JAT Airways used for aircargo again after 21 years !

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
1
A memorable day to me as I right today, after a break of 21 years, used JAT Airways for a consignment again. In the 80ies, where I worked we had weekly consolidation-shipments on JAT to both Melbourne and Sydney with usually between 200kgs and 600kgs. As JAT Belgrade at times mishandled/offloaded some of our cargo, I was practically weekly on the phone with some ladies of JAT-Cargo Belgrade. Whenever not always easy, things in the end generally worked well, not least thanks to those nice ladies. Then I in 1990 left that company here and Yugoslavia shortly after collapsed and JAT practically got out of the market. Now, a few months ago, a cargo-broker launched JAT as an option again, with very interesting tariffs, and last Friday I decided to give them a try again. All alright so far, as the consignment (final destination Larnaca) this evening left ZRH as booked. If things work well, I might use their service far often.

2
Congratulations!

Celebrated with a bottle or two of Slivovica, did you?

3
Have some Tunisian Royal Kadir wine for the moment but may move to spirits later on

4
Aaaa, the good old days. I once flew on the legendary "City of Belgrade" DC-10-30.

Not to say anything bad about the national airline of my favorite people in the Balkans, but todays standards and practices that are implemented in what was left of JAT are far far below from the standards 20 years ago. That said, similar issues are experienced among all other airlines among the Balkans, the market is way to small for each country to have it's own flag carrier.

Such great examples of how small market countries do great jobs when integrated like SAS, LAN...

Anyone up for a home made peach rakija to cheer this memorable day for Wollishofener?

5
*raises a glass of Rimuss in the general direction of Glattbrugg*

Cheers Wolli!

6
The problems for airlines like Adria Airways, Croatia Airways, and JAT are obvious. But they all three generally fulfil relatively strict EU rules and regulations (supervised by EU chaps who would love to pull them a leg) and so for sure are NOT that baaad ! You mention SAS (subs of LH) and so I can tell you that B+H Airlines, the airline of Bosnia-Herzegovina is now controlled by Turkish Airlines which right now is trying also to take over 51% of JAT.

And yes, JAT Yugoslav Airlines in the old days used its fleet of some three DC-10-30 to serve Sydney, Melbourne and New York.

And, well, you might bring a bottle of your home-made peach rakija to the Viadukt on Thursday evening

7
Just in short, TK doesn't want any near JAT's shares because the debt is..well unthinkable. The government wants to keep JAT but loose the debts...It's tricky.

Adria and Croazia are operating with huge loses and BH is doing good due to newer planes from TK and good routes for the big diaspora people in Western Europe and England.

After the demise of Macedonian Airline due to huge debts and Montenegro Airline not able to sell shares to El Al...You have what you have in the Balkans.

By the way, JAT had 4 DC-10. YU-AMA, AMB, AMC and AMD. They served on direct flights from Belgrade to New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Beijing.

Interesting to mention, in 1985 JAT became the first European company to introduce the new generation medium-haul aircraft, the Boeing 737-300, which is today still the basic aircraft on many carriers.

8
Miss their DC-10s. Official Olympic carrier and all that. Now they fly white, no scheme B.737s. Wouldn't do any harm to get poignant for Aviogenex with their mixed fleet Tu-134s and B.727s, always late, but a pretty well based company with their own tower in downtown Beograd.

http://www.planepictures.net/netshow.php?id=910810

9
SAS is now a subsidiary of LH? They kept that quiet!

When did it happen, and did anyone tell the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish goverments (50% shareholders in total) about it?

Sure you're not confusing a takeover/merger with their Star Alliance/codeshare agreements?

10
Not a subsidiary, a strategic partner and codeshare pal in the STAR alliance. Rumors were that LH would purchase SK a few years ago as the pair held a sizable chunk of British Midland, but then LH took over Bishop's mob with an 80% buy out. The LH/SK buyout has been on the German's shopping list for ages and rumors peaked last October, but nothing happened. After Swiss and AUA, the Scandi option is a good fit and would make them larger than the AF/KL alliance.

11
- Sorry to have forgotten LA and Beijing ! and, ehmm, yes of course 4

- what you have in the Balkans ? you mean "la Macedoine"

- Adria and Croatia got relatively fuel-efficient airplanes in the meantime

- the Serbian government can keep the debts but sell JAT !

- Croatia and Adria will continue to produce losses as not profitable

between November and March

12
No, I did not confuse the takeover with those agreements, but somehow simply took LH moves to takeover a majority of sorts (50% of the state-owned shares of the 3 companies and 50% of the private shares of the 3 companies) as already done. I have checked it up now and it is not yet done but I am sure that it is in the pipeline. LH now is in control of Swiss and AUA and so is favouring Zürich and Vienna over Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo, which is bad for SAS. And here come your "agreements" into play. SAS in fact no longer can get back out.

