Ryanair amended the terms of a E700m share buyback Wednesday to allow block repurchases it said could limit the holdings of British shareholders and ensure it remains majority EU-owned after Brexit. Ryanair triggered contingency plans in March to restrict the voting rights of British shareholders if the UK leaves the EU without a deal on future relations or quits both the EU customs union and single market in a "hard" Brexit scenario. The restrictions are aimed at ensuring the carrier remains majority EU-owned to comply with its licensing and flight rights. Ryanair CFO Neil Sorohan said in February that while the airline was 55% EU-owned, Britain-based shareholders controlled 20% of its stock. He said he expected half of those to redomicile to the EU in a no-deal or "hard" Brexit. <br/>
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Ryanair has announced a new partnership with British company VA Airline Training to train pilots. Would-be pilots undertaking the VA programme are trained using Ryanair procedures with an expected 300 individuals expected to be assessed and trained over the next 3 years. “This new Ryanair-VA Airline Training programme will provide a steady pipeline of talented and professional pilots,” said the airline’s head of crew training captain, Senan O’Shea. “Ryanair will hire up to 1,000 pilots per annum over the course of the next 5 years,” he added. Aer Lingus is also seeking new pilots to train and says it is particularly focused on female candidates. <br/>
Start-up carrier Bamboo Airways intends to launch Vietnam’s first direct flights to the US by early next year on a leased Airbus A380, signalling the ambition of the newest entrant to one of Asia’s fastest-growing aviation markets. Trinh Van Quyet, chairman and CE of FLC, the Hanoi-based real estate and resorts group that owns the airline, said Bamboo had applied to US aviation authorities for permission to fly to the US and was now pinning down details of the non-stop flight. “We will start in Q1 of 2020 if we get permission by the end of this year,” Quyet said. Vietnam Airlines is considering launching flights to the US west coast. VietJet Air, its biggest competitor, is believed to be weighing a similar move, but declined to comment on its plans. <br/>
Planned US startup Moxy will have “lots of flexibility” with the Airbus A220-300 that would allow the airline to go international, David Neeleman says. Moxy is the latest in a string of start-ups founded by Neeleman that include JetBlue Airways and Azul. In January, Moxy firmed an MOU with Airbus for 60 A220-300s, the narrowbody designed and built by Bombardier as the CS300 until Airbus bought the program. Moxy had just signed a purchase-and-leaseback LOI with lessor GECAS for the first 9 of its A220s. Neeleman said GECAS will deliver the first A220 in April 2021, allowing Moxy to start flying from May. Moxy’s primary focus will be US routes where there is no direct competition. With Moxy, Neeleman said, “you can get there twice as fast at half the price. That’s an easy sell.” <br/>
Air Niugini, Papua New Guinea’s largest airline, is making progress on a financial turnaround plan and is ready to begin a major fleet refresh, a senior executive said. The airline is “now in a position to start looking to the future,” and renewing its fleet will be “our priority over the next 2 to 3 years,” Air Niugini executive manager David Glover said. The carrier will probably concentrate on its widebody and narrowbody aircraft first, then its regional fleet, Glover said. Air Niugini’s only widebodies are 2 Boeing 767-300ERs, and it will likely replace these in 2021 when their leases expire, Glover said. The airline will probably look for used widebodies, such as Airbus A330s or even Boeing 787s, he said. On the narrowbody side, the airline already has four 737 MAXs on order. The first two are scheduled to arrive in the last quarter of 2020. <br/>
Air Italy, 49% owned by Qatar Airways, continues to push back against accusations by the 3 major US carriers that it is “cheating” by adding new flights from its Milan hub to several US cities. “I would love to know how we are cheating,” Rossen Dimitrov, Air Italy’s COO, said. “We are a fully European airline, and we meet all the regulations and requirements of the EU. We have a majority shareholder which is European.” The US carriers have questioned Qatar’s motivations, asking the State Department to look into whether Qatar’s investment is appropriate. “With respect to Meridiana Airlines [Air Italy], it is clear that that airline could not be driving the growth and funding the losses it is clearly having if there wasn’t a strong govt entity behind the scenes funding that,” Delta CE Ed Bastian said this month. <br/>
The FAA has removed 3 senior managers in the office overseeing Southwest Airlines, amid allegations of lax safety enforcement raised by agency whistleblowers and various resulting govt inquiries, according to people familiar with the matter. The DoT's inspector-general has been looking into some of the safety issues for many months, these people said, including lapses by the airline in documenting maintenance for more than 100 of its jets. Other parts of the probe focus on failures to reliably compute the weight of checked baggage and hazardous landing incidents in which one aircraft smacked a wingtip on the tarmac and another ran off the strip in stormy weather. Separate congressional investigations began delving into a number of such operational and maintenance slipups by Southwest more recently. <br/>