Originally Posted by
safelife
Correct, EASA calls it Ownership and Control.
Word here is Lufthansa hired a bunch of high profile lawyers to study the case of critical airlines in terms of non-EU Ownership or Control, mostly IAG airlines, Ryanair, easyJet; and the day after Brexit (but only then) call for for rules to be strictly enforced, to gain an advantage of the situation.
They have experience with that, they tried that on Air Berlin earlier as well, arguing that Etihad was controlling them although they only owned slightly below 30%. In that case it worked in the first instance, and got revoked in a higher court.
Doesn't that then cause problems for airlines such as KLM, Brussels, Swiss, Austrian etc?
I believe, as all those airlines are within European Common Aviation Area based on EU single market regulations which switzerland and norway joined, it doesn't. Although in the case of Swiss and Lufthansa i believe they do not own Swiss outright, but rather via a quite complicated construct that ensures majority swiss ownership, and Lufty assured that both the switzerland and austrian government assured in their bilateral traffic right agreements that the ownership structure of Swiss and Austrian was recognised or rather waived by their counterparts. However, to negotiate something like that requires time and quite a big political intervention, i can see that happen in the case of IAG, not so much with easyJet, Norwegian or Ryanair.