irishguy28

That doesn't mean the European Commission could not force IAG to give up prime slots at peak demand times to enable competitors to enter certain identified problem routes more efficiently!

This report is already 13 years old, but shows that there was more demand than available slots at certain times of the day even then.

alanw

This is, of course, terrible. It won't affect me much personally since IAG already keeps BCN trapped in LCC hell.

But Ryanair are closing four of their Spanish bases at the end of this year, leaving a lot less competition for the domestic market. And I would be willing to put money on IAG removing UX point-to-point routes and making everything terminate in MAD. It's no secret that IB/IAG and AENA both want the same outcome: all roads lead to Madrid, and you don't go anywhere without passing through. Just look at our ridiculous high-speed train routes (and the fact that Spain's flag carrier doesn't even fly to their second-biggest city) for further evidence of that.

It's kind of surprising they're spending all that money to buy UX instead of just rat-f***ing them into bankruptcy like they did to SpanAir.

Oh, how I miss JK.

atflyer

I guess UX simply was doing too well at the moment. And the owners managed to get a decent price for giving IAG the privilige to become monopolists in Spain, and to compensate for the Delta coup with LATAM that weakened One World considerably in Latin America. Doing that by competing them may have costed too much time. To keep on being strong in Latin America IAG probably had to move. Compare that with the paltry 150 Mio Lufthansa may pay for Alitalia. I further wonder if the much talked about IAG Max order has anything to do with this - UX flies B737s.

irishguy28

But Lufthansa are not expecting to acquire 100% of Alitalia for that €150m. Delta's offer of €100m was for a 10% stake in Alitalia, which the Italian government was attempting to get them to raise to a higher stake. I have not seen what percentage LH expects for their offer, but it can't be much more than 20% if it is even that much.

NickB

I do not think that CZ is a meaningful precedent. Most CZ frequent flyers would have been based in China and I can't see FB (or for that matter any European FFP) being particularly attractive to them. I think that there is far more of a chance of a FF status matching campaign for UX from the likes of AFKL-FB or AZ-MM. That said, UX is a small player so perhaps they won't bother.

catsniper75

Hello. Thank you.

A friend of mine called FB today for another matter and asked for me, it seems, so far, that they are not willing to match UX « refugees ».

Still, this announcement is too fresh and not even backed by the Spanish authorities.

Maybe I can try status match requests around all ST partners xD

NickB

Personally, I would wait a while if I were in your shoes. As you say, it is still rather early. I guess no harm in trying, though.

irishguy28

You may be keen to get things moving, but the decision on whether IB can actually buy UX, and whether UX will actually leave Skyteam, won't be known for some time.

They are very, very unlikely to offer a status match before UX officially leaves the alliance.

HalconBCN

Actually, Iberia does fly to BCN and the "all roads lead to Madrid" is unfortunately an example of the victim attitude we hear all too often from some of our politicians in Catalonia - who forget that the rest of Spain still lags behind in terms of infrastructure. Just try getting a train from Valladolid to Ourense.

I strongly disagree the high speed train routes are "ridiculous" - a wild distortion of the facts. Take a look at an AVE weekday morning from Barcelona to Madrid. The trains are packed with people wearing business suits, indicating the strong interdependency between our two great capitals.

alanw

Iberia does fly to Barcelona - from Madrid, and only Madrid (aside from the LHR flight which I can't imagine will last much longer). Which kinda proves my point, no?

As far as your attempt to use Barcelona-Madrid trains as an example of all roads lead to Madrid being "a wild distortion of facts", well once again you're proving my point. AVE is great as long as you want to go to, you guessed it, Madrid. Tell me about taking an AVE from Barcelona to Valencia. Or to Bilbao. Or to Sevilla. Or Alicante. Or Granada. Why, it's just 900km out of your way and a scenic trip to Madrid. With respect to your example of getting a train from Ourense to Valladolid for some reason, according to the RENFE website you'll have AVE service on that route before the end of the year. And it won't go through Madrid.

I'm going to go ahead and stand by everything I said before.

rrgg

Maybe HalconBCN is including Air Nostrum and non mainline metal, for example BCN-VLC.

HalconBCN

It's really tiresome when people base their arguments on emotions rather than facts or basic knowledge of the geography of Spain.

I'll tell you about taking an AVE to Seville because I've done it. It takes about 5 hours versus 10 hours in a car. Your problem seems to be that the line goes via Madrid. I've got news. In most countries train lines go via the heavily populated capital city. As they do even in Catalonia :-)

The line from Ourense to Madrid is still under works with tunnels and whatnot - it's not going to be operational under next year earliest. Again, you're just not well up on the facts as I already had to point out several times.

As for Iberia, well, you also "forgot" that the airline does fly from Barcelona and obviously IAG is the biggest airline at T1 thanks to Vueling, not forgetting LEVEL which is also part of the group and is operating direct flights from BCN to North American destinations.

I'll leave it at that.

irishguy28

Which is IAG strategy, in a nutshell!

While Spain has indeed reaon to be peeved that the second city is seen as suitable only for an LCC (Vueling) supplemented by a long-haul LCC (Level), this is already better than the situation in the UK, where British Airways should rightly instead be called London Airways.

BA has several hubs, alright - but they're all in London!

IAG are pushing "fortress Madrid" as the main highlight of the deal - so they clearly realise that this is the aspect of the deal on which it is most likely to fail. They are attempting to curry favour with the Spanish government for their own benefit by indicating that this is both necessary and desirable to "elevate" MAD to the same level as the other named airports. That might work if it was only the Spanish government that had a say. But they also need to think of the distorting effects it has on Europe's largest domestic aviation market, for which IAG would have almost three-quarters of all current capacity.

A better play would have been to build up a second hub [if only Spanair was still flying!!!]. I really think they missed a trick here.

CNN: British Airways owner has big plans for Madrid airport
Forbes: IAG Makes Madrid Barajas Airport A Pawn In Air Europa Acquisition
La Vanguardia: Salvar el gran Barajas

NickB

This is a very curious way to look at it. Every single network carrier is organised on a hub and spoke model and, if this is the way you are organised, strategically it makes a lot of sense for that hub to be a major one capable of competing with other major hubs in the region. This is not so much currying favour with the Spanish government as making sound, strategic business sense for IAG to develop Madrid as a major hub.

As to whether a dual hub strategy would be sensible, most countries in Europe are single-hub. The nearest parallel I can think of is Italy. And here too, Alitalia moved away from a dual hub to a single hub strategy notwithstanding the fact that the government at the time, which was instrumental in putting together the investors to prop up Alitalia, was a Forza Italia-Lega Nord, which you would have expected to be keen on protecting MXP.

I can fully understand that Catalans might not be too impressed but, ultimately, IAG is a private company run for the benefit of its shareholders, not a public service run by the Generalitat de Catalunya and accountable to Catalan voters.

Fabo.sk

LH is running a dual-hub system for itself, plus secondary hubs in the group. AFKL are notionally two airlines, but their two hubs are quite close to each other. BA is running a multi-hub thing in a single city.

I think Spain is big enough to support two true hubs, not that it is what would work for IAG.