Lufthansa became the first airline to announce it will suspend its route to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, while the airport is closed for 6 weeks for repairs. The carrier won’t divert its planes to Kaduna, a city about 140 miles away, a spokeswoman said by Thursday. She didn’t give a reason for the decision. Lufthansa will continue to fly to Lagos, the commercial hub, and Port Harcourt, she said. Nigeria plans to shut Nnamdi Azikiwe International for 6 weeks from March 8 to repair potholes on the runway, which have damaged planes in recent months. “We doubt that the European airlines will fly to Kaduna out of concerns ranging from capacity to whether passengers can be shuttled safely between Kaduna and Abuja,” an analyst at who advises companies about Nigeria said. “Kaduna experienced a kidnapping surge in 2016.” <br/>
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Lufthansa’s CE said Gulf aviation would be hit by a wave of rationalisation as regional carriers which are hit by lower growth projections are forced to cut capacity. “There is more and more indication that – as we say in German – trees don’t grow to the sky in Gulf aviation,” Carsten Spohr said. “Therefore finding smart partnerships like Etihad has done with us, and limiting growth will play a bigger role in the next 12 months than in the last 10 years.” Gulf carriers have been growing strongly through fleet expansion and linking Asia with Europe and the Americas. But slowing global demand has hit their expansion plans. Emirates announced a 75% decline in profit growth last year and has, along with Etihad, been forced to make redundancies among support services. <br/>
Air India plans to focus on the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and the South Asian markets where the airline sees growth potential amid a slowdown in demand and economic growth across other parts of the world. Pankaj Srivastava, commercial director and board member at Air India, said the airline plans to increase flights and capacity to markets such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Tokyo, Hong Kong, as well as Sydney and Melbourne. “The Gulf is a very important region for us, so we are substituting smaller aircraft with larger aircraft. In Bangkok and Singapore we’re poised to grow. We are also increasing flights into South Asian subcontinent, we are increasing flights into South East Asia, so within this part of the region, Air India is growing and that remains our focus,” he said. <br/>
A woman pilot and another crew member of Air India were grounded for 3 months after they failed a pre-flight alcohol test. The crew members, who have been taken off from flying for failing to clear the pre-flight medical test were to operate Air India's Rajkot flight from New Delhi Jan 25, sources said. As part of the DGCA safety regulations, all pilots and cabin crew must undergo breath analyser test before and after flights. The matter was reported to the DGCA and the two crew members were taken off for flying for 3 months, the source said. Aircraft rules prohibit crew members from taking any alcoholic drink 12 hours prior to the commencement of a flight. Incidentally, the airline's head of operations, himself a senior executive pilot, is under probe by a committee for allegedly skipping the mandatory test close to a month. <br/>
United Airlines said Thursday it is teaming with IBM to develop a suite of iOS apps that will help the airline's employees better meet the needs of the company's customer base. Some 50,000 United employees are already outfitted with iOS devices, including flight attendants who now use iPhones. Pilots use iPads to store crucial information, including airport maps, needed to fly and land airplanes. With new data and insight at their fingertips via the new apps being developed, flight attendants, for instance, will have greater visibility into which passengers on a particular flight are connecting to other flights. The apps also will help flight attendants advise passengers which gates they need to get to for the connecting flight. <br/>