Europe’s biggest budget airline has seen forward bookings collapse by 90% because of a lack of confidence among passengers, its chief executive has said. Ryanair’s boss, Michael O’Leary, said: “We operated about 50% of our schedule through August, September, we expect to operate only about 40% of our schedule in October, and at the moment November and December look like they’re booking at about 10% of normal levels. That’s a number that’s repeated across most of the airline industry. We have never seen such awful forward bookings.” O’Leary criticised the Department for Transport (DfT) policy of adding and subtracting countries from the “no-go” list each Thursday. “If we stick to the current UK scheme where the government adds Portugal one week, takes it off the next week, adds Greece, takes it off, nobody – businesspeople, people going away for weekends – can make any bookings with confidence, without having their plans disrupted. “The British government doesn’t have any competence, let alone confidence. “Flying is safe, but governments must create an environment where people can make these bookings with some degree of confidence.” The Ryanair CE urged the UK to adopt a European Union plan to classify locations according to risk and permit travel between most locations.<br/>
unaligned
El Al’s new ownership structure has already run into problems, just a week after the share offering which resulted in a change in major shareholder. The new investor, Kanfei Nesharim, took a 43% shareholding in El Al during the share offering on 16 September. It had declared at the time that it was a private company incorporated in Israel, and was under the full and exclusive ownership and control of Israeli citizen Eli Rozenberg. Kanfei Nesharim added that it should be regarded as the controlling stakeholder in the flag-carrier. But El Al says it has submitted a letter to three ministers acting on behalf of the Israeli government’s special ‘golden’ share in the airline over concerns that Rozenberg is not the controlling holder of Kanfei Nesharim. According to information in El Al’s possession, the airline says, it understand that the controlling holder is Rozenberg’s father, Kenny Rozenberg, who is not an Israeli citizen. El Al says it has asked the ministers to “consider these circumstances” in light of the request of Kanfei Nesharim’s for a permit to control the airline.<br/>
AirAsia Group announced Thursday that it is building a super app off its existing mobile application and website to provide services such as e-commerce, delivery and payments. The app is to be available next month in Thailand and Asean. AirAsia CE Tony Fernandes said the idea to build a super app came before the pandemic, but new revenue streams are desperately needed after most of AirAsia's fleet has been grounded for months because of travel restrictions. The company suffered losses of US$238m in Q2 of this year. "This journey didn't start during the pandemic -- this journey started two years ago -- but it was accelerated because of the outbreak," Fernandes said. "This is not a Plan B, this was always our Plan A, but we still think aviation will definitely come back." The new platform will be accessible through AirAsia.com and AirAsia's mobile app on Oct 8, including digital services under subsidiary AirAsia Digital. These services include BigPay, a digital payment app; Teleport, a wholly owned logistics, e-commerce and delivery business; and Santan, a food and beverage franchise. Fernandes said these services are already earning revenue for AirAsia except for BigPay, which is in negotiations with regulators to set its rates. Teleport came to Thailand in 2019 through a joint venture, while BigPay is available in Thailand and can transfer money to Thai bank accounts. Santan is only available in Malaysia or on AirAsia flights. "AirAsia's roots are from moving people from A to B and moving cargo from A to B, and that is the basis of AirAsia Digital and the basis for our platform AirAsia.com," Fernandes said. The app will also allow users to book hotels and flights (from airlines other than AirAsia) and offers a travel and lifestyle rewards programme. The company ended its partnership with Expedia and is offering its own travel booking service.<br/>