Swiss airline Crossair in talks with American
Dallas Business Journal
Swiss airline Crossair has been in talks with AMR Corp.'s (NYSE: AMR) American Airlines to revive a partnership American had with Swissair, according to news agency reports Friday.
Crossair CEO Andre Dose told a news conference in Switzerland he negotiated with Fort Worth-based American Thursday night and said the talks had been constructive, Reuters said.
Crossair plans to assume two-thirds of the operations of Swissair, which collapsed last month after the drop in air travel since Sept. 11 caused a fatal credit crunch at the already heavily indebted group.
Dose said Crossair and American aim to accept each other's tickets and could resume a North Atlantic code-sharing pact, but the deal hinged on Crossair's overall strategic partnership.
"If we selected another alliance partner, we would also have another Transatlantic partner,'' he said, according to Reuters.
Dose is conducting a series of discussions with airline alliances and individual airlines with the aim of preparing a board decision on the partner choice before the end of the year.
Crossair has said it has four options in choosing a partner -- joining one of the three main existing international groupings or doing a deal with unpartnered Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL) of Houston.
The existing alliances are: the Oneworld alliance led by American and British Airways; the Star Alliance with UAL Corp.'s (NYSE: UAL) United Airlines, Germany's Lufthansa, SAS and Singapore Airlines; and the SkyTeam alliance between Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL) and Air France.
Swissair and Crossair already have a commercial alliance with American, so Oneworld is an obvious candidate, say industry observers.
As reported, Swissair plans to sell its Atraxis information technology unit to Plano-based Electronic Data Systems Corp. (NYSE: EDS) for about $50 million.
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