unaligned

The Air India Express plane that crashed at Kozhikode airport on Friday evening was owned by the airline and was not a leased one, said an airline official. Out of its total fleet of 25 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft (post crash 24 aircraft), Air India Express owns 17 aircraft (16 post crash) and the balance eight were taken on lease. A senior insurance industry official told IANS that the entire claim amount will be paid to the airline if it is an owned aircraft. If there is any loan taken on the plane then the financier will also have a financial interest in the crashed craft. All the owned aircraft of Air India Express underwent refurbishment of the cabin involving a change of seats, carpets and curtains. The airline had said the refurbishment project resulted in the empty weight of the aircraft reducing by about 800 kg due to the lighter weight of the new seats, resulting in the gain of additional traffic payload and revenue earning capability to that extent on every flight. With the lead reinsurer of the plane approving the claim for total loss of the Dubai-Kozhikode flight, Air India Express will get the entire claim of $50m (Dh183m). "Like the consortium of primary insurers, a consortium of reinsurers has insured the aircraft of Air India and its subsidiaries like Air India Express. The lead reinsurer, AIG London, has approved the hull claim (claim for loss of aircraft). Other reinsurers in the consortium will also give their approval," the senior official with one of the four insurers said.<br/>

India’s aviation regulator suspended two senior executives at the local affiliate of AirAsia Group after a pilot alleged there were safety lapses at the airline and subsequently was fired. AirAsia India’s head of operations, Manish Uppal, and head of safety, Mukesh Nema, were suspended for three months, Arun Kumar, chief of India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said Tuesday. In a video posted in June that’s been viewed more than 6m times on YouTube, pilot Gaurav Taneja questioned AirAsia India’s policies on sick leave, landing procedures and handling of the coronavirus. Taneja posts under the username Flying Beast and has more than 3.5m YouTube subscribers. AirAsia India counted sick days as mandatory break days for pilots, depriving them of the required rest before flying an aircraft, Taneja said. He alleged that the airline sets targets for pilots to land using a specific fuel-saving approach, which can be more dangerous at certain airports. AirAsia India also didn’t follow standard operating procedures related to flying during the pandemic, Taneja alleged. A spokesperson for AirAsia India said the airline has made interim appointments to fill the two posts, in accordance with directions from the aviation regulator.<br/>

Eli Rozenberg’s bid for a controlling stake in El Al Israel Airlines is below the price that can be obtained in a public share offering and may struggle to gain board support, said a source close to the board who declined to be named. Last month Rozenberg, a US citizen now resident in Israel, offered to funnel $75m into the airline in return for a 45% stake. Rozenberg is the son of Kenny Rozenberg, chief executive of New York-based nursing home chain Centers Health Care. “From my talks with members of the board, most are against the proposal,” the source said. “Shareholders are opposed to it.” The source said Rozenberg’s offer was worth only 0.63 shekel ($0.1851) a share, below the 0.71 shekel market price. “It’s better to offer shares to the public at 0.70 shekel,” the source told Reuters. “The government would buy shares that aren’t bought at 0.67, so there’s a safety net.” El Al’s board has yet to vote on Rozenberg’s offer, which would also need shareholders’ approval. “I don’t see the board taking a decision in favour of this deal,” said Ilan Arad, vice president of investment at Israeli investment house Yetsira. Even an improved offer should not be accepted, he said, because transfer of control will not resolve much deeper problems the airline faces, such as not being able to fly on the Jewish Sabbath.<br/>

Wizz Air has apologised to passengers who were turned away from an Athens-bound flight for perceived flaws on the Greek “passenger locator form” (PLF). Twenty-eight passengers were offloaded from the airline’s flight W9 4467 from Luton to Athens on Thursday 6 August. Some were denied boarding by ground staff because they had not included a middle initial when completing the online form. But the instructions for the form, which was introduced by Greece when it reopened borders for the summer, make it clear that the middle initial is optional. Under European air passengers’ rights rules, airlines need not pay compensation or offer refunds if they present themselves with “inadequate travel documentation”. Initially a spokesperson for Wizz Air said: “Passengers who do not complete the form or do so incorrectly will be refused carriage, and are not entitled to compensation.” The carrier said that missing middle names would result in offloading. But the Budapest-based airline has now “established that passengers travelling to Greece are not required to include a middle name on their passenger locator form”. The spokesperson said: “As a matter of priority, the airline is investigating whether any passengers were wrongfully denied carriage on the W9 4467 flight as a result of not including a middle name on their PLF, despite correctly completing the rest of the form. Should there be any affected passengers, Wizz Air will contact them directly to apologise and offer the relevant compensation, as well as the options of rebooking or refunding their ticket.”<br/>

