African low-cost airline Fastjet has suspended all domestic flights within Tanzania until the end of January after the country’s aviation authorities warned they are likely to revoke its license, the company said on Monday. The airline, launched in 2012, has faced tough conditions in Tanzania, its home market, in recent years and warned on Dec. 7 that it may have to go into administration, close down or sell itself because it only had enough cash to keep it in business for a week. “Fastjet Tanzania would like to inform all customers who booked air tickets for December 2018 and January 2019 that it has suspended its flights for a while due to operational issues,” the airline said. All flights to and from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique are unaffected, the company said without indicating what would become of flights to Zambia. On Friday the company said it had met conditions for an open offer and equity refinancing to raise funds. All passengers who had bought tickets for the period would have their fares refunded, starting Dec. 20, the notice added.<br/>
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Lion Air announced Monday it was funding a multimillion-dollar search effort using a Dutch company for the second black box and missing victims from doomed flight JT-610. The Boeing 737 MAX vanished from radar 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta on October 29, crashing into waters off the north coast of Indonesia’s Java Island and killing all 189 people onboard. Authorities called off the grim task of identifying victims of the crash last month, with only 125 people officially identified after tests on human remains that filled some 200 body bags. Following requests from victims’ families, Lion said it had allocated US$2.6m to hire a Dutch company to continue the search with its ship the MPV Everest. “The search operation will focus on the latest coordinates of the crash... with an operational time of 10 consecutive days in December,” the airline said. The MPV Everest, a 142-metre long vessel with state-of-the-art remotely operated vehicles, will arrive near the crash site on Wednesday. Bad weather had delayed its trip from the Malaysian port of Johor Baru.<br/>
Japanese LCC Peach Aviation will prepare for its merger with sister carrier Vanilla Air by taking over Vanilla’s routes next year. Peach and Vanilla Air are both subsidiaries of All Nippon Airways (ANA) Holdings. In March 2018, the group confirmed its intention to merge the two LCCs under the Peach brand during the fiscal year beginning April 1, 2019. Most of the flights branded as Vanilla Air will be transferred to Peach during the next summer schedule season, which runs from March 31 to Oct. 26, 2019. However, in some cases there will be a gap between the end of the Vanilla flight and the start of the corresponding Peach flight, and a handful of the Vanilla routes will be dropped. Peach has also announced new routes. Ten of Vanilla’s 13 international and domestic routes will be resumed as Peach flights. The three flights dropped are from Tokyo Narita-Hakodate, Japan; Narita-Hong Kong; and Okinawa, Japan-Ishigaki, Japan. Flights will be increased on routes from Ishigaki to Narita and Osaka. Peach said it will launch two new routes in the summer season, and relaunch three others that it has previously suspended. The most significant new route is a daily flight between Sapporo, Japan and Seoul, beginning April 25. <br/>
The engineering arm of Monarch Airlines, the holiday carrier that collapsed last year, has been put up for sale by its majority owner, private equity group Greybull Capital. Monarch Aircraft Engineering, which services aircraft for a range of leading airlines including Virgin Atlantic and easyJet, is in talks with a number of potential buyers about a sale of all or parts of its business. It is the last remnant of Monarch Airlines, which went bust last year after several restructuring attempts. The failure of the airline, also owned by Greybull Capital, forced the UK government to launch its biggest peacetime repatriation operation, flying home more than 80,000 people. The airlift cost taxpayers £60m. Monarch was founded in 1968 by the Swiss-Italian Mantegazza family. The engineering business survived the collapse but was put through a company voluntary arrangement (CVA), a form of insolvency, last month to shed historic debt inherited from its airline affiliate. The insolvency led to the loss of some customers, the company said. “A CVA, completed in November to resolve historic debt which did not relate to the company’s day-to-day operation, has resulted in some loss of custom which has presented the business with a number of challenges which need to be resolved,” Monarch Aircraft Engineering said this weekend. <br/>
Shares in Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes, Brazil’s largest airline, recovered after early losses on Monday after the company said it would have to review the proposed takeover of its mileage subsidiary Smiles Fidelidade. Shares in Gol were up 2.3% and shares in Smiles 3.5% after Gol said the Brazilian stock exchange decided the structure proposed by Gol to take over its subsidiary could not be approved. Gol wanted to list its shares in a segment of the stock exchange with increased governance rules, where Smiles is already listed, and pay Smiles shareholders with these shares, but the proposal was rejected. The deal would be paid with Gol shares and an unspecified amount of cash. Shareholders had criticized the structure because holders of the new Gol stock would only hold non-voting shares in the airline and in the mileage company. Analysts at XP Investimentos said the B3 rejection complicates the proposed Gol reorganization, but said a presidential decree allowing foreign ownership of Brazilian airlines may present “new alternatives” for Gol to proceed with the intended takeover. In a securities filing, Gol also said it would weigh options considering the presidential decree allowing foreign companies to own up to 100% of Brazilian airlines. Until last week, foreign investors could own up to 20% of a Brazilian airline.<br/>
A Colorado college student learned the hard way that some pets aren’t welcome on planes. Lanice Powless was travelling home to California through Denver International Airport last week for the holidays. She is a student at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, where she lives in the dorms with her pink pet Betta fish “Cassie.” Powless said a fish seemed like a more responsible choice for a pet in college, rather than a cat or dog. Before her purchase, she says she checked TSA to see if she could fly home with the fish. TSA policy allows live fish in carry-on bags after inspection by a TSA officer. “Typically I would just check in and then go through TSA and walked right on with it,” she said. “No one’s ever stopped me.” Last week that changed. Powless said she and a friend were checking their bags for a flight home when a Southwest employee informed her the fish couldn’t fly. Powless didn’t realize airlines may have separate rules from TSA. Southwest’s pet policy is stricter, allowing only small dogs and crates in crates stowed under the customer’s seat. No pets can travel in Southwest cargo bins. Story has full details.<br/>
Wizz Air is to expand its UK operation with another pair of Airbus A321s next year, supporting a network expansion from London Luton. The airline has nine Airbus jets stationed at Luton but will take this to 11 over the course of June-July 2019, says Wizz Air UK managing director Owain Jones. Jones added that the UK operation will further enhance capacity by replacing one of its five A320s with an A321. Wizz Air UK will open six new services – to Oslo, Bergen, Porto, Catania, Turku and Thessaloniki – during the summer of 2019. It is also lifting frequencies on routes including Athens, Larnaca, Tirana, Chisinau, Constanta and Suceava. The expansion will amount to 22% growth from Luton, year-on-year, and means Wizz will be the largest operator at the airport in terms of seat capacity. Wizz slashed its UK growth forecast two years ago, following the UK referendum decision to withdraw from the European Union. But Jones says that, while the UK regions showed weakness, London has proven to be “resilient”, allowing the carrier to put capacity back into the market. He says that growth of 15% is “sustainable”, adding: “We’ve always seen Wizz as a 15% growth business.”<br/>