Ryanair CE Michael O’Leary said the carrier can raise pay for pilots and still retain a pricing advantage over rivals after a staffing crunch led profit to slide in its busiest quarter. O’Leary pledged Tuesday to press on with a review of flight rosters, benefits and salaries as he seeks a permanent solution to a meltdown that left Ryanair short of flight crew at the end of the summer season. The stock posted its biggest gain in more than 2 years after the carrier reaffirmed a forecast for record profit even amid costs to hire pilots from recently failed rivals and offer 20% more pay than peers. While the proposed salary award would increase annual costs by E100m (US$116m) if accepted across the company, O’Leary said that it “will not significantly alter the substantial unit-cost advantage we have over all other EU airline competitors.” <br/>
unaligned
A new combined labour contract for the pilots of Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, finalised Monday, provides hefty wage increases that bring the highest pay rate to US$251 per flight hour, with increases of 3% in 2018 and in 2019. The current top of the pay scale is $216.46 per flight hour for an Alaska Airlines captain and $189 for a Virgin America captain (although no Virgin pilots have yet reached that 12-year level). The average pay increase is 16% for an Alaska Airlines captain and 29% for a Virgin America captain. The new contract, effective Wednesday and running through April 2020, also accelerates the pay of younger pilots by increasing the ratio of first-officer pay from 31% of a captain’s pay in year one to 41%, with corresponding increases in that ratio throughout the first 5 years of employment. <br/>
Bangkok Airways will start imposing fees for passengers who do not turn up without prior request for a change of flight. The airline is charging the penalty fee to curb growing passenger "no-shows", which cause wastage of flights and affect revenue-earning opportunity. The airline has seen such incidents spreading from its flights to Bangladesh and India to other routes, and saw the need to curtail that practice, an insider said. The fees will be imposed on both domestic and international flights at THB500 (US$150) per leg on domestic flights for an economy class ticket and THB1,000 for international services. Business class passengers will be subject to a THB1,000 per leg fee for domestic travel and THB2,000 for international flights. <br/>
Airbus and Pratt & Whitney’s compensation to IndiGo for glitches that grounded jets helped the airline's post quarterly profit that exceeded analyst’s estimates. The problems plaguing the carrier’s operation since July were fixed earlier this month after Pratt & Whitney managed to replace the engines that power the Airbus’s A320neo jets. The world’s biggest buyer of the aircraft grounded as many as 9 of its brand new planes on some days, denting the schedule and on-time performance. IndiGo has 430 A320neo jets on order, on top of a previous order for 100 aircraft. Profit for the quarter ended Sept 30 almost quadrupled to INR5.52b (US$85.2m), the airline said. That compares to an average forecast of INR3.21b from 11 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. <br/>
A row between Virgin Australia and Samoa over flights from New Zealand has deepened with the island nation's govt saying its economy could have been damaged by a "multinational airline". At the weekend Virgin was told its application to fly 5 times a week between Apia and Auckland from the middle of next month had been declined. The airline has said the knock-back came out of the blue but the Samoan govt said the decision should have come as no surprise as a 12-year joint venture deal between them had ended earlier in the year. Samoa is setting up its own airline to fly to New Zealand with support from Fiji Airways. The 6-times a week service is due to start at the time Virgin Australia hoped to start its service. Thousands of passengers have been caught up in the dispute. <br/>
Flying on WestJet's LCC Swoop will come with a price: ancillary fees that will cost travellers about twice what they pay on the mainline carrier, the CE of the airline said Tuesday. Gregg Saretsky said he expects non-fare fees on Swoop, which is set to launch in June, will be very similar to so-called ultra low-cost carriers in the US. "We're about C$19 per guest currently on the mainline operation and I would expect that we should be able to get (double) that on Swoop," he said Tuesday. WestJet's fees for services like flight changes, cancellations and checked bags increased 12% in Q3 to $117m, or $18.64 per passenger. Between 60% and 70% of Swoop travellers are expected to pay fees for carry-on and checked baggage, added Bob Cummings, who is heading up preparations to launch Swoop. <br/>
SkyWest, parent of SkyWest Airlines and ExpressJet Airlines, again cited the company’s ongoing fleet transition as the primary source of improved revenue and profits, posting US$53.7m in net profit for Q3 2017, up 30% from US$41.3m in Q3 2016. SkyWest’s Q3 revenue was $831.9m, up 4% year-over-year, attributable, the company said, to “the net impact of adding 37 new [Embraer] E175 aircraft since Q32016, partially offset by the removal of 75 unprofitable aircraft over the same period, including 50 ERJ-145s/135s, 22 [Bombardier] CRJ200s and 3 net CRJ700s/900s.” In Q3 alone, SkyWest removed 25 aircraft, including 6 ERJs, 15 CRJs200s and 4 CRJ900s. “Our results reflect strong production, solid operating performance and ongoing fleet transition improvements,” SkyWest CE Chip Childs said. <br/>