unaligned

Mechanics at Southwest Airlines are lashing out at their employer about what appears to be the carrier’s return to using offshore maintenance stations for major maintenance checks on Boeing 737 aircraft. Southwest flew an empty 737 aircraft to San Salvador’s El Salvador International Oct 14 “in order to accomplish a heavy maintenance check on that aircraft," Bret Oestreich, national director of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which represents Southwest mechanics, said. The move could be a signal by Southwest management that the airline once again will do significant maintenance work in San Salvador. The carrier had employed mechanics in that country to do maintenance work for a number of years, but then abruptly ceased having work done there in 2017. <br/>

Southwest Airlines was downgraded from "buy" to "hold" by an investment bank based on speculation that it might look to solve its 737 Max issue through an acquisition. Southwest has hundreds of 737 Max planes--grounded since March-- on order through Boeing. "An acquisition by Southwest motivated by a desire to diversify away from the Max creates significant risks in the near term for LUV," Stifel analysts said in a Monday research note speculating whether Alaska Air Group and JetBlue Airways could be M&A targets. Southwest recently extended Max-related cancellations until Feb 2020, meaning the carrier will be hampered by the grounding well into Q1 2020. Southwest is famous for its all-737 fleet. But if the Max grounding persists, the carrier might be forced to buy another airline. <br/>

Ryanair’s bid to fast-track its action against some of its pilots based in Ireland and their trade union over a planned strike that was halted by injunction last August has been adjourned for 2 weeks at the Commercial Court. The adjournment was granted in the context of a High Court hearing next Thursday of an application by the pilots and Fórsa for a stay on Ryanair’s case while a mediation process proceeds. Ryanair representation told the Commercial Court Monday the mediation was addressing a pay claim and that is not what Ryanair’s legal action, which seeks damages and certain declarations, is about. Defendant representation said their position was that an agreement had been reached to stay the damages case pending the mediation and that it was always intended that agreement would be legally binding. <br/>

Turkmenistan Airlines has been granted permission to resume services to and from the EU, following an 8-month ban. In February, EASA said the carrier had been barred from EU airspace “pending restoring of compliance with specific international aviation safety standards.” Following the ban, the airline set up a project team with Lufthansa Consulting to improve its safety performance and regain EU third country operator status. The German company said a recovery plan has been set in motion aimed at satisfying the EU safety authorisations. The project team, which covered areas including quality, safety, flight operations and maintenance, worked on developing and implementing management system changes. <br/>

UK regional Virgin Connect, formerly known as Flybe, plans to ultimately consider larger aircraft once things have settled under its new ownership. Flybe has a fleet of 70-plus aircraft, comprising 54 De Havilland Dash 8-400s, 5 ATR 72s, 6 Embraer E195s and 11 E175s. Virgin Connect CE Mark Anderson said: “We will look at developing the fleet.” When asked whether this could involve larger aircraft, he replied: “For sure.” He declined to give further specifics but added: “Our partnership with Virgin [Atlantic], and perhaps others in future, definitely give us the opportunity to look at other aircraft in future. We’re not about to make any crazy decisions and go off and buy a whole fleet of jets, but we’re not going to stay static and keep a fleet of Q400s forever and a day.” <br/>

South African regional carrier CemAir is on the verge of restarting services following a 9-month hiatus and a bitter dispute with the country’s aviation regulator. The South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) grounded CemAir for the second time in 2 months in January, most recently for what it described as “systemic failures of the airline’s maintenance controls.” CemAir challenged the move, and April 29 the Civil Aviation Appeal Committee overturned SACAA’s decision. “Despite the uncontested judgement, CemAir was unable to resume operations due to the natural annual expiry of the AOCs Jan 28," the airline said. “The SACAA’s website continues to display inflammatory media releases, the contents of which have been proven to be false and in contravention of the Civil Aviation Act," added the airline. <br/>

Fastjet Group is to suspend flights in Mozambique after mounting losses resulting from insufficient demand, which it partly attributes to tougher competition. Fastjet Group had been concentrating on its operations in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe after its withdrawal from Tanzania. But Fastjet Mozambique – which started up in Nov 2017 – has faced competition from Ethiopian Airlines, which recently established itself in the country's domestic market. Fastjet Mozambique has been using an Embraer ERJ-145 but says it has been forced to "scale down" its route network. Over the first half of this year Fastjet Mozambique recorded "significantly reduced" revenues of US$1.9m – down from $4.2m – and relatively heavy operating losses of $2.4m. <br/>