unaligned

EasyJet plans to cut up to 30% of its 15,000-strong workforce as it becomes the latest airline to warn that the aviation industry faces a slow recovery from the upheaval wrought by coronavirus. The low-cost carrier said it needed to axe about 4,500 jobs as it looks to reshape the business on the basis that passenger demand will not return to 2019 levels until 2023. EasyJet on Thursday also laid out plans to fly about 30% of its normal capacity across July, August and September, which means taking a more cautious approach than budget rivals Ryanair and Wizz Air. Ryanair this month confirmed plans to resume flights in July at about 40% of capacity, before ramping it up to about 60 to 70% by September. Wizz Air expects to run about 70% of its flights in July and August, subject to an easing of travel restrictions. It has already started flying about 10% of its capacity in May. EasyJet’s CE Johan Lundgren acknowledged that some other airlines were more optimistic of a recovery before 2023. “I think we have done it on a prudent, and we believe on a conservative but still realistic, basis. Truth of the matter, nobody knows. Nobody would be happier than ourselves if demand was picking up earlier than that,” he said. As well as cutting staff, easyJet said it was looking at closing bases at airports. The carrier said it would also reduce its aircraft fleet to about 302 planes by the end of 2021, which is 51 lower than what was anticipated before the pandemic struck.<br/>

The captain of a Pakistani airliner that crashed last week, killing 97 people on board, approached Karachi airport without announcing he couldn’t open his landing gear and hit the runway three times, a government minister said on Thursday. Search teams recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage of the PIA Airbus A320 that crashed into a residential neighbourhood of Karachi last Friday, a spokesman for the airline said. Flight PK8303, from the eastern city of Lahore, came down less than a mile short of the runway as it was making a second attempt to land. The flight data recorder has already been found. Minister for Civil Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan told reporters the plane’s engines touched the ground three times on the first attempt at landing. “The pilot never announced his landing gear wasn’t opening. He haphazardly touched the engines thrice with the ground,” Khan said. “All marks are present (on the runway). He was not at the proper height... Control tower informed him you aren’t at the required height, lower your altitude,” he said, adding that the pilot replied: “I will manage.” The pilot told controllers “we’re comfortable now” during the approach, but the reason for the remark has left most experts puzzled. Shortly after the engines scraped along the runway in the aborted first landing attempt, the pilot reported problems in maintaining altitude, then said both engines had failed. Investigators are expected to examine whether the engines shut down because of their collision with the runway, following what appeared to be a steeper and faster approach than normal.<br/>

Kuwait Airways is planning to lay off as many as 1,500 expatriate employees in response to the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The state-owned carrier is currently assessing the plan and the process should take about two weeks to complete. The lay-off will involve employees across all departments. The loss-making airline employs about 7,800 staff, of which 1,350 are Kuwaiti nationals. Before the virus crisis hit, it had planned to hire an additional 1,000 people this year.<br/>

Ukraine International Airlines, the country's largest carrier, said Thursday it was laying off more than a third of its staff due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. In mid-March, Ukrainian authorities banned all passenger air services to stop the spread of the coronavirus, dealing a blow to carriers' revenue. A company spokeswoman said that Ukraine International Airlines was cutting some 35% of its workforce. "We deeply regret to have stopped employing 900 highly qualified professional(s) because of the substantial decline in the airline's operations," CE Yevgen Dykhne said. He said the management had made "every effort" to cut costs and added that the privately-owned company would do its best to retain key staff including cockpit personnel. The layoffs will primarily affect administrative personnel and cabin crews. The airline has been seeking to stay afloat by providing its planes for charter flights, including those carrying Ukrainian seasonal workers to western Europe. The company said it hoped to restore regular operations after Ukraine resumes air travel on June 15.<br/>

Southwest expects to fly about the same capacity in late 2020 as it did a year earlier, projecting that business and holiday travel will return as the economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic. “We see demand slowly improving. It still has a long way to go,” said CCO Andrew Watterson. “November-December is the end of a ramp that started in May and continues throughout the year.” He cautioned that the comparative level for 2019 was depressed by the global grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max, which Southwest expects to get back in the air before the year is over. Southwest will focus on adding capacity toward year-end in Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Nashville, Tennessee, tapping leisure and domestic business demand, which typically recover first in a downturn, Watterson said in an interview Thursday. The capacity outlook was more optimistic than the view among other US airlines, which have reported small increases in bookings and passengers from April, when the pandemic drove demand down more than 95% from a year earlier. Travel remains well below last year’s levels. And the largest carriers have offered employees leaves or early retirement while projecting that demand could take as much as three years to fully recover. “Industry demand could still be down and it would be fine for us to have what we have out there” in terms of capacity plans, Watterson said. “Whatever demand materializes, we’ll adjust to it.”<br/>

Wizz Air has given a further indication of its expansive approach to the post-crisis environment by detailing plans to open bases at Milan Malpensa and the Cypriot resort of Larnaca Wizz has been one of most bullish of European carriers in terms of resuming services, including announcing plans to move ahead with a previously planned Abu Dhabi operation in June. It has today detailed plans to base five Airbus A321s at Milan Malpensa from July. It will add 20 new routes, in addition to the eight already serves from the Italian airport. The new routes, which will gradually roll-out across July, cover 11 countries. They include six Greek destinations in Athens, Corfu, Rhodes, Santorini, Thessaloniki and Zakynthos. Malpensa has become an increasingly popular airport for low-cost carriers. Earlier Thursday Wizz announced plans to base a pair of Airbus A320s at Larnaca in support of 10 new routes. Wizz has served the Cypriot destination for almost a decade and Cirium schedules data shows it usually serves 19 routes from Larnaca. The 10 new routes announced from July are to three German destinations - Dortmund, Memmingen, Karlsruhe/Baden Baden - Danish cities Billund and Copenhagen, Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece, Suceava in Romania, Finnish city Turku and Wroclow in Poland.<br/>

Potential bidders for Virgin Australia have expressed anxiety over the lack of financial support for the stricken airline from the Morrison government. Sources close to the sales process said four shortlisted purchasers, who are due to lodge indicative bids for the airline on Friday, were becoming increasingly worried about a period estimated at between four to six weeks during which the airline will have no cash. The airline’s administrator, Vaughan Strawbridge, has recently indicated Virgin Australia may need a bailout to bridge the gap between any sale late next month and a creditors’ meeting likely to be held in August. Unions have also raised concerns about the role of the government’s liasion with Virgin, former Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore, who Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine told Guardian Australia has become an impediment to the sales process because he has no power to make decisions. Kaine said Moore was like a sheriff without a badge. “You’ve got to give him the badge, the authority, and the chequebook, the money, and let him get on with the job,” he told Guardian Australia. The government has been approached for comment. Virgin Australia’s crumbling financial position – it had just $100m in the bank a fortnight ago and continues to burn cash – and the lack of clarity from government has fuelled fears among potential buyers that the sale process might fail and Virgin Australia collapse into liquidation. A complete collapse of Virgin Australia would throw 10,000 people into unemployment during a brutal economic downturn and risk handing rival Qantas a near-monopoly over Australian air travel.<br/>