Wizz Air plans to open a new training and education centre in Budapest by the end of 2018. The new 3,800 sq m facility, which is located nearby Budapest Ferenc Liszt International, features 2 new full-flight simulators, 1 fix-based simulator and a cabin-emergency evacuation training device. Wizz Air said the new facility will enable the company—which expects to triple its fleet within the new few years—to train 100 crew members daily; this number should rise to 250 crew members per day. Wizz Air COO Diederik Pen said that by the end of 2018, Wizz Air will have an “international team with more than 1,000 pilots and 2,000 cabin crew members. This number could triple within the next 10 years,” he said. The carrier has 256 Airbus A320neo family aircraft on order. <br/>
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Frontier Airlines pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots Association, are petitioning the National Mediation Board (NMB) to release the union from further contract negotiations, saying talks are at an impasse and “further mediation will be futile.” In a letter submitted to the NMB April 27, ALPA detailed the April 17-19 mediation session at which talks broke down. ALPA said the union’s proposal for pay and benefits fell “within the range of recent pilot contract settlements at United, Delta, Southwest, Hawaiian and Spirit Airlines, but at the lower end of that range.” According to ALPA, Frontier’s counter-proposal was “inadequate” and considerably lower than the pilot union’s demands. Frontier and its pilots have been in negotiations for over 2 years and in federal mediation since Nov 2016. <br/>
Belgium's new Air Belgium start-up airline, whose flights destinations are mainly in China, is facing difficulties due to the absence of authorisation to conduct flights over Russian territory resulting in the repeated postponement of its inaugural flight, which is now set to take place June 3. In April, the airline started to sell tickets for its flights without an overflight permit from the Russian authorities. For its routes from Charleroi Airport to Hong Kong, Air Belgium must fly over the territory of 9 countries, including over the territory of Russia, which has not given its green light. Circumventing flying over the Russian territory would take at least an hour and a half more, which makes such flights impossible. Apart from the absence of the overflight permission from Russia, the company is also facing operational and financial difficulties. <br/>
It’s proving to be a bumpy year in Brazil, but the top executive of the country’s biggest airline can’t shake his optimism. Despite election-year uncertainty and a currency that’s yet again unsettled, CE Paulo Sergio Kakinoff sees historically low interest rates and subdued inflation -- coupled with an economy that’s lurching forward -- boosting Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes. That, and loyal consumers. "The company is less impacted now by the macroeconomics," Kakinoff said. "There’s an impact because of the consumer’s preference -- our market share is higher -- that makes our results more resilient." Aside from a less hostile economic environment -- Brazil is far from its glory days of growing some 5% annually, but a recession that sank GDP by 7.8% is over -- an overhaul of the country’s labour laws has also helped the airline. <br/>
Jazeera Airways has attributed an improvement in the traditionally weak Q1 figures to a combination of investments in improving passenger experience, a growing route network and higher asset utilisation. The airline booked a net loss of KD0.3m (US$1m), a 67% improvement on a loss of KD0.95m a year ago. Turnover was markedly up—by almost 43% to KD14.3m. Ancillary revenues grew 35%; in 2017 as Jazeera announced plans to reduce its traditionally large free luggage allowance for most passengers to 30kg and introduced paid-for on-board food and drink. Q1 passenger numbers were up 43% year-over-year to nearly 404,000, while load factor increased to 75.8% from 71.9% in the year-ago quarter. Aircraft utilisation jumped 25.7% YOY to 11.8 hours compared to Q1 2017. <br/>
Flynas again plans to increase its exposure to the long-haul sector, as it seeks to take advantage of growing numbers of religious travellers to the country. The airline had a brief foray into the long-haul market in 2014, when it launched services to several Far East nations, as well as to the UK and Morocco, using leased Airbus A330s. The venture was halted within months, when load factors failed to live up to expectations. “We’re looking at returning to the long-haul market on a dry-lease basis,” Flynas SVP-commercial Paul Byrne said. “It’s a matter of economics more than anything. Previously, we used wet-lease quite heavily for the Haj [pilgrimage] period, which is around 4 to 5 weeks’ flying. The amount of money we paid for those would almost pay for a year’s dry lease.” <br/>