Air Berlin Final Deal

The score now with Air Berlin?  As most of you know....it's been in bankruptcy for a couple of months, and been in decline for at least five years.  A lot of hype was made up around 2007 and how they were in the right position to benefit from BER (the new Berlin Airport)....so they were expanding and taking on new positions.  Sadly, they guessed wrong on BER, and screwed up on finances.

Lufthansa will now buy Air Berlin for 210 milliion Euro.  The number one airline of Germany....buys the number two airline....which says a lot.

Lufthansa says that 1,300 employees will be Lufthansa employees in the end.  The rest filter out to Niki Airlines or get dismissed.

The chance of Eurowings being run out of Frankfurt now?  Zero chance.  That was the low-cost end of Lufthansa and they say it won't be in the plans ahead.

So this brings up this odd topic of Alitalia (Air Italy).  It's been in bankruptcy-like care for more than a decade.  The Italian government has never been able to find anyone willing to buy the airline because there's this agreement that must come with the deal....not to dismiss any employees.  In 2017, the government finally said enough....just sell the airline period, and get rid of the cost to the government.  What's generally said is that they have too many employees with no real job and it's more or less welfare-class employment going on.  Several companies talked of a deal....wanted to dismiss some employees (never numbers mentioned) and it got nowhere.

Now with Lufthansa?  Yeah, that's the odd thing....maybe they'd buy Alitalia.

My guess is that Lufthansa is angling toward some deal where if future strikes were to occur with the Lufthansa pilots....they'd have extra pilots in their pocket or other airlines to cover various routes. The effect of a strike might not be so big.

What will be the landscape in 2018?  It'll be a curious deal how this looks at ticket prices and options.  BER?  It'll open by the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019, and it'll be a big part of the success for Lufthansa in the future.