Woehrl reveals plans for Air France's CityJet

[FRANKFURT] German aviation investor Hans Rudolf Woehrl wants to merge Air France-KLM's CityJet, which he offered to buy last month, with his carrier InterSky to take advantage of demand for regional business flights beyond Europe's big airline hubs.

"The aim is to create a new regional airline active across Europe that is big enough not to be pushed out by big carriers like Lufthansa," he told German weekly magazine Wirtschafts Woche in an interview published today.

Air France announced last month that Intro Aviation GmbH, of which Mr Woehrl is a co-founder, made a firm offer to buy CityJet as well as its subsidiary VLM, without disclosing financial terms. It said it expected the transaction to close in the first quarter of 2014.