Monarch Airlines collapsed into bankruptcy early Monday, ceasing its flights and forcing the govt to step in and bring home more than 100,000 passengers stranded abroad. Britain’s aviation regulator called the collapse of Monarch the “biggest ever U.K. airline failure.” The airline is one of many that have struggled to grapple with Europe’s highly competitive airline market. For Monarch, “mounting cost pressures and increasingly competitive market conditions in the European short-haul market” led to “a sustained period of trading losses,” Blair Nimmo, a partner at KPMG, which is acting as administrator for company, said. Monarch’s problems have been building for some time. Terrorist attacks in Egypt and Tunisia and unrest in Turkey dented demand for tourism to those destinations, weighing on the carrier’s results. <br/>
unaligned
The UK govt started Britain’s “biggest ever peacetime repatriation” Monday as it began flying home the first of 110,000 holidaymakers stranded overseas after the collapse of Monarch Airlines, the country’s fifth-biggest airline. Administrators from KPMG were appointed in the early hours of Monday morning after the carrier and tour operator held emergency talks at the weekend with regulators over Monarch’s future. All of its 750,000 future bookings have been cancelled. The administrators said Monday evening that 1,858 employees out of 2,100 at Monarch Airlines and Monarch Travel Group had been made redundant. “The remainder have been retained by the joint administrators to assist them in the administration process and, importantly, to help collate critical information to assist the CAA,” KPMG said. <br/>
The sudden collapse of Monarch Airlines Monday has sparked a rush among airlines to hire pilots from the stricken carrier, as rivals seek to add more experienced staff. "There is growth in many UK airlines, and we'll be working with them to see if we can ensure the skill and experience of Monarch isn't lost," Brian Strutton, general secretary at the British Airline Pilots Association, saying the union had been approached by Thomson, Wizz Air, BA CityFlyer, Virgin Atlantic, Aer Lingus and Flybe. Transport minister Chris Grayling said he had spoken to airlines who were looking to hire some of Monarch's team. Monarch's collapse happened at a time when the availability of experienced pilots has been in focus, especially at LCCs, after Ryanair cancelled hundreds of thousands of flights due to issues with the rostering of pilots. <br/>
Ryanair pilots have formed an unofficial trade union in a battle with the CE, Michael O’Leary, over their employment terms. O’Leary has clashed with pilots amid the fallout from the carrier’s recent pilot rostering “mess-up”, which saw more than 700,000 passengers affected by flight cancellations. A letter circulated among pilots indicates they are coordinating to derail Ryanair’s strategy of negotiating separately with multiple employee representative committees (ERCs), small groups representing individual airport bases. Instead, they have now formed a central committee to replace the ERCs, in a move designed to improve their bargaining power. According to a letter, it was set up to “oppose the longstanding strategy of divide and conquer that Ryanair has applied in its dealing with pilots”. <br/>
Ryanair has been accused of “plucking figures out of the air” over its insistence that passengers caught up in its widespread flight cancellations can only reroute on other airlines if the new tickets cost no more than 3 times the value of the original Ryanair fare. The airline made no reference to any such price limitation in its widely publicised statements issued Friday when it agreed to demands made by the UK CAA to clarify passenger rights. However, its customer service staff continued to impose the price restrictions over the weekend. One passenger, as he tried to rearrange flights to Madrid for this coming weekend, was told the airline could only “re-accommodate a flight for you with a different airline provided, that the cost of the ticket does not exceed 3 times the value of the original Ryanair fare for the sector cancelled. <br/>
Aer Lingus is likely to go head-to-head with one of the US airlines operating out of Dublin when it launches its latest route from Dublin airport next year. The airline is due to announce details of its 2018 summer schedule and an extra transatlantic route this week. Travel industry sources believe that Aer Lingus is planning to launch on a route already served by one of its US rivals, with Philadelphia named as a likely destination, along with Charlotte, North Carolina or possibly Atlanta. American Airlines already serves both Philadelphia and Charlotte, while Delta serves Atlanta. Aer Lingus has been growing its transatlantic business with the backing of IAG, which bought the company in 2015. The following year, it began 3 services, Los Angeles, Newark, New Jersey and Hartford, Connecticut. It began serving Miami, Florida this year. <br/>
Southwest Airlines launched the Boeing 737 MAX 8 into revenue service on its network Oct 1, flying from Dallas Love Field to Houston Hobby for its first official flight with the CFM International LEAP-1B-powered aircraft. Southwest chairman and CE Gary Kelly called the MAX 8 “the future of the Southwest fleet.” The carrier launched 9 737 MAX 8s into service Oct 1 and will add 5 more to its fleet by the end of 2017. Southwest, which Boeing has said played a pivotal role in helping design the aircraft, becomes the first North American airline to operate the aircraft, which entered service with Malaysia’s Malindo Air in May 2017. Southwest test flew a MAX 8 on simulated operations over 6 days in Sept 2016. <br/>
Air Transat and Thomas Cook Airlines signed a 7-year agreement for the exchange of aircraft on a seasonal basis, which will enable the two carriers to manage their fleets more efficiently. The deal calls for Thomas Cook to make available a number of narrowbody Airbus A321s every winter to Air Transat, which will receive at least 1 widebody A330-200 in return. The agreement takes advantage of the different seasonality of the two companies: Air Transat uses a greater number of smaller aircraft in winter to serve its destinations in the Caribbean, Mexico and Florida, and larger aircraft in summer to serve the transatlantic market. In contrast, Thomas Cook uses smaller aircraft in summertime to fly to destinations around the Mediterranean Sea and larger widebody aircraft in the winter to fly to the long-haul destinations. <br/>