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JetBlue Airways’ top executive is joining an industry push for additional federal help as passenger totals plateau at about a quarter of year-earlier levels. Airlines are “in a very, very critical situation right now,” said CEO Robin Hayes as he called on the Trump administration and Congress to resolve a stalemate over a new economic stimulus plan. Carriers have said that the stalled travel recovery may force them to cut tens of thousands of jobs on Oct. 1, when restrictions expire on $25b of existing US payroll aid. “They absolutely have to come together and build a stimulus bill to help the country continue to get through this,” Hayes said Thursday. “The day of reckoning is coming for the industry, because we can’t continue with where we are in terms of numbers of jobs we have and see demand at 25% to 30% of where we’d normally be.” JetBlue has joined other US carriers in trimming its flying this month amid a resurgence of coronavirus cases and quarantine requirements adopted by some states. The New York-based carrier will fly about 40% of its normal schedule in August, down 10 to 15 percentage points from its earlier plan, Hayes said.<br/>

The largest rural airline in Alaska has declared bankruptcy and laid off more than a thousand workers but wants to award $250,000 in bonus money to its chief executive and other employees. Anchorage-based RavnAir Group filed the request Tuesday in Delaware bankruptcy court, arguing that the bonuses are justified because of long hours and the hard work that went into selling the company’s assets after it shut down during the coronavirus pandemic, Alaska Public Radio reported. The final sale of all the assets is expected to generate more than $55m, exceeding what the company anticipated. CEO Dave Pflieger has already collected $1.4m in salary, bonuses and expense payments over the past year. It is unclear how much of the $250,000 would go to Pflieger and to the other employees. Pflieger was not involved in conversations about his own potential bonus, but did participate in discussions about them for other employees, company officials said. The state of Alaska and the aviation industry have questioned why the company agreed to sell several of its big planes and two of its operating certificates to California-based FLOAT Shuttle, when other companies offered to pay more money for the same assets.<br/>

Wizz Air is launching a new base in Doncaster Sheffield Airport and seven additional destinations, including Spain and Portugal, as demand has proved ‘extremely strong’ despite the pandemic. Owain Jones, managing director of Wizz Air UK said that since being the first carrier in Europe to relaunch flights post-lockdown, its routes to Spain and Portugal have proved “a runaway success”. After the Foreign Office (FCO) dropped Spain from its ‘green list’ of quarantine-exempt countries, demand did go down, Jones says, but it still continues to maintain fairly steady numbers for trips to the country. Wizz Air plans to fly at 80% capacity by the end of the year; a higher number than any other European airline has announced. The Hungarian-owned airline has switched its focus chiefly to the Greek islands as Britons flock there due to low numbers of local infections. Its first direct service to Santorini took off this week and the flight was close to full. Bookings to Greece have been “extremely strong,” Jones confirms. Not that trips to the country have been without problems. As we’ve reported, Greece’s requirement that passengers submit a PLF (passenger landing form) and obtain a QR code at least 24 hours before travel hasn’t been reaching all customers, leading to some being turned away from boarding. “One of the challenges has been the completely unjoined up approach we’re seeing to policy across Europe,” Jones states, adding that Wizz Air customers are warned about Greece’s requirement five and three days before travel.<br/>

Azul Thursday said it managed to generate 1b reais ($186.32m) of cash between April and June, at the lowest point of the coronavirus crisis when carriers worldwide were burning through their liquidity. Cost cutting, including staff reductions, and unspecified investment gains were the primary causes. The carrier, which has cut 30% of its staff, is likely to be one of the only airlines in the world to have positive cash flow in Q2. Still, the extra cash may be temporary. In the first half of the year, Azul burned through 82m reais and expects to burn cash in the second half as well, at a rate of 3m reais per day. So far this year it has had a net loss of 9.3b reais, mostly due to the devaluation of the Brazilian real against the dollar. But Azul is now in a more comfortable cash position than its main rival in Brazil, Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes, which Reuters reported is facing a cash crunch as it nears a debt repayment deadline.<br/>

Cebu Pacific’s financial losses deepened in the second quarter of this year as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic began to be felt more severely. The Philippine airline and its subsidiaries made an operating loss of Ps6.29b ($129m) in the three months ended 30 June, it reports. This compares with a profit of Ps4.96b in the corresponding period in 2019. An operating loss of Ps693m had been incurred in Q1 2020. The H1 operating loss of Ps6.98b compares with an operating profit of Ps8.81b in the same period of 2019. At the net level, a Q2 loss of Ps7.96b compares with a profit of Ps3.79b a year ago. The company made a H1 net loss of Ps9.14b after a profit of Ps7.14b in the six months ended 30 June 2019. First-half revenue was down 61% at Ps17.3b. Q2 revenues dwindled to Ps1.42b from Rs23.5b in the same period of 2019. “The overall decline in revenues was brought about by the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak which started with cancellation of flights to China, Hong Kong, Macau and South Korea in varying periods due to the imposition of travel restrictions,” says the airline. “With the rapid escalation of the situation surrounding Covid-19, the Philippine government implemented a community quarantine which then prompted the group to suspend all its scheduled flights beginning 19 March 2020.”<br/>