Eight budget airlines have formed a new alliance designed to help them better compete against pan-Asian LCC groups like Jetstar, AirAsia and Lion Air. The new Value Alliance, launched Monday, will allow customers to view, select and book the best-available fares directly from the website of all airline members to create itineraries throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Tigerair Singapore, Thailand's Nok Air and NokScoot, Japan's Vanilla Air, Korea's Jeju Air and Cebu Pacific of the Philippines are founding members alongside Tigerair Australia and Scoot. The carriers collectively serve more than 160 destinations, primarily in the Asia-Pacific region. "We can leverage each other's brand recognition in our respective home markets and leverage each other's distribution in our home markets," Scoot CE Campbell Wilson said. <br/>
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Ryanair has opened a training centre at London Stansted Airport, as it seeks 1,000 more pilots, cabin crew and engineers this year to fuel its expansion. The European training centre includes 4 full-flight simulators, an aircraft interior for cabin crew training and a full-scale engineering training aircraft. “These new facilities will allow Ryanair to recruit and train over 1,000 pilots, cabin crew and engineers in 2016, and many of these jobs will be based across Ryanair’s 13 UK based airports, where we are adding 14 new aircraft, and growing our UK traffic from 36m passengers to 41m passengers in 2016,” Ryanair CE Michael O’Leary said. “It is exactly this type of investment that will be lost to other competitor EU members if the UK votes to leave the EU,” he added. <br/>
Alaska Air Group, which in early April announced a US$2.6b offer to acquire Virgin America, said it and its target have received a request for more information on the proposed transaction from the US Justice Department. The two carriers said the so-called “second request,” is a “standard part” of antitrust regulators’ review process and said they are cooperating fully with the Justice Department. The request for more information extends the period that the parties must wait to close the transaction, until 30 days after they have complied with the request or if the waiting period is otherwise terminated by the govt. Alaska Air Group and Virgin America said they are “confident” they will obtain regulatory approval to complete their transaction no later than Jan 1, 2017. <br/>
Nok Air reported a Q1 net loss of THB379.9m (US$10.8m), reversed from net profit of THB55.6m in the year-ago period. Q1 revenue fell 2.04% to THB3.38b; operating costs for the quarter were THB3.55b, up 10.8% from the year-ago period. The LCC attributed increased costs to the rise of aircraft lease rental and ongoing maintenance costs from a recent fleet expansion. Additional pressure came from “domestic low-cost carriers still facing challenges from [local] price wars and oversupply.” The company also said the lower-than-expected results, and the revenue decrease, were “mainly due to flight frequency cuts [resulting in] a 7.1% decrease in ASKs and a 10.3% drop in the number of passengers carried as a result of the reduction in pilots [numbers].” <br/>
AirAsia X will begin direct flights to Iran from Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur from late June. The LCC will offer 3X-weekly Airbus A330-300 schedules from both Bangkok’s Don Mueang International and Kuala Lumpur’s KLIA2 airports to Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International. AirAsia X CE Benyamin Ismail said the move will open up a new link “connecting Asia and Australasia with the Middle East.” AirAsia X cancelled its 4X-weekly KLIA-Tehran service in 2012, because of pressure resulting from sanctions and “challenging economic and business conditions,” but was granted a new AOC from Iran earlier this year. Ismail said the revival of direct flights to Tehran from Kuala Lumpur would help improve bilateral relations. The carrier has intimated that plans to expand to a daily service are also under consideration. <br/>
The US DoT has awarded Hawaiian Airlines the right to operate between Tokyo Haneda and Honolulu and Kona, Hawaii. DoT approved Hawaiian’s application for the sole night-time Haneda slot the Japanese govt made available for US service. The carrier plans to use the slot to fly to Kona 3X-weekly and Honolulu 4X-weekly. “Flights between Hawaii and Japan are the most travelled and most beneficial to the US economy, so being able to expand the number that we can offer to Tokyo Haneda Airport is especially important,” Hawaiian CE Mark Dunkerley said. Currently, US carriers have 4 slots at Haneda, all at night, which makes service to the East Coast commercially difficult. In its ruling, the DoT said the night-time slot award will not preclude Hawaiian from applying for a daytime slot. <br/>
The union that represents more than 8,000 Southwest Airlines pilots sued the airline Monday in federal court in Dallas, alleging that its plan to introduce a new aircraft type into its fleet next year would be illegal unless the parties first negotiate rates of pay, pilot bidding and flying hours for the new Boeing 737 jetliners. The Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association has been in contract talks with the carrier since March 2012 on a labour agreement to succeed one that opened for renewal that year. The two sides entered federal mediation in late 2014, and the pilots voted against a tentative deal last November. The union maintains that its contract or any side letters agreed to between it and Southwest must be in place to facilitate the flying of a new aircraft type by the pilots. <br/>