EgyptAir and South African Airways consider plans to establish co-operation or joint venture

EgyptAir and South African Airways (SAA) announced the two airlines are considering plans to establish a cooperation or joint venture agreement to enhance underserved routes in Africa (Business Report, 29-Oct-2009).

EgyptAir: "SAA and EgyptAir have the same interests because we are both from Africa and we belong to Star Alliance. We now want to look to see how we can co-operate to cover central Africa and other destinations daily," Hussein Massoud, CEO. Source: Business Report, 29-Oct-2009.

South African Airways: "We will talk about Africa in the context of Star Alliance and look at how the existing carriers could work together in order to cover more of Africa. There are regions, which are not covered in Central and West Africa. There are many ways to do this. You could take your existing networks or do it on a joint-venture basis. There are a number of options, but there is nothing concrete as to the model we might deploy," Jason Kruse, Head of Business Development. Source: Business Report, 29-Oct-2009.