unaligned

Ryanair will press ahead with plans to move Polish staff on to self-employed contracts, Ryanair’s CMO Kenny Jacobs said. Ryanair is already trying to cope with an industrial relations revolt across the region, with pilots and cabin crew staging strikes in several countries over employment conditions. In Poland, a union representing Polish cabin crew has refused to sign the new contracts which the company’s local subsidiary wants to introduce. But Jacobs said the new contract reflected the local market. “It’s the local type of contract, the same as (national Polish carrier) LOT and other airlines,” Jacobs said. Many Polish Ryanair staff are currently on contracts provided by the parent company, but are being asked to transfer to the new contracts as Ryanair’s main operation in Poland is handed to Ryanair Sun, a local subsidiary. Paulo Conceicao, secretary of the Polish cabin crew union, CWR, who works as cabin crew at Ryanair, said that the self-employed contract would mean staff would lose important rights such as sick pay and maternity leave.<br/>

Ryanair’s year-long dispute with unions took a bizarre turn with the release of CCTV footage the discount carrier says shows cabin crew staging a photo of them being forced to sleep on the floor at Malaga airport in Spain. The original shot appeared to depict staff bedded down at the terminal after being stranded by storms, and was accompanied by the suggestion that the company had “left them there.” Ryanair initially apologised for the situation, saying there’d been no available hotel rooms, before posting the footage Wednesday with the claim that the initial image was a fake photo. “This video proves that the original picture was staged and no crew slept on the floor,” it added. The SNPVAC union, which represents the Portuguese crew, argued that the picture was an accurate illustration of what had happened, with 24 people left overnight without food, drink or enough chairs to sit down. “Ryanair did us all a favour by providing evidence that in fact there were no minimum conditions for their employees to spend the night with dignity,” it said. The incident comes amid an increasingly fractious clash between Ryanair and staff demanding sweetened contracts after the Dublin-based company was forced to accept unionization. <br/>

Cyprus said Thursday it would offer refunds or assume the cost of rebooking passengers stranded by the collapse of Cobalt, a Cypriot budget carrier which went bust on Wednesday. Cobalt, which carried approximately 3,000 passengers daily, went into administration after talks to find an investor fell through. The company had a fleet of six Airbus A320s under lease and flew to about 20 destinations. It launched operations in 2016, backed by Chinese investors. “It is a sad day for all the employees and passengers of Cobalt Air. The company has been working relentlessly during the past months to secure the long-term financing of the airline,” Cobalt said. The company went into administration at midnight Wednesday, it said. Cyprus’s transport ministry said Cobalt passengers scheduled to travel on Oct 17 or 18 needed to purchase a new ticket with another carrier and would be reimbursed. It gave contact details of two Cyprus-based travel agents which would arrange transport for others scheduled to fly until Oct 24, with the cost assumed by the state.<br/>

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is suffering operational losses of 2b rupees (US$15m) each month and has had trouble paying employees this month, the Dawn newspaper said Thursday. The losses were aggravated by a fuel price hike and a depreciation of more than 20% in the rupee currency within a year, Aviation Secretary Mohammad Saqib Aziz told a Senate committee on Wednesday, it added. Hemorrhaging money and losing market share to Gulf-based rivals such as Etihad and Emirates, PIA has suffered management turmoil in recent years and a 2016 plane crash that led to 47 deaths. The operational losses were in addition to the airline’s liabilities of 400b rupees, including bank loans, Aziz added. One cause of the financial woes was overstaffing, Aziz said, adding that PIA has 13,500 regular employees and some 3,500 of daily wages, for about 450 workers for each aircraft. Five of PIA’s fleet of 33 aircraft have been grounded for maintenance, he added. A PIA spokesman on Thursday said October staff salaries were paid after a delay because of financial constraints. “Salaries were delayed this month, more than half of the employees got salaries by the 6th or 7th,” the spokesman said. “The senior staff have also been paid,”<br/>

Add Alaska Airlines to the list of airlines raising baggage fees. The carrier plans to raise baggage fees for tickets purchased on or after Dec. 5. Alaska will charge $30 for the first checked bag and $40 for the second, in line with new prices at JetBlue, American, Delta and United, according to a new fee chart on its website. JetBlue set $30 and $40 as the new industry benchmark when it hiked its fees in August. Alaska passengers face a bigger increase in the charge for a second bag than passengers on other airlines because Alaska has been charging $25 for the second checked bag, compared with $35 before the increase as other carriers. Alaska is also increasing the price for a third checked bag, to $100 from $75. That is still below the $150 fee charged by American, United and Delta. Overpacking will cost Alaska passengers more, too. The airline increased the fee for an overweight bag to $100 from $75. All bag fees are each way, per person.<br/>

Jetstar Asia's near-term growth will focus on increasing frequencies on certain routes within its existing network. The budget carrier's CE Bara Pasupathi lists its services to Darwin, Okinawa and Denpasar as routes where it will soon add more frequencies. "Where we are growing is new markets that have gone in with around three or four [weekly] frequencies and then we add up the numbers," he says. The carrier has already announced that Singapore-Darwin will increase from four to five times weekly from 28 October, while Singapore-Okinawa will increase from three to four times weekly on its service from 15 November. Jetstar Asia will also add around six to seven additional flights on its Singapore-Denpasar route for the upcoming northern winter season, which Pasupathi says reflects demand is driven by European travellers connecting onto its network from other carriers. He explains that the carrier is seeing stronger demand from its 32 interline and codeshare partners, as well as increasing feed from 49% shareholder Qantas. "We are seeing more transfer traffic at Singapore that comes from Europe, across the Asia-Pacific region... 20% of our total traffic is from transfer," he said. "It has also helped that Qantas' shifting of hubs from Dubai to Singapore has enabled us to carry more of their passengers on our own network."<br/>