oneworld

Around 100 people who joined Japan Airlines as pilot candidates but never had a chance to work in the air due to the airline’s 2010 bankruptcy are finally making their debuts on domestic flights. The bankruptcy led JAL to substantially cut its flight routes and freeze recruitment and training of pilots. Of its employees who joined JAL as pilot candidates, some left the airline to become pilots at other companies and others who stayed at JAL worked on the ground. After the airline rehabilitated itself with taxpayers’ money, it resumed training for would-be pilots in Oct 2012 and started hiring pilot candidates again in April 2015. The roughly 100 employees who are making or soon to make their debuts as domestic flight co-pilots are those who had seen their flight training frozen for the longest period of time among other JAL pilot candidates. <br/>

British Airways appears to have reduced the number of Boeing 787-9s it expects to receive, according to IAG’s latest fleet plan. The fleet plan outlined in IAG’s full-year results shows a total of 18 787-9s for the carrier, 3 fewer than the 21 listed in the half-year schedule. Sixteen of these aircraft have already been delivered. The latest IAG schedule appears to show that the 3 absent 787-9s have been converted to the smaller 787-8. BA has 8 787-8s in service but the outstanding number on order has been raised from 1 to 4. These 4 787-8s, plus the 2 remaining 787-9s and the 12 787-10s on order are all scheduled for delivery between 2017 and 2021. IAG had listed 18 options for 787-9s at the end of 2015 but this had been adjusted to 6 -9s and 12 -8s by mid-2016 before being revised again to 18 -9s in the latest schedule. <br/>