In this morning's Wall Street Journal is an interesting report that Delta is currently in talks with Singapore Airlines to buy their 49 percent stake in Virgin Atlantic. Singapore first purchased their stake in Virgin Atlantic in 1999 and the investment has failed to pan out for their bottom line, so it's not really a surprise that they are trying to get rid of it.
What is surprising is that Delta is the other airline that is interested in purchasing the stake. Analysts believe that the reason Delta is angling to invest in Virgin Atlantic is to increase their gate options at London Heathrow so they can offer more flights to LHR and use Virgin Atlantic gates as a parking spot.
UPDATE: A more in-depth article is over at Marketplace that explains why Delta can only buy 49 percent, but European based Air France-KLM could take a controlling stake.
UPDATE 2 Tuesday Dec. 4: In this mornings WSJ was a great article on how more slots for Delta at Heathrow would fill a hole for the airline.
No comments:
Post a Comment