Yesterday I shared the news breaking from the Italian media regarding a potential blockbuster deal that would join Lufthansa and Etihad.
Fortunately, it appears that the sides were not in any serious conversation regarding combining themselves into some strange Eur-Abic airline.
Unsubstantiated rumors from the Italian yellow press (specifically Il Messaggero) suggested that Etihad was prepared to take as much as a 40% stake in LH. Maybe ‘Il Messaggero’ just needed the page hits for their website revenue so they threw something out there to gain some attention.
This time, sources I deem reliable quashed such a notion as unrealistic due to the obstacles involved in such a combination.
At least I was on the record from yesterday’s post casting my own doubts and not running any ridiculous ‘What If’ scenarios that were running rampant on the Interweb.
