SAA’s Star Alliance partner, Lufthansa, has voiced concerns about SAA’s codeshare relationship with Emirates.
Addressing the Cape Town Press Club recently, Jens Bischof, Lufthansa board member responsible for sales and revenue management, said: “Lufthansa has a solid partnership with SAA but its codeshare with Emirates takes away passengers from SAA and happens outside Star Alliance.” He acknowledged that regional joint-venture agreements between certain airlines inside a global alliance were a general industry development but said it allowed airlines outside an alliance to “crawl” into the system. He believed the future would see more attempts to challenge global alliances and to “destabilise” the global alliance system.
SAA’s head of group corporate affairs, Tlali Tlali, said the airline did not agree with the sentiments expressed by Lufthansa. He pointed out that SAA and Emirates’ long-standing codeshare applied only to the Dubai route, a market not served directly from South Africa by Lufthansa. “We are pleased that our passenger traffic throughout Europe with Lufthansa as our partner in the Frankfurt and Munich hubs has grown by 35% in the last year alone. Our commitment to this mutually beneficial partnership is certainly unquestionable,” he said.
Jens said Lufthansa believed Star Alliance still provided value to SAA because it allowed it to expand its network offering, while the minimum joining requirements and service standards required were of value to SAA customers.
SAA previously blamed the axing of its Cape Town-London services on its having lost its Star Alliance UK connecting partner when Lufthansa sold bmi to International Airlines Group, the parent company of oneworld member British Airways. However, Carsten Schaeffer, Lufthansa vp for sales and service in Southeast Europe, Africa & the Middle East, said Star Alliance had a 30% market share out of London.
Jens declined to comment on a recent suggestion by Business Day editor, Peter Bruce, that Public Enterprises Minister, Malusi Gigaba, was “chasing a link-up (of SAA) with Lufthansa”.
For more details on this story refer to TNW April 24.
