Iberia must soon face the appointment of a new president to replace Fernando Candela, who assumed the position last July, initially second on an interim basis for this semester, coinciding with the strike called by UGT and CCOO in the ground service (‘ manipulation’) in the middle of Christmas.
The appointment of Candela – with almost 30 years of experience in the airline sector – occurred after the surprise departure from the company last May of Javier Sánchez Prieto, who signed as CEO of Ivirma, a company based in Valencia specialized in assisted reproduction in the hands of the American fund KKR.
Luis Gallego, the CEO of International Airlines Group (IAG) – the group to which Iberia belongs along with British Airways, Vueling, Aer Lingus and Level – defended at the time that the group has enough internal talent to assume the presidency of the former Spanish flag company.
Candela has a long history in the group, where she was CEO of Level since 2019 and Director of Transformation of IAG since 2020. Previously, she was CEO of Iberia Express for six years and Director of Planning and Management Control of Air Nostrum.
Six months of setbacks
In these six months in office, Fernando Candela has had to face a major setback for the group, with the decision of the airport manager, Aena, to leave Iberia out of the management of ground service (‘handling’). in eight of the country’s main airports, although it maintained the largest, Madrid-Barajas.
Iberia has appealed the decision before the National Court after the Central Administrative Court of Contractual Resources (TACRC) did not admit the appeal presented by the dryer, which requests that the contest be suspended.
The loss of the eight airports has led the unions to call four days of strike between January 5 and 8, in the middle of the Christmas holidays, in protest at the subrogation of personnel in the companies that won the competition.
In this semester, in addition, IAG has made progress in the procedures for the purchase of Air Europa by Iberia, which it formalized before the European Commission on the 11th, an operation with a cost of 500 million euros for the entire capital of Globalia. , from the Hidalgo family.
In order for Brussels to approve the operation and consider that it does not alter competition, Iberia has presented a “very ambitious” plan of options to get rid of routes (‘remedies’ in slang), which significantly increases those already presented in a previous attempt.
It also takes a “broader” approach in terms of possible winners of the routes it should get rid of, although it has not revealed who those “remedy takers” could be or what routes it would sell. Now he will have to wait for the Commission to rule, but he estimates that the process could be closed in 2024.
IAG defends that the operation benefits consumers and Madrid as a ‘hub’ (air traffic distribution center) that can thus better compete with the large European centers.
The results accompany
During Candela’s mandate, in addition, the group presented the results for the first nine months of the year, in which it earned 2,151 million, a figure that multiplies by more than ten those of that period of the previous year. In those nine months, Iberia recorded a profit of 821 million euros, double the 382 million in 2019.
With more than 15,500 employees and flights to 138 destinations in 45 countries that operate with 156 aircraft, Iberia is the leader in Latin America, where it offers more than 300 weekly flights from Spain.
Within the IAG group it is the second largest in terms of passenger revenue, behind British Airways (1,943 million in the third quarter compared to some 4,600 million for the British) but its operating result is comparatively better, as it closed with a profit of 449 million in July-September compared to 712 million Britons.
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