Ryanair hopes to start feeding passengers onto Aer Lingus from early 2018, its CMO Kenny Jacobs has said. Jacobs said the airline had hoped to introduce an integrated system enabling customers to buy long haul tickets with its rival earlier this year. However, he added the airline now anticipates this starting with the first half of 2018. Jacobs said the airline hoped to be able to offer flights from other carriers in the IAG stable and said it was happy to work with any airline. He also defended Ryanair’s treatment of pilots, saying the airline was a great one for them to work at and claiming it was gaining pilots from rival carrier. “We have an incredible number of pilots from Alitalia and Air Berlin applying to join Ryanair. We’ve also hired from Monarch as well,” Jacobs said. <br/>
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Ryanair will offer connecting flights through Porto Airport in Portugal from next January, the airline said Tuesday. The carrier began offering some connections via Rome Fiumicino and Milan Bergamo airports in Italy earlier this year. Ryanair is now planning to offer the same service through Porto, connecting destinations in Portugal, Italy, Spain, Germany and Belgium with each other, through the Portuguese gateway, from Jan 3. Passengers will be able to fly from the likes of Barcelona, Brussels, Dusseldorf, and Lisbon through Porto to Faro, Ponta Delgada, Nuremberg and Madrid. The initiative involves around 20 routes. The move will allow passengers to transfer between flights without going landside, have checked in baggage transferred from one flight to another and have one booking reference for the two journeys. <br/>
Ryanair pilots have written to CE Michael O'Leary seeking to negotiate pay and conditions collectively rather than through the present system of negotiations with each of the airline's 86 individual bases. In a letter entitled "A collective message to our CE", signed by 59 pilots representing their colleagues, they say they refuse to be divided any longer into 86 separate groups across Europe. They say the current negotiating system was imposed by management but has never served their interests, adding that it is time for this "failed" arrangement to stop. They deny they are forming a Ryanair pilots' union - but stress that in future, they will decide for themselves how they wish to be represented. Ryanair dismissed the letter as "meaningless", and reiterated that it will not engage with the EERC or any other group "fronting" for pilot unions of competitor airlines. <br/>
A union representing pilots at Eurowings has rejected a collective bargaining agreement with the carrier. The Vereinigung Cockpit union has been negotiating with Eurowings over pilots the airline wants to employ from insolvent Air Berlin, but Monday rejected a Eurowings’ offer saying the airline should “acknowledge their social responsibility as beneficiaries of Air Berlin’s bankruptcy and offer its employees acceptable terms and conditions.” “This collective agreement would not have created binding prospects either for the pilots of Air Berlin affected by the insolvency or for the staff of Eurowings,” the union said. Lufthansa and EasyJet have agreed takeover terms with Air Berlin’s administrators, subject to regulatory approval. <br/>
Grupo VivaAerobus, holding company of Mexican LCC VivaAerobus, posted a MXN409m (US$22.5m) net profit for Q3 2017, up 33.1% over MXN307.5m net income in Q3 2016. The company attributed the results to increased Q3 load factor and capacity, driven by competitive pricing. Net income margin was 18%, up 1.6 points from Q3 2016. The airline had a 91% passenger load factor during the quarter, up 2.7 points year-over-year; passenger numbers were up 16.5% YOY to 2.3m. The carrier’s Q3 capacity showed a 15.9% YOY increase to 2.6b ASKs. Q3 revenue totaled MXN2.3b, up 21.3% YOY, 59% of which were passenger revenues and 41% “complimentary” (ancillary) revenue. Operating expenses totaled MXN1.8b, up 19.2% YOY. <br/>
Ukrainian manufacturer Antonov is considering its own low-cost airline. The company’s director Mykhailo Kharchenko said that although it’s cheaper to build aircraft and later lease them to other carriers, the possibility of creating Antonov’s low-cost airline is discussed. Turkey, Egypt, and Bulgaria are the destinations where the LCC would fly first of all “because when the season of holidays begins, the demand for flights to these countries from Ukraine sharply increases,” said Antonov‘s director. The first question to be answered is which airport Antonov’s passenger airline would fly from. Another problem Antonov faces now is a lack of planes for a low-cost airline. The manufacturer has several An-148 and An-158 passenger planes in its service. However, these aircraft are currently not airworthy. <br/>
IndiGo will launch 47 flights in December, which includes 19 new routes and 28 additional frequencies, achieving 1,000 flights per day Dec 23, 2017. IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh said, “A thousand daily flights is a milestone that no airline in India has ever achieved before.” IndiGo, which has a 38.2% market share in India, is the country’s largest carrier and one of the fastest growing LCCs. From Dec 21, IndiGo will connect Lucknow and Hyderabad with Sharjah (in the UAE) and launch 16 domestic routes. The airline will also add frequencies connecting Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai with major cities including Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Kochi, respectively. IndiGo said its technical dispatch reliability stands at 99.9% for the quarter ended June 30, 2017. <br/>
A video allegedly showing security staff of India’s IndiGo airline manhandling a passenger went viral Monday, prompting the federal govt to launch an investigation into the incident involving the airline. In the video, widely shared on social media and televised on local news channels, at least 2 IndiGo staff members can be seen pinning a passenger down on the ground after an argument on the tarmac at New Delhi airport. The male passenger shouts and attempts to fight back but is overpowered by the IndiGo staff. “This is absolutely unacceptable,” Jayant Sinha, India’s junior minister for civil aviation said. The airline has been asked to submit a report on the incident to the aviation ministry by Wednesday, after which the govt will see what action needs to be taken, Sinha said. <br/>