NEW DELHI, SEPT 11: Joining the large list of international carriers showing interest in air India's disinvestment, Lufthansa today indicated that the huge potential of the Indian market could attract the German airline to have a stake in the Maharajah.But Lufthansa's chief operating officer Karl-Friedrich Rausch said it was too early to take a firm decision as very little was known about the terms and conditions of Air India's disinvestment."We are looking into national carriers including Air India. After we look at the figures we will decide. There are a lot of questions we have to answer before taking a decision," Rausch, who met civil aviation minister Sharad Yadav here to ask for more trafic rights to India, told newspersons.Rausch said his discussions with Yadav centred around Lufthansa's requireemnt for more flights to India and the Air India disinvestment issue did not figure.India and Germany will have bilateral aviation talks here in Delhi on September 18 and 19. Lufthansa currently operates 15 flights to Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi which it wants to increase to daily flights to and from the three cities to cater to the huge market demand, especially tourists.Asked whether the Star Alliance, of which Lufthansa is a partner, had discussed Air India's disinvestment, Rausch said there had been no such approach, `at a later stage, maybe', he said agreeing that China and India were two countries where the Alliance had to have a presence in view of the big market.Commenting that management control of an airline was more advantageous, Rausch said ''we don't know what is there in the Air India proposal. What does Air India have to offer. We are far from knowing what is going on''.Lufthansa, which has not had stake in any airline, has not had the opportunity to pick equity because not many airlines have been privatised recently, Rausch said. A variety of different factors like whether picking stake in Air India would be profitable would steer Lufthansa to take a decision, he added.Rausch said Lufthansa was also keen to fly to Bangalore. This might come up at the forthcoming bilateral meeting as currently the designated cities are only Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi.Lufthansa was keen that India extends the open sky policy thatair freight services enjoy to the passenger traffic. The german airline operates 16 cargo flights a week to eight destinations in India.Lufthansa, one of the top performers in the air traffic industry,led the field in Europe with pre-tax earnings of 2 billion deutsch marks in 1999, a year which was marked by a steep expansion of capacity worldwide coupled with falling average yields.
