Europe's airlines are bracing themselves for increased competition from high-speed train operators following the creation of a new pan-European rail alliance.
Seven European rail companies and three high-speed rail subsidiaries in July banded together to form Railteam, a partnership aimed at providing travellers in Western Europe with seamless high-speed, cross-border train services. Railteam, which bills itself as a "real alternative to air alliances", aims to serve 25 million passengers by 2010. It plans to achieve this by inter-connecting the distribution systems and co-ordinating the timetables of each individual operator.
Lufthansa says it "can't predict exactly how [Railteam] will affect our business at this stage", but points to its existing AIRail scheme - through which it co-operates with German rail operator Deutsche Bahn on domestic routes linking Cologne and Stuttgart with Frankfurt - and says it could enter into similar co-operation agreements with other rail companies in the future. It adds: "When the train offers equal quality and price to the plane, we will think about co-operating, but we're still very well-placed to compete with rail."
KLM believes the creation of Railteam "will definitely have an impact on the airline industry", and says the carrier is itself "participating more and more in the Dutch high-speed rail system". KLM points as an example to its existing co-operation agreement with Dutch rail company Nederlandse Spoorwegen. Air France has already said it plans to establish its own domestic rail service following deregulation.
Railteam will go live in 2009 and consists of Germany's Deutsche Bahn SNCF in France Eurostar in the UK, France and Belgium Netherlands operator NS Hispeed OBB in Austria Swiss firm SBB and SNCB in Belgium.
Source: Airline Business
