Originally Posted by
iahphx
Most folks ascribe nefarious reasons to IAG for having an interest in Norwegian, and I suspect they're right. I don't know exactly what game they're playing, however (but then I'm no expert on European bankruptcy laws and such). Buying a competitor to shut them down isn't that unusual. Heck, I even thought Southwest bought AirTran largely to eliminate a competitor. But this usually happens when the competitor is solvent. When they're bleeding money, you usually just wait for them to fail. So it's certainly interesting.
Why buys airline tickets with cash? You definitely need to buy tickets on struggling airlines with a credit card, but I don't know the financial protections available in Europe for such purchases. And if you're taking summer of 2019, there's a long time to go before your friend should be shopping for an airline ticket!
I’m with you all the way. However, Switzerland and Germany are not at all credit card oriented like the USA and people often pay by direct bank debit (myself included). Here the mentality is to book as far in advance as possible, a mentally engendered by the rise of easyJet (whose advertising always screamed that the earlier you book, the cheaper a deal you will get).
With respect to your first paragraph, I’ve never understood how BA has been allowed to wipe so many competing airlines out of existence. Their current state of service is exactly what I predicted some years ago and I suspect Lufthansa will become the same now that airberlin has disappeared (but that is another story).