Comments on: Lufthansa’s Growing Web of Airline Ownership

By: FlightMemory

FlightMemory — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:19:16 +0000

Due to the big sums in the mergers of the last decade, LH always had to stand back as it did not believe such sums were worth the possible profit (e.g. see Alitalia). Hence the strategy to acquire smaller airlines partly or completely and use a multi-brand strategy, which is of course due to the national feelings (imagine SWISS would have been rebranded to LH-Switzerland – the Swiss would have gone crazy, actually they debated long, it they can live with the big German LH at all).

LH is still profitable (made profits in 2008) in contrast to most of its competitors who grew by merging and acquiring big airlines, so at least at the moment, the strategy seems to work well.

But it is to be seen, if they can compete with Emirates and the other MiddleEast airlines, once the A380 roles outr big time, the fuel prices go up and the future of long haul US-Asia connections is decided…I think that is their biggest threat in the future…

By: CF

CF — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:22:30 +0000

rajat – I’ve limited this one to passenger airlines. It was already getting too big . . .

By: rajat

rajat — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:13:44 +0000

what about Lufthansa Cargo?

By: rob

rob — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:00:54 +0000

CF- My apologies on Lufthansa Regional. You were correct, it is a banner for Air Dolomiti, Augsburg Airways, CityLine, Contact Air and Eurowings. They all somehow formed an alliance and use Lufthansa Regional as the name

By: CF

CF — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:51:28 +0000

Optimist – Yep, they were all German-related at some point. LAB went under a couple times recently. It seems like they keep trying to operate a flight every so often, and they even had an accident in the last couple years after I thought they had already shut down. But they’re basically done. Aero Lloyd also went under. Hapag Lloyd still exists, sort of. They had a couple of different airlines including HLX (with the taxi livery) and they’ve all now been merged under the TUI umbrella as TUIfly.

By: The Traveling Optimist

The Traveling Optimist — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:12:32 +0000

By: CF

CF — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:10:27 +0000

rob – It wasn’t entirely clear to me how much if any Lufthansa still owns of Thomas Cook. Talk about a confusing company structure. I think I’ll just leave Condor on there for now and use that as a representative for all Thomas Cook airlines if they are in fact connected to the others.

I did add Cityline on there in my last revision. It’s my understanding that Lufthansa Regional isn’t actually an airline but rather a banner used for several of the regional carriers that fly for Lufthansa. No?

By: rob

rob — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:57:35 +0000

Lufthansa also (indirectly) owns Thomas Cook Airlines through condor.
Also don’t forget lufthansa regional and lufthanda cityline which until recently were not owned by lufthansa (the regional and cityline simply used the name lufthansa and added to it.

Thomas Cook, lufthansa regional, and lufthansa cityline are all German airlines.

By: patrickmcfly

patrickmcfly — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:38:52 +0000

Lufthansa prepares against the competition of Multi American as well as the agressiven Arab airlines such as Emirates. The Arabs do not need the high kerosene-praise to be afraid, them possess to Oil-pour. the Germans want to develop a Multi Hub System in Europe, in Addition the assumption of other Airlines belongs. All of it will profit: Improves utilization of stretching and improves purchase conditions…

By: globalplayers

globalplayers — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:52:44 +0000

@Enduring Wanderlust please grow up!

@Ari We’re talking about Lufthansa German Airlines here, LH Cargo with its own subsidiaries is a different business unit.