Air France may buy stake in SAS: La Tribune

The logo of Air France is seen on a building in Paris January 6, 2009.

PARIS (Reuters) - Air France KLM (AIRF.PA) is considering buying a stake in Scandinavian airline SAS (SAS.ST), according to French paper La Tribune, following the French-Dutch carrier's announcement this week of plans to acquire a 25 percent interest in Italian carrier Alitalia AZPIa.MI.

"SAS has begun an informal consultation process and has contacted us," an internal Air France KLM source told La Tribune, in an article due to appear in Wednesday's edition of the paper.

Air France KLM officials could not be immediately reached for comment on the report.

SAS, which is 50 percent owned by the states of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, has recently been losing money.

In September, sources told Reuters that Germany's Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) was in talks to buy SAS, which has long been tipped as a takeover target.

La Tribune reported that Air France KLM considered SAS as an "interesting" opportunity but it was worried by SAS's financial position.

Earlier this week, SAS posted a 12.5 percent year-on-year fall in December passenger traffic and said it expected to cut capacity further this year.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; editing by Richard Chang)