SATA reinforces European strategy

Grupo SATA recently signed interline agreements with Aeroflot (Russian airline), Malév (Hungarian airline) and LOT (Polish airline) aimed at penetrating the Eastern European market.

Of particular note is the agreement with Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, with a long-running tradition in commercial civil aviation.

These interline agreements are primarily aimed at attracting Eastern European passengers to the Frankfurt hub, a platform at the centre of Europe, to which SATA Internacional currently flies weekly. In 2012, the number of flights will increase, with 24 additional round trips between Ponta Delgada and Frankfurt in the coming off-season and mid-season, for an increase of 47% in the number of available seats (7,755 more seats).

According to António Gomes de Menezes, Chairman of the Grupo SATA Board of Directors, “the reinforcement of flight operations to Europe is essentially aimed at offsetting the seasonality of the off-season and mid-season in Azores tourism.”
He went on to say that “the closing of an interline agreement with Aeroflot is a milestone in SATA’s history, since it puts SATA on the route of one of the world’s largest airlines, and opens to door to SATA in Russia, a country with more than 140 million inhabitants and one of the world’s highest economic growth rates.”

The penetration strategy in northern and central Europe (Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo), together with countries further east such as Poland, Hungary and Russia, is aimed at offsetting the seasonality of the Azores destination and leveraging the focus on these European markets, considered strategic for the tourism sector, in which the notoriety and appreciation of the Azores as a destination has been increasingly consolidated.

Moreover, the signing of interline agreements (Interline Electronic Ticketing Agreement – IETA) allows SATA Internacional to issue tickets for partner airlines’ flights and vice-versa which, in practical terms, allows passengers to travel with a single electronic ticket on flights operated by both companies, thereby facilitating the entire ticketing process and improving service to customers.