Ryanair warned Tuesday it will take a hit of up to E20m on the back of deadly terror attacks in Brussels and air traffic control strikes in France. The airline forecasts a hit of between E10m and E20m in Q4 of its financial year, or three months to Mar 31. "That's due to the ATC (air traffic control) strikes and the Brussels attacks," CE Michael O'Leary said. O'Leary said the events might also continue to weigh on demand and continuing nervousness in the wake of the attacks in Belgium could affect earnings further in the current quarter. "What is harder to gauge is what will be the impact on travel confidence after Easter, in the April-May period. It's too early to say if there will be a material impact. In general, the airlines will have to lower air fares after Easter because there will still be a rump of nervousness." O'Leary was scathing of the frequency and "cynical" timing of industrial action by air traffic controllers in France during peak holiday periods which, he said, caused untold inconvenience to passengers across Europe. Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Shane Kelly cautioned that the estimated hit from the Brussels attacks and French strikes was a small proportion of Ryanair's total annual income. The combined "impact mentioned as result of Brussels attacks and French air traffic strikes .... represents just 1.1% of expected adjusted net income for 2016", Kelly said.<br/>
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Ryanair, once notorious for its spartan cabins and hands-off attitude to customer service, plans to give passengers still unconvinced by a recent charm offensive a platform to make their gripes clear. Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier will introduce a “Rate My Flight” mobile feature as part of the third phase of its Always Getting Better program, according to CEO Michael O’Leary, who once derided passengers as “stupid” for incurring fines by failing to print boarding passes. The application will ping people as soon as they land and ask them to evaluate each element of their flight, from boarding through food and drink provision to crew helpfulness and overall service standards, said O’Leary, who began a push upmarket in 2014 in a bid to attract more families and business travellers. Ryanair will use responses from the feedback program, trialled in March and due to go live in May, to sharpen its focus on customer concerns, the CEO said in Dublin on Tuesday, three days after making global headlines as the owner of Rule the World, winner of Britain’s leading Grand National horse race. Other initiatives announced Tuesday include fares bundling allocated seats, priority boarding and a checked bag for leisure flyers, and extra travel flexibility combined with airport fast-tracking for corporate clients.<br/>
JetBlue Airways, facing heightened competition from the planned merger of Alaska and Virgin America airlines, will expand its Mint first-class service to four new cities starting early next year. The carrier expects to add Mint to some cross-country flights at Las Vegas, San Diego, Seattle and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, continuing growth of the premium product that debuted in 2014. JetBlue announced the additions Tuesday, about a week after its decision to opt out of a bidding war for Virgin America allowed Alaska Air Group Inc. to announce a $2.6b purchase. While the cities were selected some time ago, JetBlue’s stepped-up premium offerings will give it an extra competitive tool as it faces further consolidation of the US industry. “We’ve been looking at Mint expansion at least a year and a half, figuring out how much bigger Mint can be for us,” Marty St George, the carrier’s executive VP for planning, said in a telephone interview. The original Mint routes are the top revenue generators in the airline’s system and “have had an incredible impact. Who would not want to try to duplicate that elsewhere?” JetBlue ended its coach-class-only strategy when it began offering Mint in 2014 between New York-Los Angeles and New York-San Francisco to retain passengers who were looking for more amenities on coast-to-coast flights at a lower price. Mint fares can dip as low as $599 each way.<br/>
Pakistan's parliament has adopted a law that will convert the cash-strapped national airline into a limited company but bar the government from giving up management control. The passage of the law, which blocks selling off a majority share in PIA, was a major setback for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The government had struggled to meet its deadline to sell PIA, which has accumulated losses of more than US$3b, after a delay of many months in amending a 1956 law that barred it from being privately owned. After months of legal wrangling between government and opposition representatives, a joint session of the upper and lower houses of parliament unanimously passed a bill that blocks the sale of the airline. "Management control of the company and any of its subsidiary companies… shall continue to vest in majority shareholders, which shall be the federal government and whose share shall not be less than 51 percent," the law reads. Privatisation Commission Chairman Mohammad Zubair, who is a member of Sharif's ruling party, said the government would remain the major shareholder.<br/>
Air Baltic, Latvia’s flag carrier, agreed to turn seven options for Bombardier’s CS300 jetliner into a firm order, bolstering the planemaker’s beleaguered C Series program. The seven aircraft are valued at about $506m based on list prices, Bombardier said Tuesday. AirBaltic will become the first operator of the CS300, which can seat as many as 160 passengers, when deliveries begin in the second half of the year. The airline now has 20 C Series aircraft on order. Bombardier is working to line up blue-chip customers for its flagship jet amid stiff competition from Boeing Co. and Airbus Group SE, the world’s biggest planemakers. The state-of-the-art C Series, with composite parts and efficient fuel consumption, is more than two years late and more than $2b over budget as it nears its commercial debut when Lufthansa’s Swiss International arm flies the CS100 in Q3.<br/>
Horizon Air, a subsidiary of Alaska Air Group, has placed a firm order for 30 new Embraer E175s and also took 33 E175 options. The order, valued at $2.8b including the options, represents the largest aircraft purchase ever made by Horizon, which currently operates a fleet of all Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft. The regional airline said it will operate the E175s exclusively under the Alaska Airlines brand, feeding Alaska’s mainline Boeing 737 network. Deliveries will start next year and continue through 2019.<br/>
After just over a one-year hiatus, Thai Lion Air will resume its Bangkok-Jakarta service upon the revival of traffic demand on the route. The Thai low-cost carrier, part of Indonesia's Lion Air Group, has confirmed May 5 for the restart of the daily flight from its Don Mueang airport base to the Indonesian capital. TLA executives said Monday that demand for the city-pair appears to be back on track as concerns over Thailand's political situation begins to fade. Daily Bangkok-Jakarta services were suspended in March last year after their launch in December 2014, with the airline suffering a low load factor as most Indonesians shied away from travelling to Thailand following the coup.<br/>