British Airways Plc has joined forces with three other European airlines in its Galileo consortium, and one US airline, to pay $500m for a 50% stake in Covia Corp, the United Airlines subsidiary that operates the Apollo reservation system in the US. British Airways, USAir Group Inc and Swissair are each paying $113m for 11.3% stakes, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines will pay $99.8m for 10% and Alitalia $59.8m for 6%. The five airlines, acting in consort, plus Covia Corp, call themselves the Covia Partnership. The reservation system, which has its computer centre in Denver, is IBM mainframe-based.
