IndiGo reported an INR8.11b (US$126m) net profit for its first quarter, a 37% increase and its highest ever quarterly profit. Total revenue for the quarter to end June was INR59.56b, with passenger revenue coming in 27.9% higher at INR50.78b. Costs of INR48.31b meant the airline made an operational profit of INR11.24b, a 50.6% increase from the previous year quarter. Passenger traffic in revenue passenger kms rose 25.4% on an ASK capacity increase of 18.7%. Load factor for the quarter was 88.0%, an increase of 4.7 percentage points from Q1 2016. IndiGo’s RASK revenue edged up 5.5% and yield 2.0%. It also pushed its costs per available seat km, ex fuel, down by 2.5%. IndiGo added 4 aircraft to its fleet during the quarter, 3 of which were Airbus A320neos. <br/>
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Pratt & Whitney is paying compensation to IndiGo as the manufacturer struggles to fix glitches in engines that power Airbus' new A320neo jets. “We continue to have a higher number of engine removals, and sufficient spare engines have not been available,” IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh said Monday. “The operational disruptions are quite challenging, and we are not happy with that situation.” The airline was forced to ground as many 9 new A320neo jets on some days, Ghosh said. It may be a year or so before Pratt & Whitney implements design changes to the geared turbofan, he said, declining to comment on the amount, mode or the timing of the compensation. The groundings, which emerged in recent months, are holding back IndiGo’s push to add capacity to maintain its domestic market share of more than 40%. <br/>
A man who tried to smuggle a pipe bomb on to a flight from Manchester to Italy was able to board another plane 2 days later, a court heard. Nadeem Muhammad was searched as he attempted to board a flight to Bergamo Jan 30. Security officers found the device, made from batteries, tape, a marker pen and pins, in the zip lining of a small suitcase he was carrying. A trial at Manchester crown court Monday was told that Muhammad had intended to detonate the device on the Ryanair flight. Airport security swabbed the confiscated device but found no trace of explosives, so concluded it was not dangerous. He missed his flight, but was not arrested, and was able to board another flight to Italy a few days later. “At that stage nobody had realised this was a real device," said the prosecution. <br/>
Cell phone cameras recorded the exact moment Saturday when passengers of EasyJet Flight 2122 lost what was left of their patience. It was 10:17 pm in Terminal 2 of Nice Côte d’Azur International in southern France. In an instant, with a shove and a jab, the stressed-out travellers seemed to embody the world’s collective frustration with the state of air travel, banding together at the departure gate to voice their anger over still waiting for their flight, which was scheduled to depart for London at 10:35 a.m. It was not clear if the man hit by an airport attendant was hurt, but that moment epitomised how the patience of passengers is tested at every turn, from malfunctioning ticket kiosks to painfully slow lines at security to cramped seats in coach. <br/>
Icelandair Group recorded a net profit of US$11.3m in Q2 2017, less than half of the $26.2m in net income earned in the year-ago quarter. The group, which includes hotels and tourism services as well as the airline, achieved the result on revenue of $368.9m, up 11% on the 2016 June quarter figure of $331.4m. Figures were not broken out to show details for the airline alone. A major reason for the drop in profits was a significant rise in staff costs, with salaries and related expenses climbing 39% year-over-year to $125.8m. Airline capacity rose 11% and load factor was a record 83.6%, up from 81.1% a year earlier. Slightly over half (54%) of the airline’s passengers are on transit flights through Iceland on transatlantic routes. Just 34% of the airline’s passengers terminate their flights in Iceland. <br/>