A co-founder of India’s biggest airline IndiGo, Rakesh Gangwal, said reports that a truce had been brokered between him and another co-founder Rahul Bhatia over disagreements on corporate governance were “false and misleading.” In a letter dated Monday, Gangwal told the board of IndiGo's parent InterGlobe Aviation Ltd that issues between him and Bhatia remained unresolved. Gangwal last month alleged violations of corporate governance rules at InterGlobe, calling for India’s securities regulator to intervene. At the centre of Gangwal’s complaint were Bhatia-controlled IGE Group’s significant controlling rights over IndiGo, which he alleged allows them to carry out “questionable” transactions. In the latest letter, disclosed by InterGlobe to exchanges on Tuesday, Gangwal said he did not back a proposal by the airline to expand its board of directors to 10, arguing that it would benefit IGE and help it “rework and dilute” an agreed-upon policy on related-party transactions. InterGlobe lost almost $1b in market value on July 10 after Gangwal disclosed his complaint to regulators, although the shares have recouped most of those losses since then.<br/>
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Southwest is seeking to head off a potential pilot shortage through a new partnership with several industry players that could provide the airline with up to 400 additional pilots annually. The effort aims to guide new pilots through initial training and help them land jobs as flight instructors or charter aircraft pilots, where they can accumulate hours before applying for jobs as Southwest first officers. US regulations from 2013 require new pilots to have 1,500h of flight time, a level some observers say has stymied the new-pilot pipeline. But accumulating hours is not the primarily goal of Southwest's new training programme, which is called Destination 225, vice-president of flight operations Alan Kasher said. Rather, the partnership will help ensure pilots receive training and experience that prepares them for jobs in an airline environment. "The quality of the training is the key," he said. "What we did is build our foundational principles into their training programmes." The carrier's partners in the programme include pilot training and flight simulator company CAE and several charter and private aircraft operators, including Jet Linx Aviation, XOJet and Swift Air. Another partner, aviation services company Argus, has reviewed the training that CAE and the charter partners will provide, and will evaluate pilots' performance through the programme.<br/>
Chile-based low-cost carrier JetSmart has disclosed plans to consolidate its Argentinian domestic presence by adding more aircraft and routes before April 2020, the first anniversary of its operations in country. In November, JetSmart will launch Airbus A320-operated flights to two new domestic Argentinian destinations: Rosario and Ushuaia. The airline will offer twice-weekly services to Puerto Iguazu and Mendoza from Rosario, Argentina's third-largest city. No launch date has yet been decided for JetSmart's planned flights from Rosario to Salta and Neuquen. Twice-weekly flights to Ushuaia in Patagonia will be operated from JetSmart's Buenos Aires El Palomar base. In addition to these two new destinations, JetSmart will also in November add new twice-weekly routes from Puerto Iguazu to Cordoba and Mendoza. Despite its seemingly modest 2019 expansion plans, the airline has decided to bet on the potential of the Argentinian low-cost market. JetSmart is to double its three-strong Airbus A320 by April 2020. The carrier's fourth and fifth A320s will arrive by year-end and the sixth during the first quarter of 2020. These jets will be of the Ceo family, although JetSmart plans to deploy the Neo in Argentina "as soon as possible”.<br/>
Kuwait-based Jazeera Airways substantially increased its profit figures for the 2019 first half, as the hybrid carrier continued to expand its route network and prepared to launch its first service to Europe. The airline reported a KD6.2m ($20.4m) net profit Monday, more than four times greater than the KD1.4m recorded for 1H 2018. Revenue rose 37.4% to KD47.3m and passenger numbers grew by 20% to 1.1m. One factor behind the improved figures is fleet utilization, which has risen steadily in the past two years and stood at 14.8 hours in Q2 2019. Load factor has also improved significantly over that period. Jazeera was traditionally profitable with load factors in the 60% range, but in the last quarter these reached 77.6%, up 3.9% on the same period a year ago. Passenger yield for the second quarter was up 11.5% at KD45.6. The results come as Jazeera prepares to launch its first long-haul route, making use of its newly delivered Airbus A320neo’s range to start a daily Kuwait-London Gatwick service on Oct. 27. The airline describes the sector as the first long-haul route to be operated by a Middle East LCC, although Sharjah-based Air Arabia operates to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.<br/>