A yellow paper in Zurich, the "Blick", said this morning (Monday) that a Memorundum of Understanding has been signed by all Oneworld member airlines. But it doesn't say what's written there.
Swiss COO William Meaney talked on several occasions with BA in the last months and Swiss CEO André Dosé met Eddington last Thursday. It doesn't mean that they agreed on anything. The MOM might be only saying they simply agreed on meeting again for another cup of tea.
Bill Meaney has a personal interest in Swiss joining Oneworld instead of being picked up by Lufthansa, since he had a row with former LH-CEO Juergen Weber and had to leave after three months only at Star Alliance.
According to press reports, AA is also pushing for Swiss joining Oneworld, because they do not want to see the Swiss Airline slip into the hands of Lufthansa. On its side, BA would reportedly be happy to have a hub in Switzerland. BA can forget Amsterdam, since Northwest told KLM loud and clear to join SkyTeam (Northwest became recently a partner of Delta, the SkyTeam leader in the US).
A Swiss Board member and former chief editor of the Blick, Walter Bosch, talked under cover of anonimity to all four Sunday Newspapers in Switzerland to publize the BA "solution". He could not provide thoses papers with any evidence of what is was saying. But being a member of the board, the press could not ignore what he was saying.
Bosch's main aim was to avoid the Sunday Press reporting on another more likely scenario, i.e. the insolvency of Swiss and the airline going under administration (Chapter 11). The Financial Times Deutschland had reported on the previous day of the likelyhood of Swiss going under administration.
Swiss is running out of cash, 3'500 people are being fired, motivation felt to its worst deepth, security problems are now araising due to stress and organizational problems and banks are very reluctant to provide the dearly needed line of credit the airline needs. An anonyme source at the financial division of Swiss reportedly said that Swiss will run out of cash in November if it doesn't manage to sell more A/C in the meantime.
I doubt Oneworld might really be interested in a Swiss membership if it goes into bankruptcy in the next few months. On another hand, joining the alliance might help Swiss in finding a credit facility. But the alliance membership would not help much to solve the basics problems: even after its downsizing, the fleet remains too big, the structure too costly, the market too small.
A takeover by Lufthansa would dramatically boost the network and help to cut the overhead costs, but the more than 300 Swiss managers sitting in Basel and Zurich do not want to hear of overhead cuts... They'd rather dye together with the airline instead of being fired by the Germans.
Last edited by ettore; 12th Aug 2003 at 01:51.