Air India Assets Holding, a special purpose vehicle that holds part of the carrier’s debt and assets, is planning its first rupee-denominated bond sale to refinance some debt of the airline. Air India Assets is aiming to raise INR220b (US$3.2b) and has sought fee bids from bankers Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said. Out of the total, the company plans to raise INR145b through notes that will have a sovereign guarantee while the nation’s govt will fully service the remaining. The SPV was set up by the govt last year, and about INR295b of Air India’s debt was transferred to it to ease the ailing carrier’s debt burden and to make it easier for prime minister Narendra Modi to sell a stake in it. The airline, with a total debt of $8.4b, lost INR76.35b in the year to end-March, according to provisional estimates. <br/>
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On the 13th day of their strike, representatives of the Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union failed to reach an agreement with the management at EVA Air to end the dispute, reports said Tuesday. The outcome followed 11 hours of talks mediated by the Ministry of Labor. While the Central News Agency reported a consensus had been reached about 1 of the issues, the union’s demand for no retaliatory measures against strikers, on the whole the talks still broke down, meaning the strike was likely to continue, the Liberty Times and the Apple Daily reported. Since June 20, about 1,000 flights were canceled, affecting an estimated 200,000 passengers, and causing both sympathy with the flight attendants’ long working hours but also resentment at the disruption caused to the public’s travel plans. <br/>
A boarding gate mix-up almost landed a US teenager in Germany this week instead of Sweden. Fourteen-year-old Anton Berg was traveling Sunday from Raleigh, North Carolina to Newark, New Jersey, and then to Sweden. United flew the teen, considered an unaccompanied minor by the airline, to Newark and said an employee took him to gate B65, where he was supposed to get on a Scandinavian Airlines flight. However, he boarded a flight by Eurowings which had a plane at the gate, United said. It is unclear why Anton was able to get on the Eurowings flight and whether he had a boarding pass. As the airliner taxied to begin its trek to Germany, Anton alerted the flight crew that he was supposed to be going to Sweden. The plane eventually went back to the terminal, and Anton was booked on another flight to Europe. <br/>