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A second ship with specialist search equipment will join the hunt for the flight recorders and wreckage of EgyptAir flight MS804, the head of France's air accident investigation safety agency said. A French naval supply vessel picked up a signal from one of the two recorders on June 1, and Egypt has chartered a second vessel operated by Mauritius-based Deep Ocean Search, equipped with a suitable sonar and underwater vehicle. Remi Jouty, director of the BEA air accident agency which is advising Egypt on the underwater search, said the first ship continued to pick up locator signals from the first recorder, whose location had been narrowed to a radius of 1-2 km. Pending the search for the two flight recorders, the Egyptian-led investigation is still "very far" from understanding why flight 804 crashed into the Mediterranean on May 19, killing all 66 people on board, Jouty told a group of aviation journalists in Paris.<br/>

Air NZ has sold a 19.98% stake in Virgin Australia to Chinese company Nanshan Group, which owns Qingdao Airlines, and said it's considering options for its remaining 6% holding in Australia's second-largest domestic airline. The carrier said it will sell the stake in Virgin Australia at 33 Australian cents per share, a premium to Virgin's last traded price on the ASX of 28 Australian cents. Last month, Virgin Australia issued new shares at 30 Australian cents apiece to a unit of HNA Aviation Group, the largest private operator of airlines in China, giving it a 13% stake, and HNA said it intends to increase its shareholding over time to 19.99%. Air NZ announced in March that it was considering selling its stake in Virgin Australia and had hired First NZ Capital and Credit Suisse to advise on its options. The Kiwi carrier has spent an estimated A$373m building up and maintaining the Virgin stake since 2011 but faces a considerable loss on that investment. Virgin's share price dropped early this month after brokerage Credit Suisse indicated it could require an A$1b equity raising, double previous expectations, to reduce debt to reasonable levels after it posted a profit warning.<br/>

United Airlines’ board was too isolated in recent years, allowing the carrier to fall behind rivals since its 2010 merger, said CE Oscar Munoz, who shouldered some of the responsibility himself. “As board members, we only meet infrequently and are not as engaged with the front line, necessarily,” he said. “The first thing I did as CEO was I left this board room” and visited employees at United. While directors don’t meet often, they carry “some of the blame” for not being more observant, said Munoz, who was named CEO in September. Better operational insight might have prompted the board to insist on fixing a buggy reservations system that resulted in grounded flights or to solve technical issues that prevented employees from being paid on time, he said. Munoz accepted criticism for his own oversight since 2004, first as a board member of Continental Airlines and then of United. A few investors and employees criticized the board’s lack of oversight as shareholders re-elected 14 directors. Half have joined the board since March, following a shakeup in which two large investors put forth their own candidates.<br/>

Lufthansa CFO Simone Menne will step down effective Aug. 31, in a surprise departure. Menne, 56, will resign to “pursue individual career options,” the company said Thursday, adding that it would choose a successor shortly. Menne, a member of the carrier’s board since 2012, said last year that she eventually wanted to head a company in the DAX30, Germany’s benchmark stock index. “It’s a surprise, there was no indication that this might happen,” said Gerald Khoo, an analyst at Liberium Capital Limited. “She is well-regarded by investors. They will want to know why this happened, and why it happened now. It’s unusual given Lufthansa’s history of succession planning.” Lufthansa, led by CEO Carsten Spohr, has reined in expansion plans as a glut of plane seats depresses ticket prices and travelers delay bookings amid fears of terror attacks. Capacity growth this year will trail the previous target of 6%, Spohr said last month. A graduate in business administration, Menne began her professional career in the auditing department of ITT in the US in 1987 before joining Lufthansa as an auditor in April 1989. Ten years later she took over the airline’s financial management and human resources in southwest Europe, rising to the same position for all of Europe two years after that. “In Simone Menne we are losing an experienced executive who has proven her worth time and again in her long Lufthansa career,” Supervisory Board Chairman Wolfgang Mayrhuber said.<br/>

Global internet giant Google, along with local firms All Nippon Airways and Toyota Motor, have emerged as the ideal workplaces for Japanese millennial talent, according to a new survey that has spotlighted the nation’s shifting work culture. The survey, which canvassed the attitudes and career goals of 10,394 students at 161 universities nationwide, found business students ranked ANA, Google, Itochu Corp., Mitsubishi Corp. and Apple as their top employers of choice. The annual Top 100 Ideal Employers survey, by global employer branding firm Universum, found the next generation of Japanese workers viewed a work-life balance as their top career goal. Some 60% of respondents — and as high as 67% for females — ranked this as paramount, sending “a clear message to employers considering workforce diversity,” the survey said.<br/>

Air India’s “books are so bad” that nobody will buy it even if the government wanted to sell off the national carrier, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said Thursday. Ruling out disinvestment in the carrier that has a debt of some Rs 50,000 crore, Raju at the same time made it plain that the taxpayers’ money cannot be committed “for eternity.” “Its (Air India) books are so bad. I don’t think that even if it is offered, anybody would come for it,” he said. Grappling with mounting debts and tough business conditions, Air India has been in the red since the merger of then Air India and Indian Airlines in 2007 and is staying afloat on a Rs 30,000-crore bailout package extended by the erstwhile UPA regime. Asserting that unlike others, he would not like to get into “Air India bashing,” the minister also said that the carrier needs to function in a more cohesive manner to deliver on its turnaround goals. “It is a nice airline. I like Air India but I can’t commit taxpayers’ money for eternity. That is not done,” Raju said.<br/>