The sources that are very close to the situation have stated on Monday that the merger talks between German charter airline Condor and TUIfly in addition to Lufthansa budget unit Germanwings have got significantly delayed.
The source that is very close to the issue noted that a merger of Lufthansa's Germanwings and Condor could be viewed as one of the highly potential options to the three-way merger. The source stated, "The culture would match, and it would make sense.â
When asked the details in this regard, TUI, TUIfly, Lufthansa and Germanwings all were not ready to make any comments in this regard. The reasons for their silence is however not quite clear.
Interestingly, Condor joined the ongoing merger talks only during last month following the incident when Air Berlin completely dropped its plans to buy it. Partly this present move by Condor to engage in merger talks is the result of the challenging situation in the industry due to rising fuel prices.
Notably, as stated by the source, it appears that some of the key points of conflict that form part of the ongoing talks were regarding the working conditions for TUIfly pilots, the structure of the stakeholder and the locations for the planned charter airline as well as its branding.
It is important to note that Lufthansa owns about a quarter of the stakes of Condor. Thomas Cook, the British-German travel operator owns the rest of the stakes.
TUIfly is a part of tourism and shipping business TUI.
