The sale of Go and Buzz, British Airways' and KLM's low-fare operations, could be one condition for Brussels approval of the two companies' projected merger, according to a senior Brussels official.
Mr Rod Eddington, BA chief executive, and Mr Leo van Wijk, his counterpart at KLM, met the EU's competition commissioner Mr Mario Monti last Friday to discuss the possible merger, which would create the world's largest airline in revenue terms.
At more than $21 billion (€22.1 billion), its annual revenues would compare with the $18 billion of United Airlines of the US, the world number one.
The airlines aim to decide on proceeding with a deal, in which BA would in effect take over KLM, by the end of this month.
The enlarged group would dominate the air routes between the UK and the Netherlands; on the London-Amsterdam route alone the two companies have 270 round trips a week.
British Midland and easyJet, the other two carriers on the route, have 54 and 33 round-trip weekly flights.
The relative simplicity of forcing the sale of Go and Buzz, both established as stand-alone operations in the past two years and based at Stansted, would appeal to the competition authorities, who are conscious of past problems in major airline competition cases.
In the case of Lufthansa and SAS, which have established an extensive alliance covering the German and Scandinavian markets, Brussels imposed route-specific conditions aimed at ensuring a third airline could enter the market.
But new entrants have failed to materialise because of the dominance of the two national carriers.
The Commission is also expected to look at the impact on the European market as a whole from any eventual BA-KLM merger.
Officials have privately admitted that it would be much harder to draw up conditions in this area.
BA and KLM together carry about 30 million transfer passengers and would account for more than 60 per cent of flights on 19 European routes if their operations from London and Amsterdam were combined.
KLM and BA yesterday refused to comment on any details of the talks with Brussels.
