May 17, 2010
Turkish Airlines has expressed interest in buying Polish LOT and Serbian Jat Airways.
Company Director Temel Kotil told Polish daily Rzeczpospolita that his company does not want to miss out on the opportunity to offer consolidation to the air traffic in Europe hit by the economic crisis.
Temel Kotil said “Our further expansion is unavoidable. We don’t have to buy majority packages right away. But we have to start somewhere.”
He added “We have partner relations with Lufthansa and we have a portion of BH Airlines and in Austrian DO & CO Restaurants, an everything is developing according to our plans.”
Kotil added that his company, in which the state has a 49 percent stake, is not interested in other companies in Eastern Europe other than LOT and Jat, adding that Turkish Airlines is negotiating with both.
Kotil said that he currently has no interest in the Czech, Hungarian and Ukrainian companies that are also on sale.
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“We are only interested in LOT in Central Europe because it fits into our business model of creating the first European five-star air travel company,” he said.
He said that Turkish Airlines will be getting new aircrafts and that it plans on employing about 1,500 people this year, while most other companies are saving money and cutting flights and workers because of the crisis.
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