West Atlantic Cargo Airlines CEO and President, Gustaf Thureborn, has declined to comment on whether his company is interested in acquiring TNT Airways which must be sold as part of FedEx's takeover of TNT.
The Swedish carrier, a major supplier of European air services to express and mail sectors, and its counterpart ASL Aviation have been touted as the two most likely candidates to bid for the Liege-based cargo airline and the smaller TNT-owned Spanish unit PanAir.
Earlier this month, the European Commission unconditionally approved FedEx’s planned €4.4 billion acquisition of TNT, leaving only regulatory clearance from Brazil and China and the sale of TNT Airways as the major items to be ticked off before the deal can be completed during the first half of this year.
Reports of West Atlantic's possible interest in TNT Airways have in part been fuelled by the Swedish carrier's recent cash-building activities. Last month it issued SEK850 million (US$100 million) of senior secured bonds in what was an oversubscribed issue and has also announced that it would, in the near future, redeem all bonds under its outstanding bond loan of SEK500 million senior secured bonds.
Quizzed on TNT Airways, Thureborn told CEP-Research: “We can neither confirm nor deny (any interest). We never comment on rumours in the market where we provide efficient air transport solutions.
“We are generally following what is happening in the aviation industry and we are following the development regarding the FedEx acquisition of TNT as they are both historically highly-valuable customers of ours. At the moment we are just flying for TNT,” he added.
However, he did confirm that West Atlantic was going to use the bond proceeds “to acquire aircraft or aircraft owning companies.”
West Atlantic, which has around 45 customised aircraft in service, the majority of which are wholly-owned, is also in the process of consolidating its two airlines, West Air Sweden and UK-based Atlantic Airlines as well as eyeing a stock market listing on Nasdaq in Sweden.
In April last year, West Atlantic took delivery of its first B767 freighter. A second of the type followed in November and a third is scheduled to be deployed in the first quarter of 2016. The first two planes were supplied by strategic partner US-based ATSG, which owns 25% of West Atlantic.
Last year saw the airline awarded four new long-term B737-400 operations by DHL – two were upgrades to existing routes already operated by the group with BAe ATP aircraft. It also announced a new contract with Posten Norge for domestic air shipments running until July 2020.
Asked about the crash of a West Atlantic Bombardier CRJ200 PF aircraft which occurred shortly after midnight on 8 January, Thureborn said: “We are only a short time into the investigation which is being run by the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority (SHK).
“What I can say today is that the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) have been found and now we wait for their analysis.”
The aircraft was flying from Oslo to Tromsö in Norway and had been carrying 4.5 tonnes of mail and parcels on behalf of Posten Norge.
A subsequent search for the aircraft by air located the wreckage at Lake Akkajaure in the Swedish Lapplandsfjällen near the Norwegian border. There was no evidence that the two-man crew had survived.
The SHK has indicated that to extract the information from the black boxes and analyze it could take a few weeks.
