Most of European's small and medium-sized legacy carriers are likely to disappear in the next few years, aviation expert Dr Dirk Notheis told the autumn conference of VDR, the German travel managers' association.
Dr Notheis, managing director of Morgan Stanley in Germany said only BA, Air France/KLM and Lufthansa of the traditional airlines and the low cost carriers (LCCS) were likely to survive.
Speaking to 300 delegates at the two-day event in Hamburg, Dr Notheis, said other national carriers would face problems over the price of oil.
He said they might not have the ability or resources to pay for hedging as prices rose.
Dr Notheis who has worked on projects with Lufthansa, Air Berlin and Frankfurt Airport, also said that investors would not be keen to put money into airlines which showed a loss when they could invest in LCCs which have a rapid growth rate.
A second key note speaker, Dr Hans Georg Knopp, secretary general of the Goethe Institute, warned delegates to be aware of cultural differences when seeking to do business abroad.
Other topics discussed at the conference were the "jungle of fees" imposed by governments on travel, from extra charges on airline tickets to fees charged for hotels to put radios in guest rooms, the need for GDSs to provide travel management companies (TMCs) with full content, e-ticketing and the role of TMCs.
On full content, delegates said they would rather pay a slightly higher fee to ensure they got good quality and full content rather than a smaller one for less good content.
At workshop sessions on the second day, topics discussed included security, green issues and sustainability, how to measure savings and hotels, both in terms of which channel to use for booking and pricing models like spot buying.
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