Thomas Cook's Condor, Lufthansa eye Air Berlin planes: sources

Thomas Cook's German leisure airline Condor and Lufthansa are interested in taking on a number of planes from insolvent Air Berlin, sources familiar with the negotiations said Thursday. The race is on for interested parties to agree a deal for parts of Air Berlin's business, including planes and crew, which would bring access to take-off and landing slots at airports such as Duesseldorf, Berlin Tegel, Munich and Hamburg. Condor is "in the process of preparing a concrete offer", one source said, adding Condor was interested in mainly short-haul routes, and also some long-haul ones. Lufthansa, which was first to talk with Air Berlin, on Wednesday said it had presented a term-sheet to the insolvent carrier, setting out its interest in taking over parts of the Air Berlin group. The German flagship carrier's proposal for the carve-up of Air Berlin would see it taking over the insolvent carrier's leisure airline unit Niki and other planes for a sum in the low hundreds of millions of euros, another source said. Those aircraft, up to 90, would include 38 crewed planes Lufthansa already leases from Air Berlin. The source further said a likely deal could be 80 planes for Lufthansa, 24 for Condor and 40 for easyJet.<br/>