At a recent shareholders’ meeting in Dublin, CE Michael O’Leary of Ryanair issued a mea culpa. Under his watch, the airline had bungled its fall vacation schedule for pilots. Over 2,000 flights would have to be canceled. To contain the crisis, Ryanair might cut a week of vacation from the airline’s 4,200 pilots — many of whom aren’t full-time employees but independent contractors. If they “misbehaved” by declining to help, he added, they would get no “goodies” in the future. Ryanair controls its expenses by using a mix of full-time employees and self-employed pilots recruited through outside agencies. The approach helps Ryanair sidestep labour regulations and high social security taxes in many of the 33 countries where it operates, making its labour costs among the lowest in the European industry. <br/>
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Ryanair’s director of human resources strategy and operations has rejected claims the airline’s pilot representative system for negotiating pay and conditions was a “sham”. The “employee representative committee” (ERC) system within the airline involves 2 to 5 pilots at each of Ryanair’s bases around Europe meeting HR department representatives and negotiating 5-year collective deals in the same way as in most negotiations, Darrell Hughes told the High Court. “They are certainly not a sham,” he said on the fifth day of Ryanair’s action against 3 founders of the Ryanair Pilot Group (RPG) Evert Van Zwol, John Goss and Ted Murphy, over alleged defamation in a RPG statement issued in 2013 which Ryanair claims falsely said the company misled investors. The three deny the claims. <br/>
Mark Dunkerley, who shepherded Hawaiian Airlines through a successful turnaround after joining the carrier in 2002, will retire in March. Peter Ingram, Hawaiian Airlines executive VP and CCO, has been chosen as the next CE. Dunkerley is widely credited with turning Hawaiian Airlines into one of the nation's most financially successful airlines. During his tenure, Hawaiian has become one of the nation's leading airlines in operational performance. He's also been at the helm of the carrier as its expanded to a host of new cities, including Tokyo, Seoul, Brisbane, and Beijing. Since 2002, Hawaiian has doubled the number of passengers flown annually, to 11m. Over the same period the company’s gross revenues have increased four-fold — to US$2.64b — and its employee count has doubled, to 6,600. <br/>
AirAsia is testing personalised baggage pricing and launching a travel money card, as it targets an ambitious 22% rise in revenue per passenger from add-ons by the end of 2018, its group CE said Thursday. The carrier reported MYR49 (US$.24) of revenue per passenger beyond the ticket price in the quarter ended June, but hopes to raise that to MYR60 with the help of a US$100m investment in digital initiatives that also include a new duty-free website and reusable baggage tags. AirAsia Group CE Tony Fernandes said the revenue target was a "tough ask at the moment" but the airline "had a shot" of making it. Research firm Crucial Perspective last month said the MYR60 target was "overambitious". AirAsia's June-quarter number was up from MYR47 a year earlier. <br/>
Emirates and Flydubai have laid the groundwork for the next phase of Dubai's aviation project with orders for US$40b of jets that will narrow a gap between regional and global networks connecting travellers from Sarajevo to Sydney. The two govt-of-Dubai-owned airlines have largely pursued separate strategies until recently being steered towards closer commercial ties by their sole shareholder. "I would say the first step that we took is paying off. As of the first week we could see the progress and how positive it is," Emirates and FlyDubai chairman sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said. Emirates and Flydubai said in July they would forge closer commercial ties and that both would benefit from a combined fleet of 380 jets flying to as many as 240 destinations by 2022. <br/>
Airbus might yet win a long-anticipated A380 superjumbo order from Emirates before the end of the year, but must pledge to extend the ailing program for a further decade in order to secure the deal. Airbus had planned to announce the sale at this week’s Dubai Air Show, COO Fabrice Bregier confirmed Thursday, only for the purchase to fall through at the last minute. “We expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with Emirates, who I think we’re very close to doing that,” Bregier said. “We will need a few more weeks. If we finalise it we will be committed to producing this aircraft, I believe, for at least for the next 10 years.” Airbus is caught between its desire to extend the life of the A380, in service for only a decade, and a reluctance to give a long-term commitment to a plane that has long been struggling for sales. <br/>
A German court ruled Thursday that Kuwait Airways had the right to refuse to carry an Israeli passenger due to his nationality, a verdict that Jewish groups said condoned anti-Semitism. The Frankfurt state court said the airline was merely respecting the laws of Kuwait, a country that does not recognise the state of Israel, and said it was not up to a German court to rule on Kuwaiti law. Germany's anti-discrimination law applies only in cases of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic background or religion, not citizenship, it said. The Central Council of Jews in Germany said the Kuwaiti law was reminiscent of Nazi policies. Similar cases in Switzerland and the US were decided in the favour of the plaintiffs, it said. The lawyer for the plaintiff said he would appeal. <br/>
Veteran airline investor Bill Franke has claimed that US travellers are spoiled and need to be better educated about no-frills travel. Franke's private equity firm, Indigo Partners, stunned observers at the Dubai Airshow Wednesday when it signed a draft agreement to buy 430 planes with a list price of nearly US$50b. Indigo Partners holds stakes in 4 low-cost airlines who will take delivery of the planes. Speaking after the official signing, Franke said in the US, airline customers are yet to understand budget air travel. "The consumer is essentially like your teenage spoiled brat. They had been flying with all the amenities for ever and ever and that's what they think they ought to get," Franke said. "They don't want to pay any more for the ticket, they just want all the amenities," he added. <br/>
Jozsef Varadi watched Malev’s struggle to survive up close as CE in the early 2000s, just as Europe’s low cost air travel boom was taking off. Wednesday he announced a multibillion-dollar aircraft order for Wizz Air, the carrier he later co-founded, signalling its entry into Europe’s low-cost big league. The deal to buy 146 Airbus A320neos underlines the scale of Wizz Air’s ambitions. It has sustained double-digit growth in passengers by targeting under-penetrated central and eastern European markets, where economies have grown at more than twice the rate of western peers in the past decade. Varadi said the order would be a “game-changer” for the airline, enabling it to expand its market share across Europe and beyond. Varadi’s growth strategy includes scooping up capacity left behind by airlines such as Monarch and Air Berlin. <br/>