With the long-awaited and rather convoluted takeover of ITA Airways by Lufthansa now a done deal, one could be forgiven for thinking that airline consolidation in Europe is over for now. But with the Portuguese Government still teeing up the sale of a majority or minority stake in its national carrier TAP Air Portugal (TAP) sometime in 2025, the jostling for dominance among the continent’s largest airline groups is far from over.

According to airline analysts, with Lufthansa executives now having their hands full with figuring out how best to integrate ITA Airways into the Lufthansa Group fold, International Airline Group (IAG), the owner of British Airways, Iberia, LEVEL, and Aer Lingus, is now seen as the frontrunner in the bidding war to take control of the Portuguese carrier.

TAP, currently valued at approximately $1 billion, would be an attractive and complimentary addition to the IAG group of airlines. With Iberia, Vueling, and Barcelona-based LEVEL already bringing significant traffic to the group, the addition of another strong Iberian Peninsula carrier could strengthen IAG’s presence across the Atlantic, particularly in the burgeoning market of Brazil, where traffic numbers to European destinations have been soaring since the end of the pandemic.

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