Lufthansa responded coldly Monday to a report that rival Qatar Airways was interested in taking a stake in or collaborating with the German airline. The Gulf carrier, which holds minority stakes in airlines including IAG, Cathay Pacific, and China Southern Airlines, has been seeking to boost collaborations. Its CE Akbar al-Baker was quoted by German news agency dpa on Sunday as saying he was interested in investing in Lufthansa to seize business opportunities in Europe’s biggest economy. “We did not have Lufthansa privatised in Germany to have it nationalised in Qatar,” a Lufthansa spokesman said. Initially, Qatar Airways would also look into a partnership with Lufthansa to ramp up air transport services and tourism in Germany, Al-Baker told dpa in Doha on the sidelines of a visit of the premier of regional state Lower Saxony to Qatar. Lufthansa needs to limit ownership by shareholders from non-EU member states to 49% to preserve its aviation licences. Its CEO Carsten Spohr has repeatedly criticised Gulf rivals such as Qatar, Emirates and Etihad Airways of receiving what he describes as unfair state subsidies. Dpa also quoted the Qatar Airways CEO as saying the carrier’s membership of the Oneworld airline alliance would not stand in the way of a pact with Lufthansa, which is part of rival Star Alliance. “We have said several time that we will leave OneWorld, he told dpa.<br/>
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South African Airways (SAA) lost more than 10.4b rand ($700m) in the past two financial years, documents sent to lawmakers showed. SAA, which has not made a profit since 2011 and is dependent on government bailouts to remain solvent, suffered a crippling strike last month which pushed it to the brink of collapse. The airline has not publicly published its financial reports for the 2017/18 and 2018/19 financial years and has suffered concerns about whether it will be able to continue operations for at least 12 months. But a copy of an SAA financial report for the year ending in March 2018 showed a 5.4b rand loss, with the company’s liabilities exceeding its assets by around 13b rand. A separate presentation showed that SAA had made a loss of more than 5b rand in the year ending March 2019. Both documents were sent to lawmakers on parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts. <br/>