Lufthansa is Europe’s second biggest airline. It recently had to offer concessions to the EU regulators to avoid problems with anti-trust laws, due to its plans to purchase Austrian Airlines. However, this week Lufthansa has revised is proposed concessions in a controversial move.
The European Commission will discuss the issue with other European Airlines to see if selling takeoff and landing slots will address concerns by competitors regarding fairness in the marketplace.
Late last year Lufthansa offered to buy the Vienna Based Austrian Airlines as part of industry consolidation prompted by the recession. They need approval from the EU antitrust commission. They [...]

Lufthansa says that the ball is now in the hands of the European Commission. This is something that they said after they submitted a new package of concessions to the European Commission in a bid to win approval for its takeover of Austrian Airlines.
A Lufthansa spokesperson said that they have now made a new offer, and it is now up to the European Commission to make their choice on what to do next. Right now Lufthansa refused to comment on the details of the new plan, but confirmed that they did involve a number of routes.
The airline said that they [...]

www.aua.com
Austrian Airlines has now thrown a warning out to the European Commission that if they rule against the proposed takeover by Lufthansa, they would need at least €1 Billion in new funds to ensure its survival.
Peter Mnichaelis, the chairman of Austrian Airlines, told the airline’s shareholders in a meeting earlier this week that if the transaction fell through, the airline would need more than twice the €500 million pledged by the government in Vienna.
The European Commission, the competition watchdog, has demanded that Lufthansa give up certain flights in and out of Austria to get the go ahead for the deal. [...]

On July 10, the European Commission rejected concessions offered by Lufthansa to speed up the approval of its takeover of Austrian Airlines. The European Commission went on to tell the German carrier that it would have to come up with concrete concessions by the end of the day for the approval to be sped up.
A spokesman for Lufthansa did confirm that an informal offer had been sent into the European Commission regulators that it wished for an early decision. However, the European Commission said that the offer was not enough to bring its decision forward to the end of the [...]

The European Commission has approved a government-backed bridge financing of 200 million euros (265 million dollars) for Austrian Airlines. This decision will not affect the sale of the carrier to Lufthansa, which is an agreement in which the Austrian government has agreed to assume a debt of 500 million euros (663.5 million dollars) in the airline. The debt did amount to 900 million euros (1.2 billion dollars) back in November.
Lufthansa agreed to purchase the nearly 42 percent share hold in Austrian Airlines from the Austrian government on December 5th, and they plan to take over the airline completely [...]

S7 Airlines, a Russian carrier, is considering making a bid on the Austrian government’s holding in Austrian Airlines, according to Irina Kolesnikova, a spokesperson for S7 Airlines. She wouldn’t say if S7 Airlines has actually put a bid down or not. However, she said that they are interested in gaining more international destinations, and Austrian Airlines is large, having a hub in Vienna.

OeIAG, which is the holding that owns nearly 43 percent of the stake in Austrian Airlines, set an August 24th deadline for possible bidders to send a letter in about their intent to bid on the [...]

Lufthansa has showed an interest in Austrian Airlines by holding intense talks with Austria’s government, according to Stefan Lauer, an executive board member. The German airline is also keeping an eye on Alitalia in the Italian market, he said on Wednesday. Leaders in the Austrian government said during last week that they would sell part of their holding in Austrian Airlines, however, they want to keep enough to make sure that the Austrian core shareholders and the government have 25%. Lauer said that Austrian Airlines is a significant partner for them, and if the government goes to [...]

Aeroflot, a Russian airline, seemed to be interested in placing a bid on purchasing the controlling shares of Austrian Airlines, but have made the decision not to, despite the legacy airline being seen as the potential buyer for a while now. Reuters News was told by Aeroflot Russian Airlines that purchasing Austrian Airlines was just too risky of a deal and not worth it, even though there are potential advantages. The decision of Aeroflot to forgo the bid raised some curiosity among experts in the industry since the airline has been seen as interested in increasing its operations [...]

Austrian Airlines has recently made the announcement for their passenger numbers during the month of June, where the amount of passengers they served on their flights dropped by 1.6 percent in comparison to the month of June last year, putting it at just barely more than 1 million passengers, while the load factor during the month was 73.6 percent, which is 1.3 percent lower in comparison to the same time period in 2007. On the short-haul and medium-hauls routes of the carrier, the number of passengers went up by 1.7 percent in June, while comparing it to the numbers of [...]

Austrian Airlines has been preparing for their new premium service launch, which will be made available to their passengers who fly in business class on certain flights to the Near and Middle East. This new service includes beverages, entertainment options, and food, as well as significantly enhanced seats, and they began offering it on Tuesday, July 15th on routes to Astana, Kazakhstan and Damascus, Syria. Sometime in the close future, passengers who are traveling on other flights will have the opportunity to enjoy the service upgrade as well. Some of these future routes to have this service are Tehran, starting [...]