Originally Posted by
Leeds Spotter
Its not the U.K., they issued in December what regulations would be in the event of the different options, but its deciding the position of airlines which have large U.K. resident shareholders, counted as E.U. residents today, who become non E.U. on the 29th March and folk such as me, who have both European and U.K. residency rights, who have not elected on the share register, our post 29th March position
The E.U. who have always insisted that to be a e.u. airline 50% + one share must be owned by e.u. residents, this is not how we establish ownership in the u.k. Four times last month the E.U. reminded airlines of this rule, stating that IAG was european, Easyjet unknown and Ryanair likely european. and that creative offices set up in Austria etc would not be an acceptable way to claim to be european..
Ryanair this Monday decided to amalgamate the present Irish, U.k. Polish etc companies in to one entity, as a start to resolving the matter.
BA is a spanish company (IAG) its shares issued in London and Madrid and having a world wide resident shareholder base. The e.u. on latest shareholder information ruled IAG a european company and therefore could not fly direct from the u.k. to the States after the transition period. The group could easily become either American owned or U.K. owned with a small shareholders movement.
Flybe routes from the u.k. to europe can continue after the 29th March as long as E.U. residents dont make up over 50% of the shareholding, in the U.K. we dont mind who own's the shares, this makes us so different from both the E.U. and the States where again a company for airline status must be majority American residents owned.
You are right in that whoever owns FlyBe has no real effect on their ability to fly routes within the UK. However, it can be extremely important for operations to other countries as those are governed by the specific bi/multi-lateral agreement. A future EU-UK agreement could easily stipulate airlines with UK AOCs flying to Europe be majority UK or EU owned. In fact the current draft UK-US agreement that is meant to supplant the EU-US agreement that the UK has elected to leave not only stipulates a majority UK ownership but also UK control. For this to be met the airline has to demonstrate that it's shareholders, and the shareholders of any legal but non-natural person that holds shares in the airline are UK persons. This means that if a UK registered company owned 75% of Flybe but 100% of it's shareholders were American then Flybe would not qualify as UK owned. The control is even trickier as you have to demonstrate that the single largest shareholder, if they are not UK, cannot own 25% or more of the shares, plus a lot of other stipulations. Had this been forced into the agreement it would have banned BA, TOM, and even VS from flying to the US. The UK has negotiated a clause for EU owned or controlled airlines can continue flying existing routes but need to asks for permission to open new ones.