Well, according to "Le Matin Dimanche" (a Swiss paper), today, Philippe Brugisser was swept off his feet when the AOM president invited him to dinner with Jacques Chirac two months before the deal was signed. Furthermore, a "portage" system was allegedly used so that Sair Group could control 100% of AOM shares while technically limited to 49% by EU law. Allegedly, the AOM president will have to be paid something like 450 million SFr. to deal with this, if I understood correctly.
The greatest current mystery is: What is the Swissair strategy? This is quite different from the Sair Group strategy, which has clearly failed. I feel that the Swissiar strategy and mission has disappeared while all this has been going on.
What is the mission of Swissair? Is it to become the Europe or the world's largest airline? Hardly. Is it to be Switzerland's largest airline? Been there. So what is it then? I can find no indication on the website, or by talking to Swissair crews. Perhaps it should return to a mission of somehting like "To be the most admired airline in the world." If so, none of the current weird alliances are needed. Only the first class service is up to the industry average today. Business is below par on the MD-11s, and about average on the A330s and within Europe. Economy is well below the average. (Mind you, the latest European downgrading of economy by BA lowers the standard considerably.)
Jeffrey Katz essentially wanted to move Swissair to an American business model, and failed. At the moment, Swissair is a pale shadow of what it was 10 years ago. Read my lips for the following - in all industries, appointment of the CEO from outside the company has always failed, with the possible single exception of IBM, which will fail soon.
Ideas on what the current Swissair mission and strategy are?
Momo