It was a press conference about a corporate take-over, so those enthousiasts hoping to hear news about planes, destinations, etc will indeed not have learnt much, but otherwise the purpose was well served, I should say?
Okay, those who have been predicting Brussels Airlines would be renamed and (the intercontinental) routes moved over to Germany will not understand what is going on, because it indeed doesn't sound anyway like that, at present, to me.
The interesting things I noticed:
1- Sitting next to eachother, it's made clear it's an amical take-over
2- Lufthansa forgoes the outstanding loan and converts it into an investment (?)
3- The name is not going to become Eurowings: Belgians want a distinctively local touch and Lufthansa is respecting that, just like at Swiss and Austrian (dixit Spohr), for as long as the local Belgian management feels it's somehow useful.
4- While commercially remaining distinct, Brussels Airlines' operations will as much as possible be integrated into those of Eurowings to make full benefit of a bigger platform.
5- Davignon mentioned it's better to be 30% of Eurowings, than it is to be just 5% of Lufthansa: expect Eurowings to become partly Brussels Airlines too, according to Spohr.
6- the Eurowings CEO mentions he's not going to start any base or commercial initiative in BRU: Lufthansa now has Brussels Airlines to cover that market.
7- the €600M is the price of the change of planes for intercontinental routes, which will be signed next year to replace the current ones, the cost of which will have to be sponsored by Lufthansa.
8- the hybrid model is the future: purely low cost carriers as well as purely legacy carriers are going to have to adapt to that and so having to work together their 2 brands currently covering that market is very similar ways will create a win-win for everybody, not just the two brands. (again, dixit Spohr)
The practical day-to-day implications about all of this will become clear over the next months and years of course, so that will be most interesting to keep watching for sure: I'd say that based on these foundations however, BRU has succeeded in keeping it's home airline serving both Europe and the rest of the world, with a special focus on Africa, as 'we should not let others connect us, we should connect ourselves to Europe and the world' (can't remember who it was who said that, but it sure sounded good).
Having a home based airline which is part of the biggest aviation group in Europe, that's a big step forward for the airport in fact, when it comes to long term commercial stability and thus infrastructural planning.
Now, let's see if they can indeed also succeed in getting Eurowings to move (part of) their intercontinental routes which suffer from a lack of quality feed over from Köln to Brussels, like I have always regarded as a good idea, and which you can read is a possibility in between the lines.
