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Delivering the keynote speech at the 19th Annual Global Airfinance Conference in Dublin, Hogan said that the strategy that resulted in 5.5 million guests connecting onto the Etihad Airways network from codeshares and partners in 2016, had delivered revenue and synergy benefits.
“Our investments had an immediate impact on the revenue side, delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenues and allowing us to fill our onward connecting flights. Those benefits have been replicated in all our minority investments – in airberlin, Alitalia, Jet Airways, Virgin Australia, Air Serbia, Air Seychelles and Etihad Regional,” he said.
“We also believed our minority investments would unlock an additional advantage that the global alliances were simply unable to use. Because we had ’skin in the game,’ we could work on joint procurement and other business synergies which would save us – and our partners – hundreds of millions of dollars. Again, we have seen similar benefits from each of our investments, with those synergies being shared by all the partners,” Hogan said.
The CEO also said the third goal of the equity investments is to allow the management of these airlines to reshape their businesses into sustainable profitable operations, required a longer term view.
He stated that,“We are committed to our equity partner strategy – it delivers a huge amount to our business. Some of those airlines need to react to the market pressures they face, and we are supportive of that process.”
“That approach has helped Etihad grow from a $300 million a year airline, to a diversified aviation group which delivers revenues of more than $26 billion. Etihad Airways sits at the heart of that business, of course, but is now only one element of a model which includes significant other businesses and investments,” Hogan added.
Source: travelnewsdigest.in