A decision in talks over a merger of Thomas Cook's charter airline Condor, TUI Travel's TUIfly and Lufthansa's Germanwings could come soon, Thomas Cook's chief executive officer said.

"Pretty soon we will have to give the Condor staff some certainty," Manny Fontenla-Novoa told journalists yesterday.

"It ain't weeks, hopefully not too many months," he added.

TUI Travel has been in talks with Lufthansa since the start of the year over a merger between its charter airline TUIfly and Germanwings. Thomas Cook joined the talks after German carrier Air Berlin scrapped plans to buy Condor.

A combination of the three airlines would create a carrier with 142 aircraft carrying 30 million passengers annually, putting it ahead of Air Berlin, which carries 28 million passengers each year in its 133 aircraft. One of the key issues of the deal is getting the approval from anti-trust authorities and Mr Fontenla-Novoa said it looked promising that authorities would give their green light.

"The advice that we are getting from lawyers involved is that we will probably get approval," he said.

The three-way merger was the only deal Thomas Cook was pursuing at the moment, said Mr Fontenla-Novoa adding that he wanted at least as much shareholding in the new company as everybody else in the deal.

There was, however, no certainty that the deal was going to happen, he added.

Thomas Cook, whose financial year finishes this month, was still on track to meet its targets, the chief executive officer said.

He added he felt comfortable with analysts' estimates, which expect earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) for 2007/2008 of £342 million on sales of £8.58 billion.