German Efromovich, the majority shareholder in Avianca, said Wednesday he does not have any knowledge of widespread bribes allegedly paid by Airbus. Airbus agreed last week to pay a record $4b in fines after reaching a plea bargain with prosecutors in Britain, France and United States over alleged bribery and corruption stretching back at least 15 years. Avianca on Monday said it had hired a law firm to investigate its relationship with Airbus and determine if it had been a victim of wrongdoing. French prosecutors said in settlement documents that Airbus had agreed to pay multi-million dollar commissions to an agent over jet sales to Avianca, some of which were earmarked for a senior executive at the airline’s parent, Avianca Holdings. The payments were thwarted by a freeze on agent commissions as Airbus tightened processes in 2014, they said. Avianca’s negotiations with Airbus for the purchase of about 180 airplanes for operations in Colombia, Brazil and potentially Argentina were direct and took place without intermediaries, Efromovich said. “We did a totally transparent tender,” Efromovich said. “If Airbus paid something to someone it was pure imbecility because there was no reason to do it. I can’t say who was the source of corruption, I don’t know. There was never a finger of an intermediary that we know of or at least that I knew of.”<br/>
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United announced Wednesday an agreement to purchase a flight training academy in Phoenix in a move aimed at bolstering its pilot pipeline as the industry faces a global shortage. To address a tight US labour market created by years of slow pilot hiring, a wave of pending retirements and new rules that in 2013 increased the number of required training hours, US airlines have been taking steps to attract young aviators. United, which is looking to hire more than 10,000 pilots by 2029, will be the first major US carrier to run its own academy. “We think this program will alleviate any shortage we would have had and that’s its purpose,” said Curtis Brunjes, United’s MD of pilot strategy. The school, currently operating as Westwind School of Aeronautics, will be renamed United Aviate Academy in September. United expects approximately 300 graduates in 2021 and wants to expand capacity to accommodate 500 graduates per year, Brunjes said, noting that the academy is among the airline’s most aggressive steps on pilot hiring since the 1960s. One area of focus at the school will be training for loss of control incidents, a leading cause of plane disasters, that goes beyond the current US FAA. Some of the enrollees will come from Aviate, a recruitment program that United launched last year offering students and pilots from 15 schools and regional carriers a path to a job at the major. United is offering financing options for training and will also launch a scholarship program focused on women and minorities.<br/>
When Poland’s PM Mateusz Morawiecki announced last month that the country’s national carrier Lot would buy the German charter airline Condor, he was trading in national pride. “Polish companies from all sorts of sectors are expanding, but this expansion of Lot is really symbolic,” he said. “In the past, foreign companies bought up precious Polish assets. It fills my chest with pride that Polish companies can . . . effectively take over foreign assets.” The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, does indeed have political symbolism: the government that ran Poland before Morawiecki’s Law and Justice party considered selling the airline, a fact that Morawiecki, who has made “re-Polonising” Polish assets one of his govt’s main economic policies, did not forget to mention. But the question for taxpayers — Lot’s parent is 100 per cent owned by the Polish treasury — is whether the deal makes economic, rather than patriotic, sense. There are some reasons to think it might. Lot, which has 80 planes and carries 10m passengers a year and Condor, with 60 planes and 9.4m customers, are both small in a European context. Combining will give them more scale in a market where size matters, and could give them more negotiating power in buying things such as fuel and planes. The deal will also make Lot more diversified: it will gain a foothold in another market, landing slots in Frankfurt, and balance its scheduled flights with Condor’s focus on chartered leisure flights. The takeover also adds Condor’s Airbus aircraft to Lot’s Boeing fleet. Finally, despite needing a E380m emergency loan after the collapse of Thomas Cook, its parent company and biggest client, Condor seems healthier than the turmoil around it might suggest. It is not listed, so does not publish detailed figures. But its accounts for the year to September report adjusted operating profit of E57m.<br/>