Fly Fly Away????

Ryanair’s O’Leary backs Lufthansa’s Italian deal as long as he gets concessions

Ryanair rivals Lufthansa as Europe’s biggest airline but its CEO says he can back its Italian deal to avoid ITA going bankrupt.

BY GIOVANNA FAGGIONATO AND AOIFE WHITE

Lufthansa's bid for Italian airline ITA has one surprising fan: the foul-mouthed chief executive of archrival carrier Ryanair.

"It should be approved," Ryanair's Michael O'Leary told reporters Tuesday at a Zaventem press conference. "We think the only way future for ITA is as a subsidiary of Lufthansa because otherwise ITA will disappear, will go bankrupt."

EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager told POLITICO on Monday that a deal veto remained possible for companies that don't tackle antitrust concerns: “If serious competition issues cannot be solved, we cannot approve the transaction." 

Lufthansa and ITA's owner, the Italian finance ministry, have been scrambling to make an offer that Lufthansa's spokesperson Boris Ogursky described as "significantly improved," beyond two earlier attempts dismissed by EU regulators that addressed problems with short- and long-haul flights and the airline's powerful position at Milan's Linate airport.

O'Leary told reporters that "meaningful slot handovers in the two congested airports" in Milan and Rome's Fiumicino were crucial.

"The challenge for the Commission is they believe that ITA and Lufthansa would have dominant control of the Rome and Milan markets into Munich and Frankfurt," he said.

He called for the Linate slots to be handed to easyJet and the Rome ones to Ryanair. "And then you really will have genuine competition to Lufthansa-ITA."

He also said a parallel merger review of IAG's takeover of smaller Spanish rival AirEuropa should "give up 30 percent of Air Europa slots in Madrid and Barcelona" and hand them to "Ryanair because we're the number two carrier in Spain."