Emirates will “work smart and hard” to improve its performance after the Gulf airline’s profit hit a decade low as soaring fuel costs and a strong dollar took a toll on earnings, while passenger growth stalled. After years of growth, during which it has become one of the world’s biggest airlines as other long-established national carriers have struggled, Dubai-based, state-owned Emirates warned last week profit would be lower than previous years. It revealed just how badly it had fared on Thursday, reporting a 69% fall in net profit to 871m dirhams ($237m) in the year to March 31. Meanwhile, the number of passengers flying Emirates rose 0.2% to 58.6m, its weakest growth rate in at least 15 years, while cargo increased 1.4% to 2.7m tonnes. Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said in a statement that the year had been “tough”, with higher oil prices, a strong dollar and stiffer competition, adding “our performance was not as strong as we would have liked”. While revenue at the airline rose 6% to 97.9b dirhams, its profit fell to its lowest level since 2009. And profit at Emirates Group, which includes other units, fell 43.7% to 2.3b dirhams, its lowest since 2012.<br/>
unaligned
Brazilian airline Azul’s CE said Thursday that its two larger competitors had barred the carrier from providing a competing air shuttle service on the highly profitable Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro route. “Essentially what they did was they had a shutdown plan to keep us out,” CEO John Rodgerson said, referring to competitors Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes and LATAM. The comments come weeks after Azul engineered a plan to break into the Sao Paulo-Rio de Janeiro route, by far the most transited in South America, but it fell apart after Gol and LATAM intervened. The three airlines have been disputing the airport rights set to be left behind by their struggling competitor Avianca Brasil, which was scheduled to auction the routes this week as part of a bankruptcy process. Azul initially reached a deal with Avianca Brasil but a few weeks later Gol and LATAM reached a different deal with Avianca Brasil’s key creditors, which was ultimately approved and sidelined Azul. Both plans hinged on a successful Avianca Brasil bankruptcy auction but the event was recently suspended indefinitely, meaning that even Gol and LATAM may not be able to get the airport rights they had agreed to buy. “I don’t think they ever had the intention of closing on the deal,” Rodgerson said of Gol and LATAM’s agreement with Avianca Brasil. Gol and LATAM have previously denied any anti-competitive stance.<br/>
A bid being stitched together by pilots of the grounded Jet Airways India may get a hearing if no binding offers emerge from the four potential investors currently in the race, people with knowledge of the matter said. Lenders led by State Bank of India have asked a group of airline employees, seeking to make a formal proposal, to wait to see who remains in the race after a Friday deadline lapses, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. SBI Capital Markets Ltd, which is advising Jet Airways’s lenders, has received at least three unsolicited approaches, one of the people said. Etihad Airways, India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund and private equity firms TPG Capital and Indigo Partners have been shortlisted as potential investors. Interest in the carrier waned after Jet was grounded in April and some of its landing and parking slots were temporarily allotted to rivals, the Economic Times reported. <br/>
The managerial merry-go-round at the top of Hong Kong Airlines continued on Thursday, as a new CEO and finance chief joined from the HNA Group and the company’s president quit. Sun Jianfeng, a director of Hong Kong Airlines Holdings, the carrier’s holding company, was installed as CE – a newly created role – and Li Neng was made CFO, according to sources. Sun has held jobs at the carrier and at Hainan Airlines, the flagship business of HNA, which has an approximately 29% stake in Hong Kong Airlines. The new arrivals, which the company did not formally announce, added to the series of changes in recent weeks. That included frenetic boardroom activity at HNA, amid a court case to determine who controls the company. The airline said president Wang Liya – an outsider originally drafted from the national aviation regulator – would step down into an advisory role. His job was the closest thing the company had to a chief executive, before the appointment of Sun, who will now be the airline’s designated liaison with the Civil Aviation Department.<br/>
Russian regional carrier Yamal Airlines will not take the last of 10 Sukhoi Superjet 100s (SSJ100s) from an order of 25, Yamal CEO Vassily Kryuk told the Interfax newswire this week. The decision was apparently made because of economic reasons, not the crash landing of Aeroflot’s SSJ100 at Moscow Sheremetyevo May 5 that killed 41 people. Yamal signed a lease agreement for 25 Superjets through the state-owned GTLK leasing company in 2015. The airline’s fleet includes 15 of the type, in a two-class configuration with eight seats in business and 90 in economy class. GTLK confirmed the airline refused the last 10 aircraft, but specified the decision was made last year as the operator “couldn’t forecast payload for these aircraft in the next years.” The lessor said it had no firm order for the last 10 aircraft for Yamal. “Expenses for continued airworthiness don’t allow us to expand the [Superjet] fleet,” Kryuk explained to Interfax. Yamal has operated Superjets since 2016, which replace its aging Boeing 737 Classics. Besides SSJs, the carrier operates eight Airbus A320-200s, three A321s and 10 Bombardier CRJ200LRs.<br/>
Lufthansa’s lower-cost affiliate Eurowings will open its first Eastern Europe base, in the Kosovo capital of Pristina, from June 19. Eurowings will base one Airbus A319 in Pristina, and plans to operate 60 weekly frequencies to destinations in Switzerland, as well as to Dusseldorf, Munich and Stuttgart (Germany). Pristina will become the LCC’s 13th base. Eurowings CEO Thorsten Dirks said the airline has already become Europe’s third largest point-to-point carrier with more than 40 million passengers. “We [are solidifying] this status with the expansion of our network toward Eastern Europe. The location of Pristina will play an important role in this [plan],” he said. Eurowings operates 205 aircraft to 210 destinations in more than 50 countries.<br/>