Lufthansa spent E500m on compensating passengers for flight delays and cancellations last year, a senior company figure said Friday. A Lufthansa spokesman could not confirm the cost cited by Thorsten Lange, the German airline’s head of fuel purchasing. However, the group’s bill for such problems had more than doubled to E350m in the first nine months of the year, the spokesman added. The figure for the full year is due to be published next month. Lufthansa struggled last year like rivals to cope with Europe’s rising demand for air travel.<br/>
star
Brazilian Airline Avianca Brasil, which filed for bankruptcy protection in December, said late on Friday that a judge had decided that it would be allowed to maintain its current fleet of planes under operation until at least April. The ruling from the bankruptcy court came after requests from some creditors to be allowed to repossess some of Avianca’s planes. The judge, according to the airline, decided to give the company time until a scheduled creditors’ assembly in early April to try to find a solution for its financing difficulties. Avianca Brasil has been talking to hedge fund Elliott Management Corp about the hedge fund providing a US$68.59m loan, sources told Reuters this week.<br/>
New Delhi has budgeted only a token amount to support Air India's continuing turnaround for the year to April 2020, after documents revealed that it has received US$596m (Rs40b) this financial year. The final amount is up sharply from the previously allocated budget of Rs6.5b for the struggling carrier for the year to 31 March 2019, and well over double the Rs18b provided by New Delhi to the carrier in the 2017/18 fiscal year. By comparison, only Rs100,000 has been allocated to the turnaround plan for fiscal 2019/20. In 2018 New Delhi attempted to sell a 76% stake in the financially-hamstrung carrier, but the privatisation failed to attract a single bid. In the aftermath of that failed attempt, the airline issued tenders seeking a total of Rs15 billion in urgent working capital loans, and sought additional capital infusions from the government.<br/>