Just hours after commending employees and saying they followed proper procedure, United Airlines’ CE has issued a full apology for the incident in which a bumped passenger was violently dragged off an aircraft. In his apology, Oscar Munoz calls the incident “truly horrific,” apologizes to the passenger and promises a full review of United’s procedures for handling customers on oversold flights. “We are going to fix what’s broken,” he said, promising to communicate results of the review by April 30. Whether this will be enough to calm the situation is not yet clear. The incident could have an impact beyond United; there are calls by US consumer advocates for congressional hearings in an environment that is already suspicious of US airline consolidation and revenue-raising business strategies. <br/>
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Images of a man being forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight drew widespread condemnation in China, where state media fuelled the public's anger with reports that noted the unidentified victim was an "Asian passenger." Video of the violent incident posted on China's Twitter-like microblogging service Weibo had been viewed more than 210m times by late Tuesday. Many responded with outrage over perceived bias against the passenger and some called for a boycott of the airline. United does considerable business with Chinese passengers and a consumer boycott could cause it serious pain. United says it operates more nonstop US-China flights to more cities in China than any other airline. Rowdiness has long been associated with air travel in China, including passengers getting into fights with crew members. <br/>
Lufthansa said it had seen a slight improvement in the price it gets for its tickets last month, the first time in several years it has not reported a decline, sending its shares to a near 3-year high. The comment came as the airline group published traffic data for March showing an 11% increase in demand thanks to growth at Eurowings, which it is expanding rapidly this year. "Pricing was slightly positive in March on a currency-neutral basis," Lufthansa said. A spokesman said the good demand was helping pricing. The last time Lufthansa described pricing as "positive" in its monthly traffic update was as long ago as Aug 2013. Lufthansa said Tuesday traffic measured in revenue seat kilometres rose 11% in March while capacity rose more slowly at 9.9%. That meant the load factor rose 0.8 percentage points to 77.2%. <br/>
Air NZ has been recognised in TripAdvisor's inaugural Travellers' Choice Awards for airlines, coming in fifth overall and runner up in the Asia-Pacific region behind SIA. Air NZ has also been awarded best premium economy class. Air NZ's GM of customer experience Anita Hawthorne said the accolades reflected the airline's commitment to delivering an outstanding experience on the 15m customer journeys on the airline every year. "Listening to customer feedback has helped us make strides to improving our customer experience - including significant investment in new technologies, innovative inflight products and aircraft interiors, and our new and refreshed lounge spaces,'' she said. "It's incredibly satisfying to see customers acknowledge the efforts of our people to deliver a seamless travel experience, right across our network". <br/>
Saddled with total debt of around INR460b, Air India has written to 16 of its lenders to cut interest rate on its loans by up to 2 percentage points, in line with the reduction in rates in the market. The airline is also in talks with state-owned infrastructure company NBCC and Ministry of External Affairs to sell around 98 of its properties spread across India and some overseas. While reduction in interest rates reduce its costs, monetisation of assets would help pare it short-term borrowings. If bankers accept its request, it would bring down its interest cost to around 8.5% from over 10% at present, a senior Air India official said. “This would result in annual savings in interest costs of about INR2b on loans of around INR150b,” the official said. <br/>