Air France’s main pilot union said it’s planning more walkouts in a dispute over pay and productivity once a 4-day strike ends Tuesday, threatening to increase disruption as the summer travel season nears its peak. The carrier’s management has made no attempt to negotiate since talks about its plans to extend working hours for the same salary ceased early last week, according to the SNPL labour group. The current walkout, which began Saturday, has forced Air France to cancel about 20% of its daily flights. “It’s been absolute silence since Wednesday,” SNPL said. “There will be follow-up.” Air France said that “the door is still open for negotiation” but that executives have had to focus on operational challenges during the strike. It added that the SNPL has refused all offers of compromise. <br/>
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During the past year, about 80% of Alitalia employees have gone through formal training at a new centre here, the carrier’s first such classes in 2 decades. Flight attendants learn how to strike a more welcoming tone of voice and to refer to passengers as “guests.” The change, a culture shock for an airline long known for its surly service, comes as Alitalia’s key shareholder, Etihad Airways, is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the carrier back to its glory days—and leaving no stone unturned. Since it acquired effective control of a near-bankrupt Alitalia in the summer of 2014, Etihad expanded the Italian carrier’s routes, redesigned the interiors of its aging fleet and revamped its in-flight menu. “Alitalia is an aviation icon,” Etihad CE James Hogan said. “We had to once and for all re-establish this business properly.” <br/>
Former Delta Air Lines employee Jon Ruggles was penalised US$3.1m and barred from ever trading again at exchanges run by CME Group, which accused him of breaking rules by personally profiting off the airline’s orders. Ruggles, who used to be Delta’s VP of fuel management, leveraged advance knowledge of the airline’s trades to make money for himself in 2012, a violation of rules at the exchange and his employer, according to CME. The exchange fined him $300,000 and demanded he turn over $2.8m in trading profits. His wife, Ivonne Ruggles, was also banned from CME exchanges. Jon Ruggles used her account to place the problematic trades, CME said. “Ruggles repeatedly abused his trading discretion given to him by his employer for personal gain," said CME’s Nymex division. <br/>