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Garuda will keep taking deliveries of Boeing’s 737 Max jet, giving the new aircraft a vote of confidence while local rival Lion Air threatens to cancel its US$22b order after suffering a plane crash in October. “Our Max jet has been performing well, we have no significant issue with it,” Garuda president director I Gusti Ngurah Askhara Danadiputra said Thursday. The airline has 4 Max aircraft in its fleet and is due to take 49 more through 2030. While Garuda isn’t one of the biggest customers of Boeing’s newest model of the 737, its support is coming at a time when questions surrounding the crash of a 2-month-old Max have hovered over Boeing and weighed on its shares. US pilot unions have also questioned why flight crews weren’t alerted to the plane’s anti-stall software. <br/>

Air France’s main pilots’ union elected a new leader to represent it in negotiations with the carrier, ushering in the possibility of a less hostile approach to relations with management. Guillaume Gestas will replace Philippe Evain as president of SNPL’s Air France branch, the union said Thursday following a vote by members. Jean-Michel Julien and Guillaume Schmid will serve as VPs. Evain led pilots through a series of damaging strikes over pay that cost Air France-KLM hundreds of millions of euros this year. With fresh blood at the helm of both the union and the airline there is early optimism in some quarters that relations between the two sides could start to thaw. “Lots of pilots are unhappy with the stance the union has been taking. It has been a combative relationship for a long time,” a consultant said. <br/>