13
I honestly doubt they would invest in SAS - do you really want to get into a company that is so highly political in an area of the world where you are already well positioned and that is not exactly growing rapidly? Not that it is a terribly bad investment and SAS is a more than solid airline... but there must be better investments out there... Air travel in Asia for example is exploding, Beijing is building a second massive airport after the freshly enlarged one is already getting too small again and Lufthansa is well set up with the maintenance business there already. I would guess that if they go on a shopping tour it would only be logical to do it there. Unless there is a bargain on the market as the Swiss once was...

14
The word to use is "not yet". The price of the British Midland International purchase and the partially invisible prices LH had to pay for Swiss and

Austrian possibly postponed the final purchase of SAS, as come it will. In contrast to the Swissair of Philippe Bruggisser, Lufthansa has the home market large enough to survive such things.

Back to the Balkans, for B+H the TK solution was the only real one. Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania at present do not have "home carriers" of relevance. Adria Airways and Croatia Airlines are not yet under control but due to their fuel-efficient fleet far better positioned than JAT. The idea of the Belgrade government that a "strategic investor" would take over the debts but leave control to them is complete rubbish. Serbia will, whatever route they take, have no alternative than to take over the debts. There however are alternatives to foreign ownership. They can write-down the capital to zero, take over 100% again and then in various rounds on the stock-exchange sell chunks to private industry.

15
As outlined above, I think that LH + SAS have no alternative to go. SAS has old and strong links to many airlines overseas and so may be a good tool, but only AFTER 51% of its shares belonged to Lufthansa. You mention Asia. But right now, the situation is not so much that European companies moved into Asia but possibly the other way round !

The whole alliance thing is one side, the other side is that companies merge to a remarkable extent. Companies like AirFrance-KLM and BritishAirways-Iberia and LATAM (LAN+TAM) will not be the last ones. For LH it will be important to get the area between Gottardo and Brenner on one side and the Northern Cape of Scandinavia firmly in its grip. As only the control over a geographic area of size will allow it to expand overseas in a decisive way.

16
Do you believe in hidden signs

J.A.T

= Just Avoid Them

17
And we forgot Bangkog, Chicago and I think the Buenos Aires route. This commerical was on when I was a kid

www.youtube.com/watch?v=38U0FyWvH-k

They were operated by Boeing 707 or the DC-10.

Adria is pretty well settled with fuel efficient planes and good leasing contracts and they have good tickets prices and nice connections from Ljubjana, but their crew wages are ridiculously high for the amount of flight hours they do. They have around the same yearly flight hours (around 500) as Swiss pilots and crew had before the demise. The permitted yearly flight hours is 1000. And they are payed huge amount of money, money that pilots at regional flights in Europe can only dream of. Just yesterday, the biggest bank in Slovenia decided not to give another loan to Adria - where the same bank owns around 20% of the shares!

Croazia is almost in the same mess as Adria but there you have over employment (due to political games) and much more planes and routes so the losses are bigger.

All these small countries don't really need expensive, political toys of a flag carriers. They need competition and access to low cost flights such as Ryan Air, Easy Jet so they increase passenger levels to cities and destinations close or nearby the usually big cities destinations where the diaspora lives in Europe.

18
Well, to have it mentioned, the consignment this evening arrived in Larnaca as booked ! They are clearly better than their reputation.

I in the past used PIA (Please Inform Allah) successfully, just as I did SABENA (Such A Bloody Experience Never Again) and KLM (Königliche Luft-Matratze) and AUA (Aussteigen Umsteigen Autobus) and BOAC (Better On A Camel) and even ALITALIA (Always Late In Takeoff Always Late In Arrival). And let's not forget SWISS (So What? It's Still Swissair)

19
The problems are several :

>> a country without a national carrier will not get more but less flight services from foreign carriers and airlines tend to operate to where a competitioner comes from

>> other airlines and particularily the lowtariff-airlines do not necessarily operate the routes your industry need

You saw it with Swissair/Swiss. As long as Swiss was separate, few new airlines came into Zurich, but as soon as Mr Merz had arrived the sale to Lufthansa, all of them came. Bad is that many operators wait until Swiss starts to operate (again) to the country in question. The idea of Mr Merz to sell off the "national airline" to an efficient and respected big company worked out quite well.

For the airlines in ex-Yugoslavia to find a strategic partner ready and able to purchase them is however rather difficult. AUA is LH-owned, and Alitalia even if now a private company is relatively weak.

20
Or even AirFrance-KLM

Yes, indeed it looks like any LH/SAS merger will be a "Lobster Quadrille"

They are waiting on the shingle -- will you come and join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?