FRANKFURT, Germany (Reuters) --The head of Lufthansa AG said in published remarks that he could envisage taking the German airline into a merger and rejected talk of major strategic changes at its troubled tourism unit.
Chief Executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber said in an interview with Welt am Sonntag that the age of the national airline had passed and that he would not rule out a merger along the lines of the planned takeover of KLM by Air France.
"If the only way to create added value for customers is by such investments then they are worth considering," he was quoted as saying. "It must make strategic and economic sense."
The Air France-KLM deal and the decision by Swiss to snub Lufthansa and join British Airways in the world's second largest alliance, oneworld, has left investors fretting that the German carrier may miss out on consolidation.
Mayrhuber also said that Lufthansa had no intention of selling tourism unit Thomas Cook, a joint venture with retailer KarstadtQuelle, despite deep losses that forced its chief executive and finance chief to resign earlier this month.
"An integrated tourism group has advantages because then you posses all the elements that can be tailored to suit the needs of the customer," he said.
Thomas Cook, Europe's second largest travel firm after TUI AG, faced a period of restructuring that would last for more than one season but would not undergo a complete change of strategy, Mayrhuber said.
Weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported that KarstadtQuelle Chief Executive Wolfgang Urban was seeking to break up Thomas Cook, giving Lufthansa control of its airline activities.
Karstadt would gain Thomas Cook's travel agencies business and the restructuring would be financed by the disposal of activities in Britain and France, the magazine said.
A Lufthansa spokesman said the Spiegel report was "speculation without any foundation". A KarstadtQuelle spokesman declined to comment.
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