Lufthansa wants airberlin’s long-haul planes
frankfurt — German airline Lufthansa aims to take on around a dozen of airberlin’s 17 long-haul aircraft and their transatlantic routes in a carve-up of the insolvent carrier, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
Airberlin, Germany’s secondlargest airline, filed for bankruptcy protection this month after shareholder Etihad Airways withdrew funding following years of losses.
At least half a dozen bidders for airberlin’s assets are now racing to submit offers by a mid-September deadline, with around 140 leased aircraft and valuable takeoff and landing slots in Germany up for grabs. Lufthansa, which currently does not offer long-haul flights from Berlin, is especially interested in the carrier’s routes to US cities including New York, the source said on Tuesday. Lufthansa, which has the German government’s backing to take over major parts of airberlin, could acquire as many as 90 of its planes, including 38 aircraft it is already leasing from the airline and its leisure unit Niki, another source told Reuters this month.
Such a deal, seen valued in the low hundreds of millions of euros, could see up to 3,000 of airberlin’s workers move to Lufthansa, the person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Britain’s easyJet and Thomas Cook’s Condor could split the rest of the fleet between them, media reports have said, with easyJet interested in up to 40 planes and Condor a double-figure number. —