ICAG eyes TAP,- but Finland looks a better bet.

ICAG, owner of the BA and Iberia brands is according to the Times and others to be eyeing TAP which is likely to be part of the Portugese government's distress sale of assets to help it balance its books. Actually the Sunday Times said "British Airways is plotting a bid........" When will they begin to understand that BA is no more. As a standalone company it has gone.It is simply a brand of ICAG.

With the Iberia brand already dominant on the eastern side of the Iberian peninsular, what would the addition of TAP bring to the business? The answer is probably not a lot other than to keep other possible bidders such as the Lufthansa or Air France groups out.

Much more promising is the speculation that Finnair could be Walsh's next target if they are prepared to forgo their independence and become just another brand in the ICAG porftolio. Helsinki lies almost directly beneath the great circle route from northern Europe including the UK to much of Asia .If it were provided with good connections from a wide range of European provincial cities bypassing the main hubs such as London,it would be an excellent routing for eastern business and leisure travellers. Following on from the decision not to build the third Heathrow runway and , other depressing measures to allow the significance of the airport to gradually decline, further development of Helsinki as the transfer point of choice could substantially improve ICAG's current patchy coverage of the strongly growing Asian market. It would also open up further opportunities onwards to Australasia. Over the past dozen or so years the BA part of ICAG has pulled out of Osaka, Nagoya, Seoul,Taipei, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta and reduced its own cover of Australia to a minimum.Iberia doesn't even touch the region.

Those who would worry most about a possible ICAG or any other major group's Helsinki hub are not so much their fellow Europeans but the Gulf airlines who have been reaping rich rewards from their extensive and high frequency offerings notably from Europe's secondary cities to a large number of Asian and Australasia major ones. The northern routing to the east is shorter than the southern via the Gulf and, given the right investment in frequency and capacity by ICAG or anyone else and enlarged, slick and attractive transfer arrangements at Helsinki ,the northern Europe v Gulf competition could become less one sided. Copenhagen is another possibility if the countries owning SAS decided that having their own independent airline was no longer worth the candle. The next question would be whether an organisation such as ICAG with a relatively cautious European outlook on investment and risk and its definition of what is really operating cost and what is debt would really put in the massive investment it would take to make a great impact. On past performance this approach would be the show stopper and ensure that while the northern routes took some of particularly the high end the business ,they would not put in enough investment in routes, capacity and frequency to seriously challenge the fast growing Gulf businesses.