Mesa Air Group reported a $15m operating profit during Q3 despite the travel downturn during the coronavirus pandemic. While Mesa’s profit was only down about 12% year-over-year, operating revenue plunged 60% to $73m as passenger demand remains soft for the carrier’s airline partners. Mesa’s business has been somewhat insulated during the pandemic because it has capacity purchase agreements to operate flights for United and American Airlines, for which those carriers make fixed monthly payments. Block hours for those flights were down 73% year-over-year, but are expected to improve in September, Mesa chief executive Jonathan Ornstein said during an earnings call on 10 August. He anticipates that flights for its fourth quarter will be down 46% year-over-year. The regional carrier and its mainline customers are making changes within their contract parameters to save costs, including deferring aircraft deliveries. Mesa is in talks with American to extend its capacity purchase agreement, and has agreed to remove two Bombardier-built CRJ-900 aircraft from service in June that were scheduled to be removed in January, COO Brad Rich says during the call.<br/>

Azul said Tuesday it had reached an agreement with its aircraft lessors that would help it save some 3.2b reais ($594.61m) in working capital through 2021 and be repaid beginning in 2023. The airline has been in negotiations with lessors as the coronavirus crisis derailed Latin America’s air travel industry in March. Azul hired a restructuring firm when the crisis set in and said it was renegotiating its debts out of court to avoid a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The airline now says its new agreements cover 98% of the company’s leasing liabilities and has managed to reduce its rental costs by 77% between April and December of this year. Azul said it would compensate for these discounts by paying “slightly higher” leasing costs starting in 2023.<br/>

An Irish High Court has cleared Irish regional carrier CityJet to leave the formal financial restructuring process it entered in April as the coronavirus crisis struck. CityJet entered Examinership - a process in Irish law under which companies can protect themselves from creditors while they restructure - on 17 April. “After almost four months, CityJet today exited the Examinership process and, although much smaller than before, we now have a solid business upon which we can continue the development of the airline and seek to grow again as the market recovers,” says CityJet CE Pat Byrne. The Irish Times reports the slimmed down CityJet will have around 140 positions - compared with 400 roles before the crisis. ”The process of Examinership and the necessity to resize the business regrettably came at a significant personal consequence for many and our thoughts go out to the many loyal and committed colleagues who sadly have lost their jobs with CityJet,” says Byrne. ”I sincerely hope, as the company finds new opportunities, that we will once again be able to provide increased levels of employment."<br/>

Israeli leisure carrier Arkia’s backers have agreed to inject additional funds into the airline to enable it to restore operations. The agreement comes some five months after the airline halted almost all activity and furloughed over 500 personnel. Israeli trade union organisation Histadrut says the Nakash brothers, who own the company, will provide funds to “re-open” Arkia. Under the agreement between the owners and employees, who hold 30% of the company’s shares, Arkia will take out bank loans for 130m shekels ($38m) while the Nakash brothers will inject $10m. Histadrut has overseen the agreement reached between Arkia chairman and Nakash representative Avi Hurmero and the airline’s workers’ committee chair Aliza Blaish. The trade union organisation adds that it will also financially support Arkia through a $1.5m which will be conditioned on the company’s return to activity. Arkia personnel had expressed concern that the owners did not intend to restore the airline to operation, and the situation had sparked workers’ protests including solidarity strike action by port workers in Eilat. Histadrut transport workers’ union head Avi Edri says the funding agreement is a “significant first step” for restoring Arkia, adding that – over the next few days – it will seek arrangements on workers’ rights.<br/>

UK leisure carrier Jet2’s parent company Dart Group has concluded from a modelling exercise that it would have “sufficient liquidity” for a scenario in which no flights could be operated until August of next year. Amid “uncertainty” over how the Covid-19 pandemic might affect its business in the coming months, Dart Group says it modelled a “no-fly scenario through to 1 August 2021 to assess the liquidity position over the entire going-concern period of at least 12 months” from the signing of its annual report, released on 11 August. “The directors concluded that given the combination of a closing cash balance of GBP1,387.5m at 31 March 2020, together with the additional actions taken to increase liquidity since the year end and the forecast monthly cash utilisation, the group would have sufficient liquidity throughout this period,” says the company in its report. It adds that directors “have a reasonable expectation that the group as a whole has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for a period of 12 months from the date of approval of the financial statements”.<br/>