Virgin Australia reported a net loss of A$34.6m (US$26.5m) for Q1 of its 2017 financial year. The loss includes the impact of restructuring charges, the carrier said. The underlying loss before tax was A$3.6m, a reversal from last year’s A$8.5m profit. During the quarter to end September Virgin increased domestic capacity by 0.6% (in available seat km terms), but reduced international by 13.1%. Overall capacity dropped by 0.5%. Virgin said capacity was being actively managed in response to the trading environment. Passengers carried rose to 6.24m, from 5.95m in the same period last year, with load factor up 2 percentage points to 81.2%. At low-cost unit Tiger Australia, revenue in revenue passenger km terms rose 34.7% on a capacity increase of 30.4%.<br/>
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Ryanair aims to strike a deal next year to offer another airline transfer flights for long-haul connections, in what could shake up the hub model at airlines. "We think and we hope it will happen for some airline in 2017," Ryanair's CMO Kenny Jacobs said Wednesday. With legacy carriers such as Air France-KLM and Lufthansa struggling to bring costs down on their namesake brands to compete with low cost carriers on short haul routes, using low-cost carriers instead for feeder flights could be a more cost effective way of bringing passengers to hubs for long-haul connections. There have been suggestions for well over a year by both Ryanair and easyJet, Europe's two biggest low cost carriers, that they could provide feeder flights for long-haul carriers, but so far no deal has been struck. Instead, carriers such as Lufthansa and Air France-KLM are growing their own low-cost units to avoid giving up more market share to the likes of Ryanair. Aer Lingus, part of IAG, has been in talks for Ryanair to provide transfer connections at Dublin airport, as has Norwegian Air Shuttle for Gatwick and Barcelona. Independent aviation consultant John Strickland said there were challenges to concluding deals, such as finding product and revenue terms that were agreeable to both parties. Ryanair also does not have much spare capacity, given its planes are around 95% full, he said, although they are growing with new planes coming.<br/>
Iran's second-largest carrier, Mahan Air, is flying commercial routes to more than a dozen European and Asian countries in spite of US terror-related sanctions. Backed by the country's notorious Revolutionary Guard, the airline is sanctioned by the US for providing "transportation, funds transfers and personnel travel services" to the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Forces, flying them and weapons to Syria to train Hezbollah militants, Syrian army troops and others. Many countries honoured the US terror sanctions and blocked Mahan Air. But weeks before the nuclear deal was signed in July 2015, Mahan announced it was launching a route to Munich — its second German destination. A wave of new routes followed to more than a dozen countries, including France, Russia, Thailand and Denmark. The piece has a look at the countries that have granted landing rights to Mahan Air commercial flights or are home to companies affiliated with the airline.<br/>
An Austrian airline has begun what it claims is the world's shortest regular international connection — an eight-minute hop across Lake Constance. The flight offered by People's Viennaline connects St. Gallen-Altenrhein in Switzerland with Friedrichshafen in southern Germany. It's part of a route that continues onward to the western German city of Cologne, but passengers can book only the short part for E40. German news agency dpa reported that environmentalists aren't thrilled by the new route, which began service Wednesday. It quoted Swiss Green Party politician Meinrad Gschwend saying he wants the flights banned. The airline says driving around the lake for an hour would produce as much emissions as the short flight.<br/>
A newspaper investigation has found that Allegiant Air's planes are four times as likely to break down in flight as those operated by other major US airlines. The Tampa Bay Times report published Wednesday said Allegiant jets were forced to make unexpected landings at least 77 times in 2015 for serious mechanical failures. None of the incidents prompted enforcement action from the FAA, which doesn't compare airline breakdown records to look for warning signs. Times reporters built a database of more than 65,000 records from the FAA. The newspaper reports that during interviews at the company's Las Vegas headquarters, Allegiant acknowledged that its planes break down too often and said the company is changing the way it operates<br/>