Andrew Doyle/PRAGUE
CSA Czech Airlines is bucking the east European trend and holding back from joining a major alliance, preferring to develop codeshares to evaluate potential partners.
While other flag carriers in the region - Hungary's Malév, LOT Polish Airlines, Tarom of Romania and Balkan Bulgarian - are in advanced talks over alliance membership involving equity sales, CSA says it is happy to bide its time.
The state-owned carrier, which carried 1.8 million passengers last year, has consolidated its return to profit after heavy losses in the mid-1990s. It posted a net profit of CSK408 million ($11.4 million) for 1998 compared with CSK92 million a year earlier.
All major airline alliance groupings are "very interested in having CSA as a member", says the airline. It adds: "We decided we would like to develop bilateral co-operations and learn more about alliances, and based on these codeshares decide which one to join."
In Europe, CSA co-operates with Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, Iberia, KLM, LOT, Lufthansa, Swissair and Turkish Airlines. This month it launched joint flights with Olympic Airways and Air Baltic. It will codeshare with Air Malta from 1 July.
CSA has one alliance - with Continental Airlines - that it describes as "strategic", offering onward connections to US cities for CSA passengers arriving at New York Newark from Prague.
The airline is to replace two Airbus A310-300s with A330-200s or Boeing 767s . Four Tupolev Tu-154s are to be phased out by early next year and replaced with737s.
Source: Flight International
