Skyteam towards a dark year in Europe?

Skyteam’s footprint in Europe risks being drastically reduced in Europe, potentially affecting the alliance’s attractiveness to customers and partners from other continents.

The footprint of an alliance in a given territory is indeed a major element of its attractiveness. An airline will be more likely to join an alliance whose members will offer it a good geographical coverage that it will promote commercially to its customers than an alliance that has gaps in its network. The same is true, but perhaps to a lesser extent, for the passenger who will have little interest in choosing an airline whose partners do not provide easy access to his favorite destinations. But the passenger is most of the time also constrained by the service of his departure airport, which sometimes leaves him with no choice.

Skyteam in Europe today

Skyteam in Europe today is :

Air France
KLM
Alitalia
Air Europa
Tarom
Czech Airlines

It is correct but not more. Far from the Star Alliance coverage mainly due to the Lufthansa Group but still better than OneWorld.

But let’s face it, the bulk of the offer is carried by Air France and KLM and to a lesser extent Alitalia.

Bad outlook for Skyteam in 2020

But one thing is already certain: Air Europa, which is being taken over by IAG, will leave the alliance in the coming months. And although it is only a secondary airline, for the alliance it was serving a major tourist destination in Europe: Spain.

Another threat is the possible departure of Alitalia for Star Alliance if Lufthansa ends up acquiring the bloodless Italian airline. But even without a takeover, Lufthansa is pushing for this option as part of a simple preliminary commercial partnership, with a big check for the Italians.

Here again, Alitalia is neither Air France nor KLM, but it is the key to serving Italy, which is also an eminently tourist destination.

And it is not an insult to Tarom and Czech Airlines to say that without these two airlines the alliance would lose two key assets in key countries from a tourism point of viewe and that Air France and KLM alone cannot fill the gap in terms of services that will result from the abolition of partnerships and code-shares.

Which solutions for Skyteam

In either case (the departure of Alitalia being only a hypothesis even if it is very credible) the simplest solution would be to maintain the codeshares. This is exactly what happened with China Southern, which left the alliance on December 31 but maintained its agreements with its former partners (except China Eastern).

But there is little chance that this will happen. China Southern est sortie de Skyteam mais pas pour intégrer une autre alliance et on ne voit ni IAG (British Airways et Iberia) ni Lufthansa fire un tel cadeau à leurs concurrents.

Expanding the alliance? On these destinations there are no more airlines to “marry” in Spain and Italy, we can think that Qatar Airways will not bring Air Italy into an alliance competing with OneWorld…even if the relations between the Qatari airline and its alliance are rather turbulent.

Develop services to these countries? This is the last and only solution, and Air France has started to work on it for Spain. But it is illusory to hope to recreate the same richness of destinations as by relying on a local partner.

By losing Air Europa and possibly Alitalia, Skyteam is losing more than two airlines: it is losing the ability to effectively serve two major countries in terms of tourism in Europe. From there to the fact that its members from other continents suddenly find it much less attractive than before is only a step that we will not take…for the moment.

Photo : Skyteam logo by TK Kurikawa via Shutterstock