Airline leaders highlighted the unique strategic importance of national carriers at the IATA Congress 2026 in Rio de Janeiro and outlined their approaches to growth through selective consolidation and market reinvention. Luis Rodrigues of TAP Air Portugal shared that absolutely that is part of the explanation why we get so much attention and that if you ask any country in the world where they have a national airline it is the case all over it is the case everywhere and there is this magic about seeing the colours of your country in the air and people complaining which they do not complain from with foreign airlines but they complain with yours because somehow they believe and they are right that the tax dollars that they pay it is part of investment theirs.
Con Korfiatis of Oman Air shared that maybe because they are and noted that we have had our own consolidation in Oman there were two airlines we are now owned by the same shareholder that has happened in the last couple of months it is entirely appropriate for Oman because we are a smaller nation in the GCC and we do not have the fleet size of our near neighbours. He shared that to grow Oman Air well we had to reinvent our USP so Oman has been an airline under rehabilitation for the last two and a half two years that I have been there we have made tremendous progress in the past we tried a bit of a copycat strategy was not working for us and we have moved to say well we need to create our own USP and our own USP is the country itself Oman is unique it has unique tourism assets and that is what we want to exploit and we have moved very heavily into exploiting the point to point market and we moved it from being fifteen per cent to nearly sixty per cent in the space of eighteen months and that is our focus and that is our growth opportunity.
On further consolidation in Europe and beyond Güliz Öztürk of Pegasus Airlines shared that Smart Wings Czech Airlines we signed an agreement a purchase agreement now the approval process is going on so it will take another three to four months probably for the takeover and that it was a diversification issue and it was a strategical move for the future of Pegasus and she believes it is the right one as we are growing we have different bases in Turkiye but we are based in Turkiye so this is a kind of a network diversification and a kind of a door opening to Europe. Adrian Neuhauser of Abra Group shared that we are in the process of acquiring Sky which ultimately closes out the initial footprint that we were looking to achieve waiting for one last regulatory approval there from Peru hoping to close it in July or August and that it really for us a little differently right is about integration about flows inside Latin America about giving connectivity to international airlines connecting to Latin America so it is a great step we are closing that and we are happy with the footprint that way.
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