Europe’s biggest budget airline will be flying the Boeing 737 Max from “probably early next year”. Eddie Wilson, CE of the main operating division, Ryanair DAC, made the prediction as American Airlines revealed plans to start flying the plane between New York and Miami. “It gives us lower operating costs. In the environment we’re in now, the Max will not only be welcomed by Ryanair, it’ll be welcomed by our crews as well.” The 737 Max is more fuel efficient and less environmentally harmful than earlier models of the aircraft. Ryanair is by far the biggest European customer for the Max. It has firm orders for 135 of a special version of the jet, with 197 seats – eight more than the standard configuration. The carrier has a further 75 on option. It was due to start flying the Max to and from its main base, London Stansted, in May 2019. But the plane has been grounded worldwide since March 2019, days after the loss of 157 passengers and crew aboard Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. It followed the crash in October 2018 of Lion Air flight 610 on a domestic flight. All 189 passengers and crew died. Wilson said: “I think it’s going to come back into service in the next number of weeks in the US. Easa has been working closely with the FAA. It’s trying to get two regulatory authorities to jump together. The FAA are going to go first, and Easa closely behind that.”<br/>
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Hawaiian Airlines will reinstate its flights to the northeast USA as the weather there turns cold and potential customers who have refrained from travelling due to the coronavirus may be thinking of a winter getaway. Hawaiian says on Wednesday that its non-stop long-haul flights between Honolulu, the capital of the island archipelago 4,500 km off the southwest coast of the mainland, and east coast cities Boston and New York will resume in December. They are among the longest domestic routes in the world. The airline will fly twice a week between Honolulu and Boston, and thrice every week between Honolulu and New York’s John F Kennedy International airport. The carrier also says it is bringing back its flights between Honolulu to Long Beach, California, as well as various routes between the islands of Kauai and Maui and several other cities in California. The Long Beach, New York and Boston flights had been suspended in March at the advent of the global pandemic. By bringing back these key routes, the airline hopes to profit from pent-up demand for a vacation after people in many parts of the country endured months-long lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders designed to stop the spread of the virus earlier this year. Industry analysts and airlines believe that the leisure travel market to prime warm-weather vacation spots like Hawaii, will be the first to recover as the air transport industry regains its footing following the global health crisis. <br/>
El Al’s pilots have lost a legal bid to invalidate an efficiency agreement for cockpit crews, which was reached in mid-July in the absence of pilots’ representatives. This agreement was one of several revising terms for several groups of El Al workers. The new pacts were a condition for the airline to obtain much-needed rescue funding. But while the Israeli trade union centre Histadrut had overseen the $105m pilots’ agreement, negotiated with the transport workers’ union, pilot representatives had not been present. El Al’s pilot committee subsequently filed a lawsuit with Tel Aviv’s regional labour court, stating that the agreement was not valid. But El Al says the court issued a ruling on 20 October “rejecting” the pilots’ claim. Histadrut transport workers’ union chair Avi Edri welcomed the ruling, stating that the judge “praised the decision” of Histadrut chairman Arnon Bar-David to sign the original deal, and remarked that it had helped save the airline. “It is important to remember that beyond [the ruling] is El Al – one of the most important companies in Israel’s economy and aviation industry – whose complete collapse has been avoided,” he states.<br/>
WestJet says it will begin providing refunds to passengers whose flights were cancelled due to the pandemic. The Calgary-based airline said it will begin contacting all eligible flyers with WestJet and Swoop on Nov. 2. It will begin with those whose flights were cancelled in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, to offer refunds in the original form of payment. The process is expected to take six to nine months, the company said. It asked customers to wait to be contacted, in order to avoid overloading its call centre. "We are an airline that has built its reputation on putting people first," said Ed Sims, WestJet president and CEO. "We have heard loud and clear from the travelling public that in this COVID world they are looking for reassurance on two fronts: the safest possible travel environment, and refunds." Sims said in a letter posted to the company's website that since March, it has done everything it can to reduce costs in the face of a 95% drop in demand. "Up until this point, quite plainly, the financial position of airlines around the world has been precarious," Sims said. "We went 72 days in a row where cancellations outstripped bookings, something that has not happened — ever — in our almost 25-year history. Thankfully, we are seeing bookings higher than cancellations now but still at a level that sees more than 140 of the 181 aircraft in our fleet parked and more than 4,000 WestJetters permanently laid off."<br/>