Crossair boss Dosé says new global alliance not feasible

Despite comments by nominated airline chairman Pieter Bouw, Crossair's André Dosé says a fourth alliance is unrealistic swissinfo.ch

The head of the new Swiss airline, André Dosé, has said it is not "realistic" to create a new global alliance in the near future.

The nominated chairman of the new airline, former KLM airline chief Pieter Bouw had intimated on Sunday that a fourth alliance was a possibility alongside Star Alliance (Lufthansa and United Airlines), Oneworld (British Airways and American Airlines) and SkyTeam (Air France and Delta).

Asked in an interview which alliance was best for the new Swiss airline being built around Crossair and the collapsed Swissair, Bouw said he did not yet know.

“But is there really only room for three alliances, or is there a possibility to build a fourth…on condition of an efficient alliance with airlines outside Europe? KLM or Alitalia are also looking for partners,” he told the “SonntagsZeitung”.

Decision soon

However, in an interview on Monday with the mass circulation tabloid “Blick” newspaper of Zurich, Dosé said he had been in talks with the three major alliances already and would hold further talks in the next 10 days. A decision, he said would be made before Christmas.

“Blick” accused Bouw of “dreaming” with the idea of a new global alliance and said he was forgetting that Swissair had wanted to build its own empire rather than join an existing alliance. This policy had led to its collapse, the paper commented.

And it accused Bouw of making a blunder when he mentioned that Alitalia was a potential partner. “Blick” reminded its readers that Alitalia had joined the SkyTeam alliance in July.

Dosé said Bouw, due to come up for election at a Crossair shareholders’ meeting in Basel on December 6, had not informed him of his alliance ideas.

“But it is not possible to form a new alliance and make it work quickly. That is not realistic,” Dosé said.

North Atlantic route

Commenting on the alliance issue, aviation analyst Martin Borghetto of Morgan Stanley financial services group in London told swissinfo that one of the major factors in any global alliance was the partner on the North Atlantic route.

“At the moment I think there are clearly three dominant US airlines – American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Airlines, and they have all relatively stable and fixed partnership with respective European partners,” he told swissino.

“From my perspective, I’m looking into more opportunities behind a three-party alliance structure across the world than a four party global structure,” he added.

He said that although Swissair once had an alliance with American Airlines, the US carrier now had an intensive link with British Airways.

“If there was an open skies agreement between the US and Britain in the near term, I think American Airlines would clearly shift its focus on the UK-US routes rather than other European hubs,” he told swissinfo.

“From that perspective I don’t think American Airlines would be the partner to focus on Zurich Airport as a European hub,” he added.

“Big hub status at the moment (in Europe) is only achieved at Frankfurt, Paris and London and all the other European hubs have to be considered as secondary,” he commented.

“Alliance focus will clearly be built around those three hubs and ambitions to built a fourth, fifth or sixth hub in Europe around a fourth, fifth or sixth global alliance bears the danger that you again are shovelling money out of the window and into a big black hole,” he added.

by Robert Brookes