Condor's escape from the impact of parent Thomas Cook Group's insolvency has ignited fury from UK pilot representatives. The UK govt did not step in to offer bridge funding to Thomas Cook when it sought financial assistance during the late stages of negotiating a rescue deal with Chinese firm Fosun Tourism Group. But the German federal and state govts have signalled that they will guarantee a loan to assist Frankfurt-based Condor, which will also take formal measures to protect itself from insolvency claims from its parent. UK pilot union BALPA, while not begrudging Condor's survival, has demand that Thomas Cook Group's management explain why the UK's Thomas Cook Airlines "had to be closed" while Condor was allowed to continue operating. <br/>
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Ryanair has written to UK pilots asking them to take unpaid leave or transfer to other bases abroad, saying they could otherwise join the 9,000 job losses at Thomas Cook. The airline, which reported profits of E1b in May, told its pilots that a “significant surplus of pilots must be reduced” at UK bases including Stansted and Manchester, and that it was encouraging them to take up to 12 months of unpaid leave. It said that there were limited vacancies for full-time pilots at bases in Morocco, Romania and Hungary. The memo, sent Tuesday, said: “With yesterday’s collapse of Thomas Cook with the loss of 9,000 jobs in the UK and potentially a further 13,000 jobs across Europe, we hope that there will be sufficient applications for unpaid leave/part time, so we do not have to resort to job losses at [your base] this winter.” <br/>
SpiceJet is weighing an order for at least 100 Airbus planes as Boeing grapples with the fallout over its grounded 737 Max. The carrier, a major global customer for the Max, may buy a “sizeable” number of Airbus A321LR and XLR jets to accommodate a planned expansion, SpiceJet chairman Ajay Singh said Tuesday. No decision has been made, he said, and the airline would consider a competing midrange jetliner if Boeing decides to build one. Airbus has “pushed us hard since the day we started flying Boeing aircraft, and of course with the current problems, they’ve pushed us harder,” Singh said. “They have made us a commercial offer and we are evaluating it.” The discussions with Airbus threaten Boeing with a high-profile defection at a time when the planemaker is enmeshed in one of the biggest crises in its history. <br/>
Boeing has reached settlements with 11 families of victims from October's Lion Air crash, the first agreements following 2 deadly crashes, a plaintiff’s attorney said Wednesday. The Wisner Law Firm, which specialises in aviation cases, is also "optimistic" about reaching settlements on its remaining 6 cases for families affected by the crash in Indonesia, said attorney Alexandra Wisner. The settlements pay out at least US$1.2m per victim, a person familiar with the matter said. Boeing still faces more than 100 lawsuits in federal court in Chicago following the Lion Air Crash and a second crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane in March. Boeing in July announced that it would spend $100m on communities and families affected by the 737 Max disasters. <br/>
New York Stewart International —60 miles north of New York City—plans to team up with a French company in a bid to lure back the international flights that fuelled a now-fading passenger boom at the Hudson Valley facility. Passenger numbers at the Newburgh, NY, airport grew 150% between 2016 and 2018 after Norwegian Air Shuttle started offering discount flights to the UK and the Republic of Ireland. But the carrier halted operations at Stewart after the Boeing 737 MAX airliner—which it used for the international flights—was grounded over safety concerns. For 2019 through June, the most recent publicly available data, passenger numbers at Stewart were down 9.4% compared to the same period last year. <br/>