Icelandair May Buy A 49% Stake In Azores Airlines

I have to say KEF to PDL would be a pretty cool flight!

I think the goal is to both operate the airline as a going concern, but more importantly have a lower labour cost AOC available for Loftleidir's core ACMI business for the short-medium term before selling out at a profit.

Isn't KEF bursting at the seams? I know that they are expanding the airport, but there's no way that KEF can keep up with the increasing flights to Iceland. If Icelandair wants to expand, doesn't this allow a way to do it?

Isn't Loftleidir Icelandic already managing TACV? They could unite under one group (similar to LH Group) and offer Transatlantic flights together.

The current facility at PDL isn't really fit for an FI type operation.

Icelandair, Air Azores, and TACV would give the group a large presence at BOS.

Is it worth the bother of taking on such a basket case? In March, Azores Airlines came 154th out of 156 airlines for punctuality. That's quite an achievement!
Their cousins at TAP showed them how to do it better. TAP proudly came 151st out of 156 according to OAG data.

So Icelandair has positioned themselves as a gateway to Europe, especially Northern Europe and especially from smaller markets that can't support direct flights to more than a handful of major European destinations.

Perhaps they can position Air Azores as the gateway to Southern Europe and West Africa. I would love to see a YHZ-PDL-DSS trip. It would be so much better than YHZ-YYZ-CDG-DSS, or YHZ-YUL-BRU-DSS. Anything that can make it easier to see my sister, really. 😉

Maybe this, plus the new planes that Azores Airlines has, would help enable an interline agreement with JetBlue. Azores Airlines desperately needs to be able to sell tickets to/from more US cities, and JetBlue is an ideal partner for that. I imagine that it hasn't happened in the past because of Azores Airlines poor reliability.

Air Azores could also start the same type of business but connecting Europe with Central & Northern South-America. FI serving the North Transatlantic and Air Azores the Mid-South Atlantic!

The key rationale here is that both Iceland and Azores are very strategically located in the middle of the Atlantic. As major parts of the US are within reach of narrow body air crafts, they can potentially offer one stop connections between smaller European and American cites where it’s simply not viable to fly wide-bodies or are off the radar screen of major network carriers that are premium focussed. Both of them share a similar business model and integrating the two hubs in the North and Mid Atlantic could lead to the two entities collectively offering a formidable network coverage in North America with narrow body air crafts and become true disrupters.

I have a gut feeling this is about creating leverage with regards to WOW air, which is an asset Icelandair would probably rather have than Azores Airlines. Azores Airlnies is probably the 2nd option for Icelandair(BATNA). WOW needs a capital injection to sustain its growth and they have been looking for investors. Icelandair could be doing this as a way to get WOW to accept an offer from the quickly instead of shopping around for better offers. If WOW doesn’t soon and makes a decision, Icelandair will invest in Azores and WOW misses the plane so to speak. Far-fetched theory I know, but wouldn’t be surprised if we heard about Icelander taking a stake in WOW.

It would be pretty nice to fly from the US to Europe with a stop in Iceland on the way out and the Azores on the way back.

A KEF-PDL flight can be possible if proceeding to Madeira, Canary or Cape Verde.

The Azores have an enormous potential for a stopover, far from the congested airspace of major european hubs. The Azores hub could be strong on europe-caribean flights (it is right in the route between Barcelona and Santo Domingo, or Lyon and Pointe-a-Pitre, just to give two examples. Many others can be given. The new generation aircraft can make this easier to achieve, but, a huge improvement would be needed at PDL airport.

In Canada, SATA/ Air Azores (and WOW Air) continues to disregard EU Reg. 261/2004 for compensation owed to passengers arising from controllable delays and denied boarding. A class action was recently filed in the Federal Court of Canada if anyone is interested: http://evolinklaw.com/wowair-flight-delay-class-action/#

People commenting here seem to be missing one key thing here.. both Azores Airlines and TAP are owned by the Portuguese government so it wouldn't be in the interest of Azores to cannibalise TAP routes