In 2018, the Carinthian state politicians saw the best solution for the airport in a majority partial privatization of Klagenfurt Airport. Surprisingly, 74,9 percent of the shares went to the Lilihill Group around Franz Peter Orasch. The group, which specializes in real estate development, had no prior experience in the operation of commercial airports. The cooperation between the minority shareholders (public sector) and Lilihill was marked by disagreements from the start.
The private investor made many promises, but little was actually implemented. For example, they promised to establish hub connections under the Liliair brand. Since the aforementioned GmbH (limited liability company) is not itself an airline, and major network carriers generally do not enter into cooperation agreements with "virtual constructs," at best, this would have resulted in a point-to-point connection, but not in a genuine connection to hubs with all the advantages that interline and codeshare agreements bring. Liliair never actually took to the skies, although they did grudgingly announce that they would simply implement the project at another airport.
The public sector has meanwhile created facts. The fact that Lilihill did not participate in the capital increase, which was necessary, among other things, to pay the wages and salaries of the airport employees, led to the state of Carinthia (K-BV) and the city of Klagenfurt jointly owning the majority arrived. Now it has also been formally decided to exercise the so-called call option. This means that the airport will again be fully owned by the public sector in the future. The state of Carinthia and the city of Klagenfurt have already approved and approved the necessary funds.
Within the next three weeks, the management appointed by Lilihill will be replaced by a new CEO. Carinthian state politics no longer wants to bring a private investor on board with regard to the debacle that arose at Klagenfurt Airport. It is now believed that the airport itself can be better developed. However, it is not mentioned that many mistakes, which led to the fact that hardly any airline is interested in the regional airport, were made before the partial privatization.
2 Comments