The pilots of a PIA plane that crashed in Karachi last month were chatting about coronavirus and not paying attention to the landing, the country’s aviation minister said Wednesday. The minister said that a separate investigation had revealed that hundreds of Pakistani pilots, working for domestic airlines as well as some airlines overseas, obtained their pilot licenses by cheating and were fraudulently credentialed. Ghulam Sarwar Khan, the aviation minister, announcing the findings of a preliminary report into the May 22 accident, said that the pilot tried to land without the plane’s wheels extended, scraping the engines along the runway. The plane then took off again to try for another landing, but the damaged engines failed. No technical problem with the Airbus A320 was found, Khan said. The minister also announced the results of an unrelated investigation which found that nearly one-third of active Pakistani civilian pilots have fraudulently-obtained flying licenses. He said many had others sit for their pilot exams, among other qualification abuses. He said that the 262 pilots with fraudulent licenses worked for PIA and private domestic carriers, while some were also employed by foreign airlines. “This is shameful,” Khan told parliament, vowing to restructure PIA. “We have to fix things, we have to fix this country.” Story has more details.<br/>
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Virgin Australia bondholders have lodged an eleventh-hour proposal to recapitalise the stricken airline that is the subject of rival takeover bids from two US private equity groups. Deloitte, the carrier’s administrator, is in the process of evaluating competing offers from consortiums led by Bain Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners. It is expected to announce a preferred bidder as early as this week. The entry of Virgin bondholders into that process on Wednesday could complicate efforts to complete the sale and the restructuring of the company’s A$7b (US$4.9b) debt by August. The bondholders, which are owed about A$2b, are as a group one of the airline’s largest creditors. A person with knowledge of the matter said the bondholders had proposed injecting A$1bn in fresh capital into Virgin, a debt-for-equity swap and relisting the company on Australia’s stock exchange. The bondholders include up to 30 big foreign and domestic institutions and more than 5,000 retail investors. <br/>
Easyjet is looking to raise up to GBP450m through a share placing that aims to shore up its finances in the face of deep losses during the critical summer season. The budget airline announced the placing, representing almost 15 per of cent of its share capital, on Wednesday alongside its half-year results. These cover the period to March 31, one day after the airline grounded all flights but even at this stage, the pandemic was already having an effect. Passenger numbers in the period fell by 3m, or 7.4%, and the group reported a pre-tax loss of GBP353m, compared with GBP272m for the same period in 2019. The loss was partly related to fuel hedging costs and seasonal factors — the airline usually runs at a loss in the winter months Johan Lundgren, CE, said the company had been “decisive in meeting the challenges presented by the pandemic by cutting costs” and had delivered a “strong performance” in the first half prior to the pandemic. <br/>
EasyJet saw its losses deepen in the first half of its fiscal year as coronavirus-related cancellations began to hit operations. In the six months that ended March 31, just after lockdowns were imposed across much of Europe, the airline posted a net loss of GBP324m. Passenger numbers slid 7.4%, mostly due to the pandemic, as the airline said it benefitted from less competition due to the bankruptcy of package holiday operator Thomas Cook. Revenues, however, rose by 1.6% to GBP2.4b. The effects of the coronavirus will be much more marked in the April through June quarter as airlines across the world have been forced to ground most of their planes due to travel restrictions imposed by governments.<br/>
NokScoot will bid farewell to a large number of staff while scaling down operation size amid rumours the airline will permanently exit the market soon. Thai AirAsia warned more airlines may collapse if they cannot access government soft loans. NokScoot said a review of operations led it to take steps to rationalise the business to cope with the huge impact caused by pandemic. "Despite some early signs of stabilising, demand for air travel is not expected to return to 2019 levels until 2022 or 2023," said NokScoot, a joint venture of Nok Airlines and Singapore's Scoot. NokScoot will return three aircraft from the five-jet fleet to the parent company in Singapore by the end of this month, resulting in a reduction of more than 50% of the workforce. The airline said all affected employees will be paid severance in accordance with Thai labour law. A source said NokScoot is preparing to stop operations in Thailand soon as selected staff received an official letter from the company informing them about the termination. NokScoot is among eight airlines requesting help from 24b baht in soft loans from the government. "If the government does not approve the soft loans airlines have requested, when Thailand opens to international travellers there may not be enough jets to serve them as many airlines have serious cash flow problems," said Tassapon Bijleveld, executive chairman of Asia Aviation and the largest shareholder of Thai AirAsia.<br/>
WestJet has permanently cut more than one third of its remaining workforce as the effects of the pandemic force the airline to reduce and outsource services in an effort to continue cutting costs. CE Ed Sims said Wednesday that the company will permanently eliminate the roles of 3,333 members of staff, also known as “WestJetters”, throughout the organisation. That will leave less than 5,000 empoyees out of a pre-coronavirus workforce of 14,000. The carrier will consolidate its contact centre activity to one location only - Calgary - and outsource airport operations at all domestic airports other than Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto. In addition, the airline will “strategically restructure our office and our management staff”. The staff reductions at Canada’s second-largest airline come as a blow just ten days after it said it was expanding its summer schedule in July to more than double what had been planned for June. “This situation is nobody’s fault and nothing anyone could have done would have created a different outcome,” Sims says. “Reducing WestJetter roles has always been a last resort. If there were other viable options open to us we would be taking them.”<br/>
The pilots of El Al have made it clear that they back the Ministry of Finance's plan to save the airline. In an unambiguous message they said: Saving the company is only possible by diluting the owners' stake and through nationalization, with the desire being a change in ownership. The 650 pilots said, "El Al's pilots strongly demand that the board of directors fulfil their legal obligation and accept the Ministry of Finance plan to loan it $250m. The Ministry of Finance plan will improve the capital structure of the country more than a $400m (bank) loan, which would only worsen the company's situation with no economic justification behind it other than protecting the controlling owners. El Al's pilots will not be reconciled with a decision that prefers the benefit of the controlling owners over the benefit of the company, its customers and its employees."<br/>
Jet2 and Eurostar have announced that they will be cancelling some summer flights and trains in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Separately, pilots union Balpa has said that airline Jet2 is to make 102 pilots redundant. The airline will be reducing its flying programme for 2020 and 2021. A spokesman for Jet2 said that the airline was facing "complicated" challenges relating to the coronavirus crisis and "changes on an almost daily basis", which had resulted in the need to reduce its flying programme. "Sadly, the overall effect of these reductions has been the need to propose a number of colleague redundancies across our business." He said the company had "every confidence" that it would "bounce back from the unprecedented demands currently placed on the company" but it did have to make "difficult decisions in the current climate". Balpa general secretary Brian Strutton said he was concerned about the "knee-jerk" way in which airlines like Jet2 had been responded to falling customer numbers due to the pandemic.<br/>
Hong Kong health authorities have sent 10 transit passengers – stranded at the airport for the past five days – to a local quarantine centre amid public health concerns, as the group had travelled on the same flight as 26 others previously found to be infected with Covid-19. A Department of Health spokesman said the group, which had attempted to travel from Dubai to mainland China despite a prohibition on transits to mainland cities, had been sent to an official quarantine facility at Chai Wan Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village. The spokesman added the department had only become aware of the situation on Wednesday, but could not say if the travellers would have to undergo a full 14-day isolation. A government source, meanwhile, said the group would be given Covid-19 tests, adding that poor communication between the health department and Airport Authority led to the delayed response. The authority earlier confirmed that 11 passengers on Emirates flight 380 had sought to transit to the mainland but did not have boarding passes for their onward flights.<br/>