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| Montenegro Airlines to forge closer ties with Etihad |
Montenegro Airlines, which has been shortlisted for privatisation this year, is eyeing closer ties with Etihad Airways and has recently launched fresh talks with the Emirati carrier. The news comes almost a year after Montenegro’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Igor Lukšić, said Etihad was considering acquiring a stake in the country’s national airline. According to the state-owned “Pobjeda” newspaper, the two carriers are now looking to conclude a codeshare partnership agreement and boost cooperation, with talks recently held in Abu Dhabi. The involvement of Serbia’s Deputy President for Cooperation with the UAE, Mladjan Dinkić, who is heading the talks between the two parties has generated significant attention. Mr. Dinkić, who is also Serbia’s former Finance Minister, played an important role in Etihad’s takeover of Jat Airways, which was subsequently relaunched as Air Serbia.
Last year, Mr. Lukšić and Etihad Airways’ CEO, James Hogan, met in Abu Dhabi after which the minister said the Emirati carrier would complete a screening process of the Montenegrin airline. “We have made a definite agreement for a team from Etihad Airways to visit Montenegro in order to define models of cooperation and partnership between Etihad Airways and Montenegro Airlines”, Mr. Lukšić said at the time. Montenegro Airlines has been hit by strong competition over the past year on its two main markets – Serbia and Russia - which accounted for 62.8% of all passengers it carried last year. The airline handled some 557.000 travellers in 2014, down 5.3% on the year before and decreased its flight operations by 20%. However, Montenegro Airlines says it is holding up against its competitors, “Strong competition over the past two years hasn’t managed to jeopardize Montenegro Airlines’ position as one of the most punctual airlines in the region”, the carrier said in a statement on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, the Montenegrin Privatisation and Capital Investment Council announced plans to privatise Montenegro Airlines this year. The Ministry for Transport and Maritime Affairs has offered to sell a minority stake in the airline, which is to be offered to potential investors through an international tender. Both attempts to privatise the carrier in the past have failed, though Etihad has previously expressed interest to invest in Montenegro Airlines. During the 2011 privatisation attempt, in which the government was looking to sell a 30% stake, Etihad purchased tender documentation. However, it failed to place a bid later on. Etihad Airways currently counts eight equity alliance partners in which it holds ownership stakes, with its takeover of Darwin Airline, rebranded as Etihad Regional, still to be approved by Swiss authorities.
Comments
After all, there is nothing to gain, the market is tiny and can be easily taken care of from BEG.
Better buy it and merge it with Air Serbia, operate as a single company and have some planes based in Montenegro with traffic rights and mixed/local crew, others move to BEG.
And stay away from Dinkic, seriously. Dude has damaged reputation when it comes to economy. He has complete opposite of the Midas touch!
- sell F100 fleet and stay on Embraer fleet
- put Montenegro to fly on Podgorica-Belgrade route 4 times per day in summer, 3 times in winter, and Tivat-Belgrade 5 times per day in summer, 3 times in winter (no Air Serbia on that route or with maximum of one symbolic rotation to TGD and to TIV)
- Montenegro to open every day route to Dusseldorf, Berlin and Frankfurt (Air Berlin code-share)
- Montenegro and Alitalia to open every day route to Rome and 3-4 times per week to Milan (Alitalia code-share)
- open route to Geneva and stay on Zurich route (Darwin code-share)
- stay on several routes that are profitable to Montenegro like Paris, Moscow, Vienna and some regular summer charter routes
- Etihad to open 4 times per week route to Abu Dhabi
- cut working force and close all planning, operation, administration, marketing, selling and other similar departments and transfer all of those to unify department in Air Serbia to work for both companies
And for sure they will have enough jobs for those 4 planes and even 2 more.
YM is as good as dead. Air Serbia doesn't need them especially since it can take care of the market with its own aircraft. In winter time the Atr outperforms the E-jet and it is the more suitable aircraft.
They wanted to run away from Serbia, they didn't want to cooperate? They wanted to be independent? They wanted to establish an airline in BEG and harm JU?
Well, you know what, there is no reason to cooperate now when the situation is totally different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTs8hdQVMmU
These flights would take away passengers from JU so basically ASL would be shooting itself in the foot here.
Since JU is determined to have its own US flights then feeding their transatlantic network makes little sense.
Also, how can you compete on route to Germany when you could offer maximum 3 weekly flights. They could not compete with 5 daily to BEG.
