Italian airline ITA Airlines is beating a business plan drawn up last year as the Lufthansa Group prepares to invest in the company.
Last March, ITA's board of directors approved “the business plan that had already been shared with Lufthansa” as the German airline group worked towards finalising a deal to acquire a 41% stake in the Italian carrier.
Speaking at a press conference in Rome on July 3 after the European Commission conditionally backed the deal, Spoer said ITA's performance was exceeding expectations.
“I am very pleased to say that ITA's current performance is outperforming the joint business plan we agreed to over a year ago,” he said, “so we expect to continue to outperform that business plan. We can use the funds to invest in more aircraft and accelerate our growth.”
Spohr had previously said ITA could be profitable by 2025, but that was assuming Lufthansa got approval for the acquisition by the end of last year.
Lufthansa expects to complete the transaction in the fourth quarter of this year, subject to the European Commission's approval of the implementation of the proposed rescue package.
Spohr was also optimistic about ITA's ability to be sustainably profitable, despite the long history of losses at its predecessor, Italy's national airline Alitalia.
“ITA is a very lean and well-run company, so I think costs are less of an issue,” Spohr said, noting that the bigger problem for the airline is revenue. “ITA is too small to compete globally on its own with American airlines in the Americas and Asian airlines in Asia. And even within Italy, ITA is only fourth because the three low-cost carriers are very strong.”
“So, I see our challenge as being to leverage the combined scale of ITA Airlines and the Lufthansa Group to execute commercial partnerships around the world and ensure increased load factors and average yields.”
