Darwin Airline (Lugano) has been given until the end of January 2015 to respond to additional queries raised by the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) concerning Darwin's proposed sale of a 33% stake to Etihad Airways (EY, Abu Dhabi International).

According to Reuters, FOCA still has questions relating to the resources Etihad wants to invest into Darwin. Darwin has until January 31 to respond to the queries though during the period from now until then, will be allowed to maintain normal operations.

In a bid to placate FOCA concerns over the ownership of Darwin, or Etihad Regional as it is also known, the Emirati carrier last month made several amendments to its proposed deal including scrapping a monitoring agreement over the airline’s quality and safety and relinquishing a role in the appointment of Darwin top management.

FOCA has at the same time turned down a complaint by Darwin that foreign carrier Tyrolean Airways (Innsbruck) should not be allowed to operate domestic flights on behalf of Swiss (LX, Zurich) on the routes from Lugano to Geneva and Zurich saying that the flights are under continuous and full commercial control of Swiss and that normal wet-lease agreements would not require traffic rights for foreign carriers (Tyrolean in this case).