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Oscar Munoz, who helped to steady United after a troubled 2010 merger, but not without the occasional public relations crisis, will step down next year as the airline’s CE. In May, J. Scott Kirby, the airline’s president and a veteran of the industry, will succeed Munoz, who will move on to the position of executive chairman of the airline’s board for a one-year term. Analysts said they were unsurprised by the leadership change, which had been predicted since Kirby was hired in 2016, shortly after Munoz underwent a heart transplant. Munoz, a first-generation college student from an immigrant family, had also been expected to assume the role of chairman several years ago, but the promotion was scuttled in 2017 after the airline stumbled in responding to public outrage when security officers dragged a passenger off one of its planes in Chicago. “While the timing of this transition was always a key topic, this has been largely expected by investors ever since Oscar Munoz hired Scott Kirby in 2016,” Andrew Didora, an airline analyst with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a research note. Didora added that he did not anticipate a change to the airline’s strategy. Story has more background.<br/>

South Africa’s government will cede control of the national airline to a restructuring specialist in a last-ditch attempt to save the cash-strapped business from collapse. As part of a rescue plan started on Thursday, the government will hand the running of SAA to business rescue practitioner Les Matuson to make the sort of painful cuts that would be difficult for politicians to push through. SAA has been granted a 4b rand ($272m) lifeline from the government and banks to launch the rescue plan, but that cash could only last for months, analysts say. The airline has been on the brink of collapse since a crippling strike last month left it without enough money to pay salaries on time. Then two major travel insurers stopped covering its tickets against the risk of the company becoming insolvent. SAA employs around 5,000 people, while the wider SAA Group, including maintenance and catering units, employs around 10,000. The airline said it would publish a new provisional flight schedule soon.<br/>

SAS is expecting a short term boost from rival Norwegian’s decision to pull a number of long-haul routes in the region. As part of a wider restructuring plan, Norwegian is ending flights from Copenhagen and Stockholm to the USA and Thailand. On some of these routes there is an overlap with SAS’s services. “I think it’s in the short term, of course, a positive if we have a better balance between demand and supply in the market, and the market has been characterized by a significant oversupply in the recent years,” CEO Rickard Gustafson said Thursday. While losing a low-cost competitor is undoubtedly a good thing for a legacy carrier like SAS, it also points to the difficulty European airlines currently have making money in the market. Gustafson said that Norwegian’s withdrawal was a “recognition of how difficult it is to generate a decent return” in today’s environment before gloomily pointing out that passenger demand was falling. The CEO’s comments came after the company reported its Q4/full-year results. On a quarterly basis the carrier bounded back with pre-tax profit rising 39% to $115m for the three months to the end of October. On an annual basis, however, the company saw profit slump 61% to $83.6m. Revenue for the year rose 4.5% to $4.9b. SAS blamed the poor full-year performance on “jet-fuel costs, unfavourable currency movements and a strike“.<br/>

JetBlue Airways is ready and willing to transfer one of its Mexico City slot pairs to United, as the New York-based carrier prepares to cease flying to the Mexican capital in January. JetBlue announced Oct. 23 its decision to halt daily flights to Mexico City International Airport (MEX) to focus on more profitable operations elsewhere, pressured by a deteriorating competitive and demand environment in the region. In a Nov. 22 filing with the US DOT, United urged DOT to award it one of JetBlue’s divested MEX slot pairs so it can operate a third daily frequency from San Francisco using a 128-seat Airbus A319. JetBlue was awarded three MEX slot pairs in 2017 after the DOT forced Delta Air Lines and Aeromexico to divest a combined 24 slots as a condition for the two carriers to operate their cross-border joint venture. The DOT at the time insisted that only LCCs receive the divested slots to increase competition at slot-constrained Mexico City Airport.<br/>

ANA opened Thursday what it says is the world’s first store where customers can shop remotely through an avatar. The robots, standing 1.5m tall, will be employed at the avatar-in store through Dec. 24 in a shopping mall in Tokyo’s Nihombashi district, in collaboration with department store operator Isetan Mitsukoshi. Customers using computers can control the robots called newme from anywhere in the country and shop for items in the gift store as if they were there. No actual customers will be allowed to physically enter the avatar-in store. The robot, which moves around the store on wheels, includes a tablet-sized monitor that displays the customer’s facial expressions in real time. Online registration is required to use the service, said ANA, which plans to introduce as many as 1,000 avatar robots in Japan, including 100 in the Nihombashi business and commercial district next year in time for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.<br/>

An SIA Airbus A330-300 suffered a suspected tailstrike while landing at Yangon. The aircraft, registered 9V-SSI, was arriving from Singapore on 25 November, when the incident occurred. It was carrying 282 passengers and 13 crew members. SIA says the aircraft “suffered some damage upon landing”, but taxied to the airport terminal “uneventfully”. No injuries were recorded. “Engineers assessed the damage to the aircraft, and a relief aircraft was sent to Yangon to operate the return flight,” the carrier adds. SIA states that it is cooperating closely with the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau of Myanmar, which is investigating the incident.<br/>