Profitable year for world’s first equity alliance

Etihad Airways heralded a successful first year of its equity alliance strategy, after a financial reporting season, which saw each of the five airlines within the alliance – airberlin, Air Seychelles, Virgin Australia, Aer Lingus and Etihad Airways – announce profitable performance. The airlines’ individual and collective results were boosted by a number of measures, including growing codeshare traffic between their networks, successful joint sales and marketing efforts, and a range of increasing business and cost synergies. James Hogan, Etihad Airways’ president and chief executive officer, welcomed the success of the airlines, commenting, “2012 was a year in which the global economy remained very tough and in which airline industry profits as a whole shrank, for the second successive year. Yet each of the airlines in our equity alliance showed strong financial performance with each reporting a profit. “That broadcasts two messages, loud and clear,”he added. First, we have invested in businesses and in management teams, which have the vision and focus to outperform the wider industry. Second, the ‘win-win’ of more passengers and shared cost synergies that our alliance brings to each member is having a positive effect on performance.”(http://www.etihad.com)