German travel holding FTI has set up a new subsidiary, FTI Flight Trading GmbH, which will act as a virtual carrier and a broker for both in-house charter flights and for third parties, fvw has reported.
"[The business purpose is to provide] the worldwide procurement and sale of flight capacity in the B2B and B2C areas as well as all activities connected with this," the company said in its registration documents.
Besides Dietmar Gunz and Anja Ruppert, two FTI executives, the new subsidiary board also includes Nicola Gregor who used to run the charter department of airberlin group, selling capacity onboard Air Berlin (1991) and Niki (Austria) flights.
According to the report, FTI will purchase capacity not only for its in-house tour operator FTI Touristik, but also for third-party companies, effectively acting as a charter broker.
FTI already performs such tasks to some extent as it occasionally sells capacity on aircraft it has fully chartered to other tour operators.
According to the tour operator's website, FTI Touristik is currently chartering aircraft from a number of leisure specialists, including Condor, Germania, TUI fly (Germany), and Small Planet Airlines Germany. FTI had an own airline with the name fly FTI between 1999 and 2001.
