With mounting losses and increasingly anxious investors, Air Berlin (1991) (Berlin Tegel) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Thomas Winkelmann has confirmed the ailing German carrier must find a strategic partner this year.
"We have to find a partner in 2017, and Lufthansa is one of a few possible," he told the weekly newspaper Die Zeit. "I examine everything that makes sense for Air Berlin and secures jobs in the long term."
Winkelmann's comments come after Bloomberg, last month, reported that Air Berlin's largest shareholder Etihad Airways (EY, Abu Dhabi International) was looking to bring in financial advisers to help it to decide the fate of its 29.2% stake. The Abu Dhabi-based carrier has been looking to extricate itself from its loss-making European equity investments, the most financially damaging of which are Air Berlin and Alitalia (AZA, Rome Fiumicino).
During the last quarter, Air Berlin recorded widening 1Q losses of EUR293.3 million (USD328 million) up 60% from the EUR182.3 million loss recorded for the same period in 2016. For its part, Alitalia has filed for bankruptcy amid current liabilities of around EUR2.3 billion (USD2.6 billion) and assets worth EUR921 million (USD1.04 billion).
Lufthansa Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Carsten Spohr, has confirmed his carrier's interest in Air Berlin albeit only once its rival's EUR1 billion+ debt overhang has been resolved. Lufthansa Group has already entered into a commercial partnership with Air Berlin with the latter wet-leasing thirty-three A319-100s and A320-200 aircraft to Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) and five A320-200s to Austrian Airlines (OS, Vienna).
German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche last month reported that Delta Air Lines (DL, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson) and Chinese conglomerate HNA Group have also shown an interest in Air Berlin.
