nicht mehr ganz neu, aber......
Star sets Adria and Croatia accession date
Croatian flag-carrier Croatia Airlines and Slovenia’s Adria Airways are to join Star Alliance as regional members on 15 December, taking the alliance’s newly-created regional division to three members.
They will follow SAS Group’s Finnish operator Blue1 as regional partners within Star, having both been sponsored for membership by Lufthansa. Star said in September that it would accept the two Balkan carriers but had not disclosed the date on which they would join.
At an event in Frankfurt to mark the accession, Adria Airways president Brane Lucovnik said that joining Star has been a “strategic goal” for the carrier. He told ATI that Adria will benefit from the security that will come from being allied to the Star network.
“[Joining Star] is a huge thing for us. As an independent regional carrier, it’s hard to remain in the market for long,” he says, highlighting the collapse of airlines such as France’s Air Littoral and the UK’s Duo Airways. “It’s a matter of existence.”
He says membership of the alliance will “surely” bring more passengers to Adria’s network and “truly improve the competitive position” of the company. The Ljubljana-based carrier operates to more than 20 destinations, mainly in Europe.
Croatia Airlines, the larger of the two new members, serves 26 European destinations. President and CEO Ivan Misetic says that as a regional member the carrier will feed traffic to Star hubs in Germany and other parts of Europe.
“We are convinced that our customers will very quickly come to appreciate the added value which our alliance membership brings to their travel requirements,” he says.
As the two airlines’ sponsor, Lufthansa will represent the carriers at Star’s administrative level. The German airline has close links with both operators and has played a central role in bringing them into the alliance. Lufthansa has transferred their frequent-flyer programmes to its own scheme and is working with Croatian and Slovenian airport authorities to ensure that appropriate Star service levels are maintained.