Volotea and Abra Group have formed a partnership to act as a ‘remedy taker’ in the IAG purchase of Air Europa deal by Volotea establishing a base in Madrid with an aircraft to service short-haul routes.
IAG has offered up about 52pc of Air Europa’s network made up of around 10 long-haul routes and 25-30 short-haul routes including some domestic.
Volotea and Abra Group are ready to begin operations from the IATA winter season but the EU has not indicated when a decision will be made.
The proposed joint venture is an efficient and flexible plan that will allow Volotea’s passengers access to intercontinental flights marketed by Abra’s airlines, consolidating Madrid Airport’s position as a connecting hub.
Volotea CEO Carlos Munoz said “this alliance will optimize connectivity options to benefit millions of passengers by integrating Volotea’s European routes with Abra’s destinations in Latin America, North America, and the Caribbean. We’ve come at this from a connectivity standpoint. We’ve concluded that we’re actually in agreement with the European Union that a point-to-point short-haul with a point-to-point long-haul alone are not up to the task in competing. You need to have a fully integrated network. We are going to develop it, and optimize it from a joint viewpoint, and see what creates the biggest value to the whole connecting market. We have had many meetings with the European Union, and they asked us whether we were ready—the answer is definitely yes. We told them we were ready from winter 2024.”
An EU spokesperson said “we can confirm that on June 10, 2024, the parties submitted commitments aimed at addressing the preliminary competition concerns arising from the proposed transaction. We are now carefully assessing them. We have no further comment to make at this stage.”
