Darwin Airline (Lugano) says the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) has approved Etihad Airways' plans to acquire a 33% stake in the Lugano-based carrier. The move follows a lengthy investigation into the deal, announced during the first quarter of last year, which involved close scrutinization of the Emiratis overall say in the running of Darwin, also known as Etihad Regional.
"Since announcing our partnership with Etihad Airways, we focused all our efforts on cost reduction and on a new business strategy," Darwin CEO Maurizio Merlo said. "We worked very closely with both Etihad Airways and FOCA to address the authority’s concerns about the viability of our company and to reassure the authorities that European regulations are respected in all our transaction with Etihad Airways."
Reports state Etihad amended several aspects of its agreement with the Swiss carrier including scrapping a monitoring agreement over the airline’s quality and safety, while relinquishing a role in the appointment of Darwin top management.
The European Commission is also due to publish its own findings.
Though the partnership will provide Darwin with the financial stability required to sustain its long-term growth, it has also resulted in the carrier losing contracts with Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International) subsidiary, Swiss (LX, Zurich), for which it used to wet-lease out its Saab 2000 for Lugano-Zurich return flights. As such, Darwin has scaled back its scheduled operations in favour of more lucrative ACMI charter contracts with fellow Etihad portfolio carriers, Alitalia (AZA, Rome Fiumicino) and Air Berlin (1991) (Berlin Tegel).
