Did you listen to the interview of De Wilde? He is saying almost the same things as I am.Passenger wrote:I listen to what the specialists say, like senior aviation journalist Luk De Wilde (*). And like professor Vandevoorde, Department of Transport, Universiteit Antwerpen, this weekend on Kanaal Z: "Lufthansa uses Brussels Airlines mainly to counter Ryanair at Brussels (**). Also, the Africa network Brussels Airlines has established is very valuable and Lufthansa will never give that up".sean1982 wrote:And you, the expert, does? Please ... Enlighten us!Passenger wrote: I guess tolipanebas is thinking the same as I do: "Wow, that's a lot of nonsense in one post. That guy really has no idea what's going on between LH and SN.".
Source:
http://kanaalz.knack.be/nieuws/brussels ... 61557.html
(*) Luk De Wilde:
http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/video ... =1.2564979
(**) that's exactly what I've said already before, isn't it Sean? Brussels Airlines has proven how legacy airlines can counter Ryanair at major airports.
"Brussels Airlines management have no say once LH takes control", "management trying to avoid that everything goes to Germany", "SN could become a subsidiary of the low cost arm, management and Belgian shareholding trying to prevent that".
I don't agree with some other things that he says though, which are his own analysis.
1. For instance, that LH sees BRU/SN as a third hub next top FRA/MUC in West Europe.
In fact, LH still has plenty of room to grow in MUC and now they are building a DUS hub with Eurowings. So they don't need SN/BRU at all for that. (Africa is another story, though there is nothing that would prevent LH from moving that elsewhere as bilaterals are signed)
Also, FRA is less than an hour away.
I don't think that BRU's positioning has anything uber-strategic for the LH group.
2. Also, I don't agree that LH has been loyal.
In fact, they have already earned back more than their low initial investment and made quite some money with SN by selling SN a lot of services that SN would have bought from third parties, ie maintenance, IT, staff, etc... Moreover, they also benefit from being exclusive on FRA and MUC flights. You can see LH aircraft coming in and out of BRU throughout the day to feed their longhaul hubs.
The 100 million loan was also not to save SN from a demise but to allow them to grow. Our government has bailed out SN from its demise by forgiving a start-up loan for more than 100 millions on top of yearly subsidies.
The old parked LX A332's that SN inherited are also barely worth calling a fleet investment. In fact, LX were trying to get rid of them anyway.
If LH would have been loyal, they would have exercised their call options much sooner and invested in the fleet expansion, including routes to Asia, so that SN could stay competitive. They would also have pressured TK to stay away from SN's Africa market.
I see this developing exactly as I described earlier, simply because if you consider SN as a purely strategic (read cheap way to hurt competitors) and as a financial instrument, it makes sense to shift everything under Eurowings.
In fact, if SN made only 30 millions more versus 2014, despite much cheaper fuel and 10% growth in traffic, it proves that SN is an inefficient corporation that can not reach a high ROI while carrying a lot of risk if trading conditions start to deteriorate. Investing more in it just doesn't make sense.
From a German's point of view it makes more sense to shift it into another operation that will make it both more profitable and serve German interests at the same time.
You can hear Mr Sciot's worry in his voice.
