The Air France-KLM Group has reportedly tabled an offer of €300 million ($330 million) to take a controlling stake in Spanish carrier Air Europa. The move places the Franco-Dutch airline consortium in the running to take control of the Spanish airline with Germany’s Lufthansa Group, which until now, had been considered as the clear favorite to take a majority shareholding in the Madrid-based airline.
According to Spanish newspaper El Confidencial, the Air France-KLM Group has proposed to pay the sum of €300 million in cash to the Hidalgo family in exchange for a 51% stake in Air Europa. The Hildago family, though their Globalia travel consortium, are currently the largest stakeholder of Air Europa’s shares. Additionally, Air France-KLM is reportedly willing to assume the airline’s outstanding debts owed to the Spanish government, accrued through lifeline loan payments made to the airline during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep it afloat.
Air Europa had been struggling for several years even before the pandemic, a situation that was exacerbated with a proposed takeover by the International Airlines Group (IAG), the owner of British Airways and Iberia, collapsing in August 2024. The collapse followed a ruling by EU competition authorities that a takeover would be anti-competitive. Lufthansa emerged following that process as the leading front runner, reportedly offering a €240 million ($264 million) investment in exchange for a 25% stake in the Spanish airline.
The German carrier has been pursuing an unrelenting drive to take control of many of Europe’s leading airlines in recent years. So far, the Lufthansa Group owns majority shareholdings in Lufthansa, SWISS, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways, Discover Airways, Austrian Airlines, and several regional affiliates. The Group has also also expressed an intention to bid for a stake in TAP Air Portugal when that carrier is eventually put up for sale.
While there are already established links between the Lufthansa Group and Air Europa in the form of a Boeing 787-9 that has been leased by the Spanish carrier to Austrian Airlines, El Confidencial reports that the Hidalgo family is split on whether to proceed with the bid from the two current contending parties, Air France-KLM or the Lufthansa Group. Such considerations at play could be how either party will grow the Spanish carrier, thought by analysts to be operating at a sub-optimal level in terms of efficiencies and unable to compete with Spanish flag carrier Iberia.
Other factors will likely involve assurances over the airline’s ongoing financial stability and partnership possibilities with potential new investors, such as interline and codeshare opportunities. In an address earlier in March 2025, when speaking about the 2024 results for the Air France-KLM Group, Chief Executive Benjamin Smith stated that a stake in Air Europa would be of interest to the airline group, which has also recently acquired 19.9% of Scandinavian airline SAS.
According to Planespotters.net, Air Europa currently operates a fleet of 26 Boeing 737-800s, seven Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners, and 15 787-9s, all with an average age of 9.1 years. The airline carried 12 million passengers across Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean in 2024.
