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Indonesia’s decision to suspend travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia for this year’s Hajj pilgrimage is another blow to flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, already struggling from a slump in travel due to the coronavirus. The Hajj is an important revenue generator for Garuda as pilgrims from Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world, travel in large numbers to the Islamic holy city. Indonesia’s Religious Affairs Minister Fachrul Razi said Tuesday that travel to Saudi Arabia won’t be allowed due to health concerns. More than 220,000 Indonesians were expected to make the trip this year, according to the government. Garuda President Director Irfan Setiaputra said the carrier will try to make up some of the shortfall through operations such as charter and cargo flights. The airline already said in April that first-quarter operating revenue could slide 33%, while warning of a worse scenario if Hajj flights were scrapped. Indonesian Hajj pilgrims were due to travel between June 26 and Sept. 5, according to the Religious Affairs Ministry’s schedule. Indonesia has nearly 27,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and over 1,600 deaths, while Saudi Arabia has reported more than 87,000 infections and 525 deaths.<br/>

KLM said Tuesday it will increase flights to vacation spots in southern Europe and hopes to add a handful of long-haul destinations in July. The airline’s proposed July flight schedules represent 25-30% of what would be normal for the time of year, KLM said in a statement. “Our clients would like to travel again, so we’re expanding our network carefully and slowly,” CEO Pieter Elbers said. “We are doing that as carefully as we can with hygienic measures on board and on the ground.” KLM, which is still negotiating a E2-4b bailout package from the Dutch government after France agreed a E7b loan package for Air France-KLM and Air France in April, has been slowly resuming flights after cutting back 90% of its flight service in March after the outbreak of the coronavirus. It said it would increase flights in July between Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and Alicante, Bilbao, Bologna, Ibiza, Istanbul, Nice, Porto, Catania and Split, among other destinations. It also said it will consider resuming some long-haul flights including to Jakarta and Denpasar in Indonesia, as well as to North American cities Washington DC, San Francisco, Vancouver and Calgary, depending on easing of travel restrictions. The airline said it plans to increase the total number of flights it flies from Schiphol to 3,000 in July.<br/>

A noisier era of aviation ends Tuesday when Delta retires its “Mad Dog” jets. Its remaining MD-88s — and a quieter, younger model, the MD-90 — are headed to an early retirement because of the coronavirus pandemic. Delta expected to retire the twin-engine MD-88s at the end of this year and the MD-90s by the end of 2022, but a sharp drop in travel demand has prompted it to idle more than 600 planes and retire some of its older jets early. The carrier is also planning to retire its Boeing 777 fleet by the end of the year. Delta is the last US airline to operate the planes after American Airlines retired its MD-80 fleet in September. The retirement also ends the era of the McDonnell Douglas name, the company that Boeing acquired in 1997. The planes’ were based on a jet whose history stretches back to the 1960s, the DC-9.<br/>

French investigators believe cabin crew’s increased workload, after an unexpected change of aircraft type, meant a trolley was left unsecured and injured several passengers when it broke free. The accident occurred on board an Air France Boeing 777-300ER departing Mauritius for Paris Charles de Gaulle on 16 September 2018. French investigation authority BEA says the aircraft was a replacement for one with a different configuration. While there are procedures for advising of, and preparing for, such a change, the inquiry found the operations control centre transmitted the wrong configuration data. This incorrect configuration not only implied changes including a significant number of business-class upgrades – with some four times as many business seats as the normal cabin layout on the route – and changes to the crew and catering. But the information could not be accessed through the crew’s tablets early enough, meaning the preparation of the flight and the boarding process were disrupted. “In order to limit the impact on on-board service during the flight, the cabin crew made numerous adjustments within the cabin,” says BEA, adding that these additional tasks led the cabin crew to “deviate” from roles normally assigned to them. Story has details.<br/>

Aeroflot Tuesday reported its Q1 net loss widened to 22.48b roubles ($326.2m) after traffic tumbled because of travel curbs imposed in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In March alone, the carrier’s passenger traffic slumped more than a third from a year ago and was down 12.3% for the quarter, according to data Aeroflot published in April. Aeroflot reported its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) fell by 38.8% to 13.05b roubles, while net loss widened by 42.8% Russia’s flag carrier, however, said it expected market recovery to begin “in the near future as the airline industry is preparing for a gradual restart after almost three months of lockdown. VTB Capital analysts said they expected the group’s EBITDA to fall 41% to 100b roubles in 2020, but saw it exceeding the 2019 level as early as in 2021.<br/>