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Recently, Canada’s two major airlines, Air Canada and WestJet, have been pushing to get more people back on their planes, urging politicians to substantially ease virus-related restrictions, including expanding border travel with the US, as they move to restart additional routes later this month. “This is hundreds of times worse than 9/11, SARS, or the global financial crisis — quite frankly combined,” said Calin Rovinescu, CE of Air Canada. But at the same time that Rovinescu and his counterparts are working to get more people back in the air, they’ve made one change that gives some health officials pause. On Canada Day, both Air Canada and WestJet ended what the industry calls “seat blocking,” leaving a vacant seat between passengers. So while health officials are urging Canadians to keep their distance as various measures are eased, airlines are putting them in close contact in an enclosed space for flights that can last hours. During recent testimony before the House of Commons health committee, officials from all of Canada’s major airlines played down the need to keep passengers apart and emphasized what they called a cascading or multilayered approach to making sure infections don’t spread aboard flights. That approach, they repeatedly said, includes taking into account the quality of the air filtration systems on planes. Air Canada explained the end of seat blocking to me this way: “While we would all like a single measure that reduces risk, we are left to use a combination of approaches to mitigate risk as far as practical.” It added: “It is very important that people understand how efficiently aircraft ventilation works to refresh air regularly onboard every 2 to 3 minutes, which is a key reason there has been no reports of disease outbreak clusters onboard flights.”<br/>

Air China has completed its maiden flight of a Comac ARJ21 regional jet on the domestic routing from Beijing Capital airport to Xilinhot. The carrier took delivery of its first of the regional jet on 28 June alongside China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines. While there are more than 30 ARJ21s already in service with Chinese regional carriers, Comac described the delivery of the type to China’s ‘big three’ operators as the “official entry” of the ARJ21 into the fleets of international mainstream airlines. Air China’s ARJ21-700 is configured in an all-economy, 90-seat, five-abreast configuration. It is one of three of the type AIr China will take delivery of this year. The airline ordered 35 of the type in August last year.<br/>

Singapore Airlines and its regional arm SilkAir will not be flying to new locations next month but will slightly increase the frequency of flights on existing routes as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the aviation sector drags on. SIA said Friday that this means that the SIA Group - which also includes budget carrier Scoot - will operate at approximately 7% of its scheduled capacity in August, up from 6% this month. SIA is currently flying between Singapore and 27 cities in 18 countries spread across five regions - South-east Asia, North Asia, South-west Pacific, Europe and the United States. Among the sectors that will see more flights next month include the Singapore-London, Singapore-Kuala Lumpur and Singapore-Osaka routes. Customers who have had their flights cancelled by SIA and SilkAir will be able to either get a refund or flight credits with a bonus.<br/>

ANA Holdings said Friday it will end its recruiting activities for fiscal 2021 as the prolonged pandemic makes planning for the future difficult. The parent company of ANA paused its hiring program for around 3,200 jobs groupwide in May. With the coronavirus outbreak still in full swing, the group decided a concrete business plan is impossible to develop at this point and terminated the recruiting effort for next spring. ANA will nevertheless honor about 600 informal job offers it has already made, chiefly to vocational school students. It will also continue recruiting for its pilot-training program and keep taking on employees with disabilities. As the pandemic decimates travel worldwide, ANA has temporarily furloughed about 43,500 employees, or more than 90% of the group's workforce.<br/>

South African Airways pilots have sought to more than halve the proposed number of employee retrenchments, and instead retain almost 3,100 personnel for the carrier’s relaunch, according to the country’s government. But the proposal has been dismissed by the department of public enterprises, which insists it is “not prepared to accede” to the demands. Pilot union SAAPA has not joined other employee groups in accepting the voluntary severance packages offered as part of the effort to restructure the carrier – a decision which has been criticised by the government. The department of public enterprises claims that pilots would account for half of the R2.2b in funding set aside for severance. SAA’s 600 pilots, it says, make up 45% of the payroll expenditure despite only representing 13% of personnel. The department says it wants to “put on record” the cockpit union’s proposal to retain almost 3,100 staff – including 2,000 for start-up – rather than the initial 1,000 planned by SAA’s rescue practitioners. But the department says the proposal, which includes other adjustments to the business plan, is not in the best interests of SAA, its staff, or its creditors. It has told the union that the changes – involving a much larger number of employees, especially relatively expensive pilots – would “exacerbate a prolonged economic recovery”.<br/>

Air NZ is having to reduce the number of passengers it lets on trans-Tasman flights due to new international arrival limits in Australia. On Friday, in order to better manage quarantine facilities, the Australian Government capped international arrivals, and extended current international passenger flight restrictions into Victoria. From Monday international arrivals to Perth were capped at 525 per week. For Brisbane a cap of 500 international arrivals per week applies and for Sydney a cap of 450 international arrivals per day will continue with plans for further reductions in subsequent weeks. Air NZ said it was introducing passenger limits on its two remaining trans-Tasman services in response to the Australian Government’s restrictions. For Brisbane, the number of arrivals per Air New Zealand flight is restricted to just 30 passengers until August 8. Air NZ flies Auckland-Brisbane return twice per week. For Sydney a restriction of no more than 50 passengers per flight will be in place until July 18 and is subject to review. Air NZ flies Auckland-Sydney return twice per week. The routes are serviced by Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners with seating for 302 passengers.<br/>