Engine glitches that have disrupted Airbus SE A320neo jet operations around the world may take at least three more months to resolve amid a scarcity of upgraded turbines, according to comments from one of the planemaker’s biggest customers, Lufthansa. Fixes for the snags afflicting the geared turbofan, or GTF, powerplant made by United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney unit and its partners won’t immediately filter through to the Lufthansa fleet, according to the carrier’s CEO, Carsten Spohr. “Our dialog with the manufacturers, especially Pratt & Whitney, on the big issues surrounding the A320neo engine suggests there’ll be no relief soon,” Spohr said. “For another few months we’ll be on our own. At the earliest, the fixes will come in November.” While Pratt has eliminated the most pressing faults with the GTF, it’s having to juggle demand for replacement engines with the need to supply turbines to about 100 new planes that have been parked up awaiting the fix. That’s meant that Lufthansa and other early customers for the A320neo, most of them in Asia, are having to wait in line until spare turbines become available. A Pratt spokeswoman said all new A320neo engines now include upgraded components. She added that the US company is working closely with clients including Lufthansa to move planes to the latest configuration.<br/>
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SIA has signed a strategic collaboration agreement with China’s Alibaba Group to expand digital technologies and services between the two companies. This will see new cooperation between SIA and Alibaba platforms such as Fliggy, Cainiao Network, Alipay, and Alibaba Cloud. The collaboration will enable SIA to unlock more than 600m monthly active mobile users on Alibaba’s China retail marketplace and gain customers insights. It is also one of the most comprehensive partnerships between Alibaba Group and a foreign airline. Since 2016, SIA has had a flagship store in Fliggy, an Alibaba travel service platform. The new agreement will allow customers to convert SIA KrisFlyer loyalty miles to Fliggy points and vice versa, and also enjoy benefits within the Star Alliance network.<br/>
The airline industry has talked a lot about how it can use new distribution capabilities to embrace novel ways of retailing airfares to corporate and leisure travellers. For a glimpse at what may come, look to Air Canada, which this week processed its first transaction via a new platform called NDC Exchange. For several years now, Air Canada has offered internet-based connections for online travel agencies and travel management companies to access its airfares. These worked outside of the incumbent three giants of travel distribution, Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport. About 40 to 50 agencies access Air Canada’s application programming interfaces, or APIs, to process about a million tickets a year via direct connections that avoid the intermediaries. This year, Air Canada will generate approximately $600m in revenue via these APIs. That’s still a minority of Air Canada’s overall distribution mix. But it avoids the fees those middlemen charge and it enables the airline to have enhanced control over how the content appears on travel agency reservation systems to make sure they’re presenting their full-service products in the best way and not encouraging customers to shop by lowest price. In recent years, Air Canada and other airline industry players have gradually adopted new technical standards for their APIs that have been championed by the IATA. Last week, Air Canada was the first airline to announce it was adopting a new, third way. It began using NDC Exchange, a platform that does the work on Air Canada’s behalf to transform data from its web services into a way that’s readable by sellers using any of the different versions of New Distribution Capability.<br/>