I can agree with you that one could find lots of synergies between these two companies which would result in overall cost savings for both. However, your assumption is that Montenegro business decisions are driven solely by their profit. This would be the case in the rest of the world, not in Montenegro. If it was they would probably be bankrupt by now. Lots of sons and daughters of important people would have to be fired and I’m sure Milo and comp. is not ready for that.
But by my opinion that is not so bad for Air Serbia at all. OK, part of passengers will go to Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Roma, Milan, Abu Dhabi, Zurich, but in same time there will be cost cutting in synergy of those two companies, in route BEG-TGD they will have more frequencies and monopoly, BEG hub will be even more feed from Montenegro especially to other routes exempt Dusseldorf, Roma, Milano, Abu Dhabi and Zurich.
Good job, you have just discredited yourself.
On the other hand (and what many don't realize), Milo is much better friend with sheikhs than Vucic ever was. Even he admitted that Milo introduced him to El Nahyan family. So, considering that in both Balkans and UAE politics and business seem to mix a lot I wouldn't discount anything here.
Don't discount Dinkic. As shady as he is (and trust me I don't like the guy or any of them for that matter), Vucic appointed him to this committee for cooperation with UAE. If you remember this happened right after elections where URS did badly and practically disintegrated. Now why would Vucic do this to his arch enemy after he just won the majority? This tells me that he has does have some influence in the area.
Of course they can put Montenegro under Air Serbia management, that will even make lot of sense. I would do it. But on same pattern they can decide to put Air Serbia under Alitalia management. That will make even more sense.
Feeding Alitalia and AirBerlin requires either domestic market or transfer passengers from the region. So we are talking about 0.5 million domestic market and... what transfer passengers? Who would transit to FCO/TXL via TGD? Why would Etihad need two feeder points (Belgrade and Podgorica) 400km apart, feeding the same hubs in Europe?
You tend to forget that... or more likely you didn't know it. Good thing you know now.
Ali i dobro je za ASL imala bi vise regionalnih Aviona.
INN-NS
But even if not I don't understand what is your point?
Ix:
Why on earth you need transfer passengers to feed one of your hubs? Totally wrong. Everybody wants to feed hub with nonstop flights, not with extra connection. That is trend in World. That is why big players do open regional routes which are no profitable, why they buy companies. Look just what Lufthansa did with Dolomiti. Totally destroy hub in Verona (and Dolomiti had impressive number of destinations from other airports in Italy to Verona and from Verona to London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Vienna, Moscow…), based those Dolomiti planes in MUC and open routes from every village in Italy to MUC 3-5 times per day, bypassing Verona. So, yes it makes all the sense in the world that Etihad, Lufthansa or others buy small companies with tiny traffic to support their hubs.
INN-NS
Nadam se dolasku nekog Cargo Aviona u flotu ASL ili makar jedan let nedeljno EY Carga.
INN-NS
If no transfer pax, then the entire market XM can feed to FCO/TXL is 0.5M people. There would be no passengers outside of Montenegro because TGD is barely reachable by land. Maybe a handful of pax from western Albania and that's it. So does Etihad really need to invest into feed from such a small market? Unless you mean they slash all routes except BEG, FCO and DUS/TXL, leave 3 aircraft in their fleet and switch to serving only these destinations?
Dinkic organized plan for WIZZ to take over Jat.
Ja mislim da postoji velik potencijal za Cargo u ASL .
INN-NS
INN-NS
"...- cut working force and close all planning, operation, administration, marketing, selling and other similar departments and transfer all of those to unify department in Air Serbia to work for both companies."
LOL... Well, that's not gonna happen in Montenegro, believe me.
As of the rest, it's nice to discuss all the different theories, but nothing's gonna come out of this, let's wait and see...
But this could bring one very important benefit for Montenegro. Aviolet could be very active in Montenegro, perhaps even adding some more planes because 737 classics are getting parked in the desert right now.
I wonder what type of effect this would have on other carriers in the region.
* Ancona (2 x week BV)
* Bari (3 x week AZ)
* Bergamo (4 x week BV)
* Bologna (4 x week BV, 3 x week AZ)
* Genoa (2 x week AZ, 2 x week BV)
* Milan (daily AZ, 4 x week BV)
* Pisa (daily AZ, 3 x week BV)
* Rome (20 x weekly AZ, 4 x week BV)
* Turin (3 x week BV)
* Venice (3 x week AZ, 3 x week BV)
* Verona (3 x week BV)
The presence of Italian carriers dramatically increased after the Belle Air bankruptcy, who had at that time operated the majority of the flights between TIA and Italy.
As for driving, most use the ferries from Durres to travel by ship to Italian ports, mainly Bari.
radiotivat.com/index.php/sport/14523-dlaibork-nove-lini.html