United and the union that represents the carrier’s 13,000 pilots have reached an agreement in principle to avoid furloughs of close to 3,000 aviators. The coronavirus pandemic has hammered travel demand. United last month said it plans to furlough or lay off about 16,000 employees, including 2,850 pilots, starting Oct. 1 when the terms of federal aid that prohibited job cuts until then expires. “Any potential mitigation must achieve our goals: stop planned furloughs, stop displacements, and include long-term permanent gains for any short-term, fully recoverable modifications,” said Todd Insler, chairman of the United chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, told union members in a note Tuesday. The union and the airline didn’t provide details of the agreement and how it would reduce costs. It wasn’t immediately clear for how long, if passed, the plan would avoid furloughs. The agreement needs to be approved by union members and leaders. The airline said that it continues “to try and reduce the number of involuntary furloughs at United and are happy we were able to reach an agreement in principle with ALPA that can potentially save pilot jobs.” Delta last month said it plans to furlough more than 1,900 of its pilots if it doesn’t come to an agreement with their union. The Atlanta-based carrier earlier this summer proposed cutting pilots’ minimum guaranteed pay by 15% to avoid furloughs for a year. <br/>
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United is setting its sights on Africa and India, regions that have long been minor players in its network as it tries to expand as profitably as possible during the coronavirus pandemic. The airline on Wednesday said next spring it will launch three weekly nonstop flights from Washington Dulles International Airport to Accra, Ghana, and Lagos, Nigeria, a bid for travelers visiting friends and family. It had discontinued a Houston-to-Lagos route, at the time its only Africa flight, in 2016 in the wake of the oil bust. United will also add a daily nonstop flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Johannesburg, adding to the South Africa service it launched with a Cape Town flight last December as it chases leisure travellers. “We are looking to places where we have low share that has more upside for the future United and our travelers,” said United’s CCO, Andrew Nocella. The airline is also planning to add daily service to Bangalore, India, from San Francisco next summer, a move that aims to capture business travelers between the two major tech hubs. That sets it up for a battle with American Airlines, which is planning to launch a flight from Seattle to Bangalore this winter. United will also add daily nonstop flights between Chicago and New Delhi late this year. “Bangalore has been one of the most requested destinations at United over the last few years,” said Nocella, adding that United could expand service beyond a once-daily flight there later on. The new flights’ success hinges on how the pandemic develops and a web of travel advisories and restrictions. Dozens of countries remain off limits for U.S. citizens, including most of Europe. <br/>
United Wednesday forecast a bigger drop in Q3 passenger revenue than its own expectations and said it would look to cancel more flights until it sees a recovery in air travel. United said it now expects an 85% drop in passenger revenue, a closely watched performance measure in the airline industry, down from its previous estimate of 83% year-over-year. The airline also expects Q3 capacity to decrease about 70% year-over-year, compared with its prior forecast of 65%, despite seeing a moderate improvement in bookings for leisure travel in the US and certain short-haul destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean in the two ended Sept. 7. US airlines have collectively been bleeding about $5b a month as 30% of the planes remain parked amidst the coronavirus pandemic that prompted passengers to cancel their flights and seek refunds rather than book new travel.<br/>
US and European airlines warned Wednesday of grim outlooks for the coming months, cutting schedules as passengers continue to avoid air travel during the pandemic. Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, reduced its forecast for passengers it expects to carry in the fiscal year to March, as the carrier warned this winter will be “a write-off”. Finnair, Finland’s flagship airline, said it would operate no more than 80 flights daily in October compared with the 200 previously planned. In the US, United said its capacity would fall 70% compared with Q3 2019. The company’s earlier guidance was a fall of 65%. Revenue, too, will be lower than executives forecast: down 85% from the $11.4b a year earlier, not 83%. Ryanair now expects to carry 50m passengers in the 12 months to the end of March, down from the 60m projected in July. The airline had forecast more than 150m passengers before the pandemic struck. United said it would launch seven new long-haul routes from the US over the next year: two from mainland cities to Hawaii, and five connecting diaspora populations to destinations in India and Africa. “We’re really focused on rethinking the network,” said Patrick Quayle, United’s vice-president of international network and alliances. “We’re not just looking at adding everything back prior to the way it was before coronavirus.” Given United’s hubs in cities with significant immigrant populations, the airline had long wanted to fly from the US to Johannesburg in South Africa, New Delhi and Bangalore in India, Lagos in Nigeria, and Accra, the capital of Ghana, Quayle said. However, before the pandemic forced cuts to other international routes, it lacked planes in the fleet to do it. “This is about implementing our business plan at a time when [visiting friends and family] travel is quite robust,” he said. “We have the aircraft right now, so we’re going to put the markets into play.”<br/>
If planes flew in formation like wild geese they might use five to 10% less fuel, Airbus said Wednesday as it signed up to test the idea. Executive VP Jean-Brice Dorman told an online civil aviation conference that wild geese and other birds fly in a V formation to save energy, a technique known as wake energy retrieval. "There's a kind of cushion of free lift offered by the leading bird" to those following behind, Dorman remarked. Jet engines meanwhile produce a vortex that contains a flow of rising air that another plane could use to throttle back and reduce its consumption. In 2016, an Airbus A350 plane flew 3km behind an A380 jumbo jet and "demonstrated more than 10 percent instantaneous fuel saving," the aircraft engineer said. A project inspired by "biomimicry" and baptised fello'fly has been launched to see if the concept could be put into practice. Airbus is to work with the French airline Frenchbee and SAS Scandinavian Airlines, in coordination with British, European and French air traffic controllers to demonstrate its operational feasibility, a statement said.<br/>
Air NZ is grounding its Boeing 777 fleet for at least another year with recovery of the airline’s international network predicted to be slower than initially thought. Air NZ said it had grounded its 777 fleet until at least September 2021 due to the ongoing impact of Covid-19. Air NZ has eight 777-200ERs (four owned, four leased), and seven 777-300ERs (four owned, three leased). In May the airline initially grounded the majority of its 777-300 aircraft until the end of the 2020 calendar year and indicated to analysts that its 777-200ERs were no longer needed. Air NZ COO Carrie Hurihanganui said the recovery of the airline’s international network post-Covid-19 was now looking to be slower than initially thought. “The recent resurgence of cases in New Zealand is a reminder that this is a highly volatile situation,” Hurihanganui said. “We are not anticipating a return to any 777 flying until September 2021 at the earliest, which is why we have made the decision to ground the fleet until at least this time next year.”<br/>