United has taken the Boeing 737 Max out of its summer peak schedule as the aircraft’s path to return to revenue service remains unclear. It will not return the aircraft to its schedule until at least Sept 4. “During this period, we’ll continue to take extraordinary steps to protect our customers’ travel plans. Moving forward, we’ll continue to monitor the regulatory process and nimbly make the necessary adjustments to our operation and our schedule to benefit our customers who are traveling with us,” said the airline. United says it expects to cancel between 56 and 108 flights every day, or between 1,600 and 3,300 flights every month, between now and September as a result of the aircraft’s ongoing grounding. United has 14 Maxes in its fleet, which are currently in storage. <br/>
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Flight Centre Travel Group, one of South Africa’s largest booking companies, said it will lift a moratorium on sales of South African Airways tickets that it imposed in November because of concerns over its solvency. Travel Insurance Consultants, Flight Centre’s preferred insurer, reinstated insolvency cover for SAA, enabling the retailer to resume ticket sales, Andrew Stark, its MD for the Middle East and Africa said Friday. The embattled airline was placed under a local form of bankruptcy protection in December in a bid to restore it to profitability and wean it off state bailouts. The nation’s labour court Friday dismissed an application by unions to stop the administrators from cutting jobs after they announced that they will cut 8 international routes and end all domestic flights aside from those between Cape Town and Johannesburg. <br/>
SIA group operating profit grew 15.7% during Q3 to S$449m (US$323m) on the back of strong growth in the passenger business, and despite declining cargo earnings. Group revenue increased year-on-year by 3% to $4.47b during the quarter ending Dec 31 2019. This was driven by a $239m – or 7% – increase in passenger revenue, which, SIA says, was boosted by the group’s transformation programme that has increased sales and cut costs. Traffic grew 8.3%, while capacity as measured in ASKs increased by 4.9%. SIA notes that the coronavirus outbreak poses “significant challenges” and that demand to mainland China has been severely affected. The airline group already has “drastically reduced” its services to the country. <br/>