Virgin Australia Holdings said Friday it expects to record a loss in fiscal 2019 due to tougher domestic conditions, as well as fuel price and foreign exchange headwinds. The announcement marks a drastic shift in tone for the airline operator, which in February posted its best half-year profit in a decade on the strength of its domestic business. Underlying earnings for 2019 will be at least A$100m (US$68.93m) lower than the $64.4m reported in 2018, the company said. “While we have continued to grow revenue, this announcement shows that our business needs to become more resilient to challenges such as weaker demand, high fuel prices and the foreign exchange environment,” said Group CE Paul Scurrah. The company flagged lower demand in both its corporate and leisure sectors, owing to weaker spending in Australia. <br/>
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IndiGo fell the most in a year amid reports its billionaire founders have hired law firms after differences cropped up between them. Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal are trying to sort out disagreements about the carrier’s future strategy and clauses in the company’s shareholder agreement, it was reported Thursday, citing unnamed people close to the development. Legal firms Khaitan & Co and J Sagar Associates are working with the founders to find a solution. The growth strategy of the airline “remains unchanged and firmly in place,” CE Ronojoy Dutta said in an email to employees. Representatives for IndiGo declined to comment. Shares of InterGlobe Aviation slid 9% Thursday, their biggest drop since last May. The stock, which closed at an all-time high Wednesday, has gained about 26% so far this year. <br/>
Southwest Airlines has requested to operate out of all 16 new gates that will be added to its concourse at Denver International, as part of an aggressive growth plan at the Mile High City. Southwest already leases 24 gates on concourse C at Denver, and has expressed interest in the 16 additional gates that are coming as part of an ongoing expansion. "We'd like all of them," Southwest CE Gary Kelly said Wednesday. "It would put us at 40 gates. With our productivity we can do a lot of flights with that… We try to manage our costs carefully and we won't commit to that real estate unless we were certain we are going to use it." Denver airport plans to add 39 gates across its 3 concourses, as part of a US$3.5b programme. An airport spokesperson said that the airport is in talks with "a number of carriers" on leasing the new gates. <br/>
AirAsia X achieved a slight improvement in profits for Q1, which the airline attributes partly to its route restructuring efforts. The group’s net profit of RM43.3m (U$10.38m) in the quarter was up by 4% year-over-year. Capacity was down 5% as the airline suspended some longer single-route markets, and instead increased service to core markets where it has more flights. AirAsia X has terminated flights to Tehran, Kathmandu, Male in the Maldives, and Auckland. It has redeployed this capacity to China, Japan, South Korea and India. The Malaysia-based unit is taking “a more modest approach to its operations” in Q1 of 2019, Group CE Nadda Buranasiri said. Although the Malaysian operation added 2 more aircraft in Q1, it is keeping expansion in check to focus on yields. This unit will not receive any more aircraft in 2019. <br/>
As Vietnam's aviation sector booms and passenger numbers rise at double-digit rates, local upstart Bamboo Airways is embracing what it hopes will be a novel way of standing out in a crowded market: Golf. Competition among airlines in Vietnam has intensified since Bamboo launched in January. AirAsia Group recently cancelled its foray into the Vietnamese market, and increased traffic has placed strain on Vietnam's ageing infrastructure. But Bamboo CE Trinh Van Quyet is confident he can fend off VietJet and Vietnam Airlines by using the airline to connect his golf resorts to cities in Vietnam and northeast Asia. "Even international airlines don't have an ecosystem like Bamboo's," said Quyet, chairman of Bamboo's parent company, FLC, which owns 5 golf resorts across the country. <br/>
Thomas Cook has received "multiple bids" for its airlines since launching a strategic review of the business in February, it confirmed Thursday in disclosing half-year results. The travel group says the offers variously span the whole of the airlines business or just parts of it. The Group Airline unit's underlying operating profit worsened 20% in the 6-month period ended March 31, to GBP71m (US$91m), as revenue declined 8.1% to GBP1.02b. Capacity was boosted 9% in the winter season. Passenger numbers were up 8% "against a strong prior year comparator", says the group, while operational performance "substantially improved" and 19% fewer passengers were affected by 3h delays. The airline unit's seat sales in the short- and medium-haul sectors were up 12%, but yields were "slightly behind a strong prior year". <br/>
Two days before the anniversary of Cuba's worst civil aviation accident, authorities have released a statement blaming the deceased crew for miscalculating the weight and balance of the plane. The Cuban Institute of Civil Aviation said Thursday that the Mexican crew of Cubana Flight 972 appeared to have committed "errors in calculations of weight and balance of the plane, which led to the loss of control and the crash of the aircraft during take-off." The crash killed 112 people. The plane and crew were chartered from a Mexican company by Cuba's national airline due to a lack of Cuban-owned aircraft. The Boeing 737-200 crashed a short distance from Havana's Jose Marti Airport just after noon May 18, 2018. The accident left 1 survivor. <br/>