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Unionized workers at Korean Air Lines will allow the company to decide on the wage increase for 2017 to better help the national flag carrier make a turnaround this year, the airline said Friday. "We have delegated authority to the company for this year's wage negotiations not only for the company's sustainable growth and survival but also for the job security of workers," union leader Lee Jong-ho said. The decision comes after the union Thursday agreed on a 3.2% pay raise for the year of 2016 after 14 rounds of negotiations with the management since April of last year. The union workers will receive a one-time, retroactive pay increase later this month under the agreement, a Korean Air spokesman said. Korean Air will focus on shifting to a profit this year despite a challenging business environment, the statement said. In a major blow to the airline, China banned on the sale of travel packages to South Korea from March 15 in retaliation against the deployment of an advance US missile defense system here.<br/>

It could finally be arrivederci for Alitalia, the Italian flag carrier that shuttles the pope around the world. Italy’s government put the airline up for sale this week, seeking expressions of interest from bidders before a June 5 deadline. That followed months of fruitless talks with labor unions and the carrier’s shareholders, including its biggest, Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways. Alitalia has racked up years of losses amid competition from a swarm of budget airlines in Europe. Three years ago, Etihad poured in cash to refresh the carrier, retraining cabin crew and replacing fading interiors with Italian-designed leather seats. But that hasn’t been enough. Alitalia has lost billions of dollars over decades, amassing more than $3b in debt. The airline, which hasn’t yet published results, signaled it may have had an operational loss exceeding $600m last year. Italy, Alitalia’s home market, demonstrates the airline’s losing battle to woo customers. In 2010, the carrier commanded 29% of Italy’s domestic market, according to Euromonitor. In 2015, the last year data is available, that had dropped to 25%, in a commercial-aviation market in which rivals typically fight hard for every 10th of a percentage point. The three biggest budget carriers flying in Italy, meanwhile, boosted their share from just over 12% in 2010 to 16% five years later. Ryanair is now the biggest airline in Italy by passenger numbers.<br/>

Delta has spent the past year trying to shake a reputation as a bruising antagonist that fought with other airlines and bureaucrats alike. As Delta’s Ed Bastian reaches his first anniversary as CEO this month, aviation experts and former regulators say they see signs that the Atlanta-based airline is stepping away from an in-your-face posture that sometimes rankled competitors and annoyed bureaucrats under former boss Richard Anderson. The change in attitude can be traced to the personalities of the CEOs. “Richard was a litigator,” said Mo Garfinkle, a longtime aviation consultant. “That litigious, strong, ‘I’m right’ approach of Richard is not the same approach that Ed has.” Take, for example, the time in 2014 when Atlanta business leaders were considering a state tax increase for roads and Anderson goaded them not to be “chicken” about supporting it. Or the February 2015 CNN interview in which Anderson brought up the Sept. 11 terror attacks while discussing US carriers’ long-standing policy disputes with Persian Gulf airlines, which prompted a public apology from Delta. The spats ran the gamut—with the government about alliances and landing slots, with lobbyists about whether its interests were being served, even with its own allies in the airline industry. Delta in recent years “viewed every issue as a bet-the-company kind of case, and they fought it tooth and nail,” said Kathryn Thomson, a former general counsel at the U.S. Department of Transportation. She senses now, a year into Bastian’s tenure as boss, that Delta may be becoming more like other airlines that tend to “pick and choose which issues are most important to them and fight for them.’’<br/>