences looks odd. But your blog, so your style!
It is official... Lufthansa will be the first airline to take delivery of the 777X.
I have a lot of criticism about LH, but the intellectual complexity of such statement is way below the quality of the LH product.
@James
'So “Lufthansa is buying airBaltic” is fine but it would be “AirBaltic is being bought by Lufthansa” ' Thank you. I learnt something new today.
Have you read articles on Simply Flying? That blog is full or mistakes. Most of the time wrong information is being written to the level that one start asking themselves if those writers are aviation geeks. Proofreading is not their thing. Most of the time readers point out their mistakes but they never correct them. They ignore.
.... The best thing about OMAAT is that they hardly make mistakes and when they makes and the readers point out they make corrections.
@AJO
They cannot sort out Allegris issues. The same Allegris that got them a 5-star rating 7 years ago. That was a big joke and since that day I found SkyTrax to be a much bigger joke
Air Baltic has been wet leasing planes to Swiss for 2 years now. FA salary is about 1600 eur per month or a third of a Swiss based FA.