Southwest Airlines' operations have been a mess since mid-February, and the airline Wednesday tallied the damage: 9,400 flight cancellations and counting. That's equivalent to cancelling all of its flights for nearly 2.5 days. Put another way, the total approaches the combined number of flight cancellations on Southwest's 20 single worst days for cancellations since 2011. The carrier blamed the unprecedented flight cancellations on a trio of problems: winter weather, a high-profile labour dispute with its mechanics' union and the recent FAA grounding of the Boeing 737 Max 8. A Southwest spokesman said the heavy flight cancellations of the past 6 weeks will put Q1 into contention as the worst quarter for cancellations in Southwest history. <br/>
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A German labour union says it has reached a deal on pay and conditions for about 1,100 Ryanair cabin crew. The ver.di union said Wednesday that the deal will see Ryanair employees and contractors based in Germany receive E600 (US$676) more in basic pay each month and separate increases of up to E250. The union says the airline has also agreed to give employees a minimum number of flight hours and apply German labour laws that ensure sick pay and packages for staff who are let go. Christine Behle, a member of the union's board, said the deal will "stop the extremely precarious working conditions" at Ryanair. The airline declined to comment on the agreement. Negotiations having workers' representatives in the company are still ongoing. <br/>
The entire staff of Ryanair in Belgium can be covered by Belgian law from the 1st of April. Local laws already applied since January to pilots and cabin crews directly employed by the carrier, but not to some 350 persons employed by Crewlink, one of Ryanair’s subcontractors, who worked under less favourable conditions. The employees concerned, the vast majority of whom work at Brussels Airport, will be given the opportunity to sign contracts with Ryanair itself. The same goes for people employed by Workforce, another Ryanair subcontractor, the Christian trade union federation said. Ryanair staff in Belgium and some other European countries went on an unprecedented series of strikes in 2018 to press demands to be covered by the labour laws of the countries where they worked. <br/>
EasyJet hired more female pilots last year, taking the proportion in its cockpits to 5%, but that didn’t stop the gender pay gap widening as women were also added in lower-earning flight attendant jobs. Male employees at the carrier earned an average of 54.1% more than their female colleagues in 2018, a greater disparity than the previous year’s 51.7%. Airlines tend to have a wide wage gap because high-paying pilot jobs are dominated by men, whereas women make up a bigger proportion of cabin crew -- 71% at EasyJet -- who receive much less. The industry says part of the problem is a lack of would-be female aviators. The company has been vocal about its efforts to alter the balance, and said that 18% of new-entrant pilots this year will be women as it seeks to lift the overall proportion to one-fifth by 2020. <br/>
Despite a record-breaking year in terms of passenger numbers, Montenegro Airlines foresees another challenging year, president Nikola Vukićević said Wednesday. Vukićević said that after a period in 2017 when it looked as though the small national carrier might fail, it had bounced back in 2018. “2017 was a really tough year. We hardly survived at the beginning of that year.” The airline carried 580,000 passengers in 2017 and a bump to 645,000 in 2018 had proved vital, giving the airline the best passenger totals in its 24-year history. “Demand for our services is growing,” Vukićević said. Montenegro Airlines dipped into the wet-lease market in 2018 to supplement its fleet of 3 Embraer E195s and 2 Fokker F100s. It will follow the same pattern this year, with a single Boeing 737-300 or -400 likely being brought in to bolster its own aircraft. <br/>
Norwegian Air Shuttle has temporarily halted ticket sales for routes normally serviced by the Boeing 737 MAX to ensure the LCC can “meet customer expectations” in its latest update since the aircraft type’s grounding. Norwegian, which has a fleet of 18 MAXs, has been rerouting, rebooking or refunding passengers, as well as combining flights and reallocating aircraft, to cope with the capacity shortfall. In a March 25 update on its Ireland-US operations and the new flight from Dublin Airport to Hamilton, Toronto, Norwegian said it would temporarily operate additional services from Dublin using a 737-800 from March 31. The airline had previously said it was temporarily deploying a 787-9 to operate daily flights between Dublin and New York Stewart, combining Dublin to New York and Providence flights with a bus transfer service. <br/>
AirAsia X Group is considering launching routes to Europe and the US west coast over the next 2 years, using its initial deliveries of Airbus A330neos. The group could return to the European market this year, and its first flight to the US mainland may follow as soon as 2020, AirAsia X CE Benyamin Ismail said. The Europe flight would likely be operated by the group’s Thai affiliate, while the Malaysian unit is studying 1-stop US routes. AirAsia X’s first 2 A330neos are scheduled to arrive midyear. The aircraft will be leased and operated by Thai AirAsia X (TAAX). The group also has 66 A330neos on order, with 4 scheduled to be delivered in 2020. Those 4 will likely be split between the Thai and Malaysian operations, Ismail said. The 2 leased A330neos would be enough for TAAX to operate 1 route to Europe, Ismail said. <br/>