Consolidation in the European regional airline sector is expected through a possible merger between CityJet and German carrier InterSky.
German aviation investor Hans Rudolf Wöhrl wants his Intro Aviation company, which owns almost 75% of InterSky, to merge Air France-KLM owned CityJet and its subsidiary VLM.
Air France announced last month that Intro Aviation, of which Wöhrl is a co-founder, made a firm offer to buy CityJet and VLM, without disclosing financial terms.
It said it expected the transaction to close in the first quarter of 2014.
Reuters reported Wöhrl as telling German weekly magazine Wirtschafts Woche: “The aim is to create a new regional airline active across Europe that is big enough not to be pushed out by big carriers like Lufthansa.
“In Europe, there are not just low-cost flights and business for big monopolists like Lufthansa, but there is also a market for regional connections for business travellers who are not in the big economic centres of Europe.
“There will be a revival there, and more and more regions are suffering a lack of flight connections.”
Dublin-based CityJet, the main carrier at London City Airport, has a fleet of 38 aircraft and offers more than 480 weekly flights across Europe.
InterSky runs five aircraft, mainly serving destinations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Wöhrl bought German airline Deutsche BA from British Airways for €1 in 2003, via Intro Aviation.
He renamed the airline DBA and then sold it to Air Berlin in 2006. The same year, he took a majority stake in Germany’s LTU group before selling the rehabilitated carrier to Air Berlin in 2007.