Nov. 4—MADRID — The Spanish government has agreed on a 475-million-euro (556-million-dollar) aid package for the struggling airline Air Europa, it announced Tuesday evening.
Some 240 million euros would be made available as a participating loan and the rest as a regular loan with a six-year term, finance minister Maria Jesus Montero said.
It marks the first time a fund set up for strategic companies hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic has been used, the minister said.
However, the EU in Brussels still has to approve the loan, the La Vanguardia newspaper reported.
During the first wave of the pandemic, Air Europa already received 140 million euros from the state, newspaper El Pais reported.
Montero said that the government would also now have a say on the sale of the company or potential alliances made.
This could have an impact on Spanish airline Iberia's agreement made last year to take over Air Europa for 1 billion euros.
However, British Airways' parent company International Airlines Group (IAG), to which Iberia belongs, is demanding a substantial price reduction from Air Europa's owner, the holding company Globalia, due to the slump in air traffic caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to media reports.
According to La Vanguardia, this takeover might now be more likely as a result of the government rescue operation.
Prior to the pandemic the airline flew to 69 destinations in Europe, North and Latin America and Africa. At the end of 2018, the airline had a fleet of 66 aircraft and carried around 11.8 million passengers.
___
(c)2020 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)
Visit Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) at www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
