Qualiflyer alliance has no future, says Suter

Suter wants out of the Qualiflyer alliance Keystone Archive

Moritz Suter, head of the Swiss regional carrier Crossair, has called for the break-up of Swissair Group's Qualiflyer alliance of airline companies.

In an interview with the French-language “Le Temps” newspaper, Suter declared that the alliance had no future and that at the final reckoning only Crossair and Swissair would remain.

Suter stated that Swissair was looking to rid itself of several members of the Qualiflyer alliance, notably the French airlines AOM and Air Liberté. “We would also like to break away from Sabena and all the other businesses,” he added.

Apart from AOM/Air Liberté, Crossair, Swissair and Sabena, the Qualiflyer alliance also includes TAP Air Portugal, Portugalia, the Italian Volare Group, and the Polish airline, LOT.

His controversial comments came just 24 hours after shares in Swissair Group took a hammering on Friday, falling by as much as 10 per cent at one point, following a critical financial report from the bank ABN-Amro.

Earlier in the week the airline group, which posted a SFr2.9 billion loss for the year 2000, refused to rule out job cuts as part of plans to reduce costs by at least SFr500 million ($279 million) by the second half of this year.

Suter, who resigned earlier this year as head of Swissair’s airlines division after only six weeks in the job, added that he was looking to focus Crossair’s resources on the Swiss internal market.

Crossair announced in April this year that it was confident about its prospects for 2001, despite making a loss of SFr25 million ($15 million) last year.

Between January and March the airline carried 690,265 passengers – up more than nine per cent on the same period last year.


swissinfo with agencies