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Tag: international airlines

  • News: IAG completes Vueling purchase following board agreement

    Vueling, the Spanish low-cost carrier based in Barcelona, is to become component of International Airlines Group after the vast majority of its shareholders accepted IAG’s cash tender offer for the airline, following recommendation by the Vueling board.

    IAG’s subsidiary Iberia already owns 45.85 per cent of Vueling’s shares and Iberia’s board agreed to not tender them within the offer.

    The Spanish National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) has announced today that 82.48 per cent of the rest shareholders have accepted IAG’s offer of €9.25 per share.

    Therefore, the IAG group will own 90.51 per cent of Vueling.

    The cost of buying the Vueling shares is €123.5 million.

    Vueling would be a standalone company within IAG with its chief executive Alex Cruz reporting into IAG chief executive Willie Walsh.

    Willie Walsh, IAG chief executive, said: “Vueling is a good airline and may be a welcome boost to IAG where it is going to enjoy the group’s financial strength.

    “We plan to retain Vueling’s current business model and management structure and its strong base in Barcelona.”

    The acquisition can be completed on April 26th, 2013.

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  • News: Amadeus signs content agreement with IAG

    Amadeus has signed a brand new long-term content agreement with International Airlines Group, one of many world’s largest airline groups.

    The agreement, which covers British Airways, Iberia, and Iberia Express, allows Amadeus subscribers to continue to learn from accessing an identical level of fares, availability and functionality as previously.

    “Reaching a brand new content agreement with IAG was a transparent commercial priority for Amadeus for it slow, so one can guantee that our subscribers can continue to access British Airways, Iberia and Iberia Express flights,” said Holger Taubmann, senior vice chairman, distribution, Amadeus. 

    He continued: “To this end we’re delighted to have reached agreement with IAG and we glance forward to continuing what was an extended and successful relationship for a lot of more future years.”

    Amadeus plays a critical role within the distribution space ensuring global reach to travel agencies internationally.

    Today 80 per cent of Amadeus bookings worldwide are made on airlines with which Amadeus has a content agreement.

  • News: Expedia Affiliate Network inks cope with Air Tahiti Nui

    Expedia Affiliate Network, the personal label arm of the world’s largest online travel company, today announces a longer partnership with Air Tahiti Nui, one of the crucial South Pacific’s leading international airlines.

    The carrier offers daily non-stop service from La International Airport to Tahiti and Paris.

    The deal will see ATN use the most recent version of EAN’s hotel retailing platform, Chameleon, to present the absolute best range of accommodation to customers booking travel both inbound to and outbound from the Pacific islands. 

    The partnership builds at the existing relationship between EAN and ATN, and sees the airline expanding its hotel offering to all points of sale, with key markets including France, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, as well as america and Canada.

    As well as providing access to approximately 160,000 hotels worldwide, EAN’s Chameleon platform may help ATN to present an enhanced user experience, including targeted offers on hotel and flight purchases.

    For example, from today until March 31st, ATN is offering a 10 percent discount across all hotel accommodation purchased through its websites.

    The partnership also allows travellers to profit from phone support for sales and inquiries, in addition to user-generated content from TripAdvisor, a good way to use others’ experiences to tell their booking decisions.

    Etienne Howan, chief executive of Air Tahiti Nui commented: “Our extended partnership with EAN considerably strengthens our distribution strategy, adding to our direct sales platform.

    “We’re confident the deal can assist us towards our goal of improving our customer support and making travel easier, if you want to entice more travellers from world wide to enjoy Tahiti and the South Pacific.”

  • Iberia drags International Airlines Group into red

    International Airlines Group has reported an operating lack of €23 million before exceptional items for the year to December 31st.

    While British Airways made an operating profit of €347 million in the course of the period, the crowd was hamstrung by Spanish carrier Iberia, which made an operating lack of €351 million.

    Willie Walsh, IAG chief executive, said: “Last year was a year of transformation for IAG – we bought bmi and integrated it into British Airways and initiated our restructuring of Iberia.

    “Our operating performance was solid and the €23 million loss before exceptional items was better than our guidance to the market.

    There was an important impact at the results from exceptional and non-operating items resulting in a pre-tax lack of €997 million.

    These items include provision for restructuring and impairment costs in Iberia and non-cash pension accounting requirements.

    Revenue for the year was up 10.9 per cent to €18.1 billion, including €872 million or 5.4 per cent currency impact.

    Passenger unit revenue for the year was also up 9.4 per cent, on top of volume increases of two.8 per cent.

    Walsh continued: ““We achieved synergies of €313 million in 2012, exceeding our €225 million target set first and foremost of the year.

    “This is another excellent performance, notably through higher than expected revenue synergies. However, we must never be complacent – while this trend must continue it must be hand-in-hand with structural change.”

    Despite three months of negotiations between Iberia and its trade unions, no agreement was reached on an initial restructuring plan.

    Therefore, IAG has announced that Iberia will proceed with a fifteen per cent cut in capacity and has started the formal collective redundancy process so as to affect 3,807 jobs.