PoincianaKings

Isn't the AZ investment essentially a back door way for EY to invest? Swear it was rumoured a while back that EY were interested in acquiring part of Air Malta.

rapidex

And do what with them?Air Malta has been killed by the LCC's.Malta is well served by the "majors" and the LCC's.There is no room for Air Malta.

South London Bon Viveur

Hong Kong is a little rock as well.

Slotski

So is Singapore 😀. But Malta cannot be compared to these two Asian cities.... different population, geographic position, etc.

I think it would be a shame if Air Malta was to fail. I fear the good value BA CE fares on offer could rise as a consequence.

Worcester

I doubt that a major airline would want to saddle itself with a small subfleet of different aircraft/engines and the costs associated with their maintenance and training of pilots etc.

msm2000uk

Sort of, but now even EY are considering their options with regards to AZ.

A major announcement is rumoured for this week.

M

headingwest

How many airlines is Etihad propping up!?

T8191

We have several small rocks, and Aurigny and Blue Islands seem to cope [just].

Worcester

Loss making (quite big losses on average)
Alitalia 49% owned
Air Berlin/Nikki 29.21% owned by Ethihad
Jet Airways 24% owned
Virgin Australia 24% owned


Profitable (just)
Air Seychelles 40% owned
Air Serbia 49% owned

Not known
And what used to be Darwin Airways, now Eithad regional 34% owned

These airlines do feed traffic into Eithad's long haul network, but I doubt a commercial organisation could have maintained these "investments".

OttoMH

Does this mean I'll have to stay in TYO?! 😊

AZ was pretty good on board. Nice food and wine. Limoncello too! Their FCO lounge is great too - pizza oven!

South London Bon Viveur

I guess the problem is that KM has a small home market and no long haul feed, which means I presume that it has to have some kind of partnership to make it work although I am nowhere near as clued up as others on here about the commercial aspect of the aviation industry. As mentioned above, LCC's will have played a part, but mostly in relation to the tourists and expats that live there. I imagine that KM gets the lions share of business travellers. I think Ek have had quite an impact as well.

So far as the London market is concerned, BA only really works well for point to point traffic and although I have used (and enjoyed) the service, it seems more suited to leisure travel. KM have a twice daily LHR rotation, and I imagine that those slots are valuable. I always wondered whether they should have code shared with BA to get some LH feed (noting that there is a large Maltese diaspora in OZ and Canada). I hope they survive. I always found them pleasant enough, even if the service was nothing to write home about. I think it's sad for small national carriers to go under.

Worcester

Basically if you are able to place orders in the 100's of aircraft & engines you are going to get a far better deal than if you can only buy in the 10s. Also to a less extent fuel. There is a lot of economies of scale in the airline industry, and so larger companies tend to push out the smaller ones.

Then when the larger companies are large enough they can then become price setters and effective rent takers as you see in the US now. It should be up the the regulators to stop market abuse, but as again you saw in the US the airlines have legions of lawyers and lobbyists to clear their path.

BApilotinsider

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...crisis-436521/

Alitalia closer to the brink than ever before. Troubling times..

DFB_london

this one is like crying wolf. So far the header for this thread has been way off the mark.

hugolover

AZ has been close to the brink for years and yet still comes back. A lot of this is just politics with the Unions. I remember when AZ last went bankrupt and I was at TXL at the last flight which was operated by MD-88, alas AZ came back-but not to TXL for a few years later!