Lufthansa unlikely to seek MidEast tie-up

Deutsche Lufthansa AG is very unlikely to agree to form an alliance with any Middle East airline, the German carrier's CEO Christoph Franz said at its annual general meeting on Tuesday. Gulf carrier Etihad, which competes with fast-growing Emirates, raised its stake in Germany's second-biggest airline after Lufthansa, Air Berlin, last year and recently bought 3 percent of Ireland's Aer Lingus. Earlier this week, Emirates executive vice chairman Sir Maurice Flanagan claimed that Lufthansa had opposed the Dubai carrier securing further landing rights in Germany. "Lufthansa hates us with a passion," Flanagan said of Europe’s second largest carrier. Emirates has been looking to acquire further landings rights in Germany since 2004, and Flanagan said he was confident the Dubai airline would eventually secure the extra routes as there was sufficient market demand."[Lufthansa] can’t touch us in Germany as the government seems to quite like us. Berlin is asking for us; Stuttgart is asking for us and we’ll get them sooner or later," Flanagan said. The vice chairman is not the only Emirates executive to accuse the German carrier of trying to undermine it. Tim Clark, the Middle Eastern carrier’s president, told Bloomberg last year Lufthansa’s "mantra is to take the Gulf carriers down." "It has taken European carriers donkeys’ years to adapt their business models to the changing dynamics of global civil aviation," he said. "They haven’t been able to align their traffic flows to what is going on, whereas we have."