ANA Holdings clarified Monday that its flagship carrier ANA has not become a member of the world's largest low-cost carrier alliance Value Alliance. It confirmed that its budget subsidiary Vanilla Air has retained membership of the group which it helped found in May this year.<br/>
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Pilots at German airline Lufthansa will go on strike on Wednesday in a long-running pay dispute, their labor union said Monday, raising the prospects of hundreds of flight cancellations. The strike, the 14th in the row between union Vereinigung Cockpit and Lufthansa, will run for 24 hours from midnight and affect short-haul and long-haul Lufthansa flights departing from German airports, VC said in a statement. Budget airlines Germanwings and Eurowings and other Lufthansa carriers, such as Austrian Airlines, SWISS and Brussels Airlines, are not affected, Lufthansa said. Pay talks between Lufthansa and VC broke down this month. The two sides are trying to agree contracts dating back to 2012 and the union is calling for an average 3.7 percent a year pay increase for 5,400 pilots over a five-year period. A Lufthansa spokesman said the company had taken note of VC's strike announcement and regretted any inconvenience that it may cause for passengers. "This call for strike is not the right way," Lufthansa said.<br/>
SIA said it will cut five weekly flights to Jakarta from December on instructions from Indonesian civil aviation authorities. "The Indonesian authorities have informed the airline that five flights must be cut due to runway maintenance works at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport," said SIA Monday. The five weekly flights being cut are SQ962 and SQ963 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The airline operates 63 flights a week to and from Jakarta. Earlier this month, the airline said it had to postpone plans for a thrice-weekly service linking Singapore, Jakarta and Sydney after Indonesia withdrew its approval. Runway maintenance work at the Jakarta airport was also cited as the reason. The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) said that it was aware of SIA’s cut in flight services to Jakarta. “CAAS hopes that the runway maintenance works will be completed expeditiously and that the impact on airlines will be fairly distributed,” it said. “CAAS also hopes that the Indonesian civil aviation authorities will be able to allow Singapore Airlines to resume all 63 weekly services to Jakarta as soon as possible to reduce the impact on business travellers and tourists, who rely heavily on air services to travel between Singapore and Jakarta.”<br/>
South Africa has hired Bain & Co. to advise on the strategy and corporate structure of the country’s three loss-making state-run carriers to improve the benefit to the state from owning the airlines. Bain, based in Boston, was awarded the contract as part of a joint venture with a South African company, Abacus Advisory, according to a posting on the National Treasury’s website. The contract was awarded in October for a three-month period, a spokesman for the Treasury said Monday. South Africa’s government is seeking advice on the corporate structure of South African Airways and South African Express, which could lead to the sale of a minority stake in the airlines and the disposal of assets that aren’t central to their businesses, according to a separate invitation-to-bid document. The state is also seeking advice on how to improve their financial performances, reduce risk and develop a “well-coordinated strategy,” the document shows. Both SAA and SA Express are surviving on state debt guarantees at a time when the government is trying to rein in spending and raise revenue amid slowing economic growth. <br/>