Motivation Quote by Niki Lauda

A racing legend talking like a hard-nosed shopkeeper is part of the appeal here: Niki Lauda strips “alliance” down to its real engine - distribution. No romance about shared values, no vague corporate synergy. Just a blunt admission that air Berlin’s sales network is the prize. He’s framing partnership as leverage: why build an expensive commercial machine when you can plug into someone else’s?

The second sentence is where the subtext gets sharper, and a little uneasy. “24 percent of my own airline at air Berlin sold” reads like a translation glitch, but the intention is clear: a significant slice of his airline is now being sold through (and, implicitly, influenced by) air Berlin. Lauda is presenting that as a benefit, but it also reveals the trade-off: autonomy gets exchanged for reach. In modern airline economics, control isn’t only about ownership; it’s about who owns the customer relationship, the booking funnel, the loyalty program, the airport slots. Lauda is admitting he’s willing to cede some of that if it fills seats.

The context matters: this is the mid-2000s European airline ecosystem, where small carriers faced brutal pressure from low-cost giants and consolidation. Lauda’s brand is risk management at 300 km/h, and the same logic applies here. He’s not chasing prestige; he’s buying survival and scale - with the clear-eyed knowledge that alliances can turn from partnership into dependency fast.