Word: baing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...after 18 months of circling, it finally landed: British Airways announced its highly anticipated merger with Iberia late Thursday, coupling BA's access to the U.S. with the Spanish carrier's routes to Latin America in one of the biggest deals in aviation history...
...merger, slated for completion late next year, is simple. BA and Iberia - combined annual revenues: $22 billion - are chasing their rivals' tails. Germany's Lufthansa, Europe's second-largest airline, has picked up smaller carriers from Austria to Switzerland in recent months. Thanks to the 2004 merger of the French and Dutch airlines, Air France-KLM is even further out in front. Troubled Iberia and BA, which both announced ugly losses over the past week, reckon eliminating duplicate services from fleet maintenance to business class lounges will save the airlines $600 million a year. That'll mean "a strong European...
With runaway costs and labor disputes scuttling plenty of these deals in the past, BA and Iberia - set to keep their separate brands and operating divisions under a new Spain-based holding company - will need to proceed with caution. Sure, rough economic head winds and the business of turning two firms into one can give cost cutting real momentum. The tough trading conditions following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were, after all, a "catalyst for the success of [the Air France-KLM merger] at the time," says Howard Wheeldon, an aviation expert at brokers BGC Partners in London. (Read "British...
...imposing those cuts, including slashing jobs, could be tricky. The staff at both airlines are heavily unionized. Hundreds of Iberia flights have been grounded in recent days due to a cabin crew strike over pay; a separate dispute among flight attendants at BA could see more planes parked in the run-up to Christmas...
History offers a warning to the unwieldy, too. Even if they trim their operating budgets, BA/Iberia will still be carrying serious weight - the combined firm should fly some 60 million passengers each year. But that calls for slick organization, something BA hasn't always enjoyed. (Remember the opening of Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5?) "When United [Airlines] went into Chapter 11, they were the largest airline in the world," says Pilarski. "Airlines that went under didn't go under because they were so puny they just needed to be bigger. If BA at their size is not efficient, something...