Lufthansa told staff that winter schedule cutbacks announced last week will cause it to bench an additional 125 aircraft and temporarily close large parts of its administrative operations. The reduction will cut the carrier’s active fleet back to the level it operated in the 1970s, with the impact filtering through its operations, it said in a letter to employees. Lufthansa had previously intended to use the planes in an already reduced schedule for the coming months, it said in the letter. “Winter will be an even bigger challenge,” according to the letter, signed by CEO Carsten Spohr and his fellow board members. “We managed to reduce cash burn from 1 million euros every hour when the pandemic started to ‘only’ 1 million euros every two hours now. Still, that hasn’t changed the drama of the situation.” The move sheds light on the operational impact of last week’s announcement that Lufthansa will fly only 25% of its planned winter schedule. The company will operate with only the minimum necessary resources, and Lufthansa’s airlines will use smaller and younger aircraft where possible, the managers told staff. Its low-cost arm Eurowings will fly less than 30 jets during winter and give up its office space in Dusseldorf. Most of the group’s headquarters at Frankfurt airport will also close, according to the memo.<br/>
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Lufthansa has warned that 30,000 jobs are under threat as it scaled down its winter schedule to levels not seen since the 1970s as demand for travel collapses because of the coronavirus pandemic. The executive board of Europe’s largest airline said in a letter to employees that it was now “harder than ever” to predict how the aviation industry will develop, given there is little clarity over how long travel warnings would be applied or how quickly any recovery could come. The use of video conferences may have also changed attitudes to travel against the backdrop of environmental prerogatives, while pressures on income could also weigh on tourism, the board wrote in the letter. “No one can reliably predict these effects. We are determined nevertheless to preserve at least 100,000 of the Lufthansa Group’s 130,000 current jobs. Even if we do not currently have nearly enough jobs for a workforce of this size,” it added. Lufthansa in September said more jobs would go beyond the 22,000 previously announced but did not give a clear figure then. The German state in June stepped in to take a 25% stake in the airline, pumping E9b of liquidity to prop up one of the nation’s most internationally visible companies. “After a summer that gave us all reason for hope, we are now once again in a situation that is tantamount to a lockdown in effect.” As the travel industry adapts to a post-pandemic world, the airline’s board said “we will be a smaller but also a more efficient Lufthansa. The road there will be long and arduous.”<br/>
Japan’s largest airline has signed up for jet fuel made from renewable materials in Singapore in a small step toward more environmentally friendly travel that will add costs for an industry crushed by the coronavirus. ANA signed a preliminary agreement to start buying so-called sustainable aviation fuel from a Singapore refinery run by Finland’s Neste Oyj. The deal will be expanded from 2023 when Neste will have capacity to produce 1.5m tons of SAF a year, ANA said. The Singapore plant is being enlarged to meet increased demand for diesel and jet fuel produced from waste vegetable and animal fats and oils. Airlines can’t ignore the inevitable shift toward biofuels triggered by campaigns to tackle the effects of aviation on the environment, Hiroaki Sugimori, who manages ANA’s sustainability department, said in an interview. The “Greta effect” -- a reference to climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg -- means airlines must adapt even if it involves higher fuel costs. “We can’t ignore this when we think about the reputational risk,” Sugimori said. Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga set an ambitious target for his country to become carbon neutral by 2050 in his first policy speech to parliament since taking office as premier last month. However, the timing for a shift to higher-cost, sustainable fuel could hardly be worse for airlines struggling to cope with the pandemic. Beyond the industry’s struggle to survive, any shift to sustainable aviation fuel will be hampered by scarce supply. “There are a limited number of producers for SAF compared to the demand,” said Kohei Yoshikawa, manager of ANA’s fuel procurement department. “As we looked into it, we began to realize that it’s not easy to get.” In a test, ANA received on Saturday its first cargo of 7m liters shipped from one of Neste’s European refineries to Haneda airport near Tokyo. Story has more.<br/>
Singapore Airlines announced the latest addition to its route network last week: non-stop flights between Singapore and New York, which will begin next month. The first flight bound for the Big Apple will depart from Singapore on November 9, marking the official return of the city state's flag carrier to New York for the first time since March 22, when services were suspended. The airline ceased services to all US cities except Los Angeles from April, as restrictions on travel were imposed to help stop the spread of Covid-19. It will also mark the first non-stop flight between Singapore and New York City, as the airline's other non-stop route to the region uses Newark Liberty International Airport, in nearby New Jersey. The 8,287-nautical-mile length of the new route technically earns it the title of “world's longest flight” by distance, but that's now how the airline sees it. A Singapore Airlines spokesman says that SQ21/22, the non-stop flights between Singapore and Newark, will still hold the title in the airline's book despite being shorter than the New York route by two nautical miles. Singapore Airlines is holding firm that the launch of New York flights isn't a resumption of the Singapore-Newark flights – which will return as demand and restrictions dictate – nor will they replace the New York-Frankfurt-Singapore route, which was also suspended earlier this year. These flights are entirely new and have their own flight numbers, SQ23 and SQ24. Non-stop flights between Singapore and Newark had initially launched in 2004, using four-engine Airbus A340-500 aircraft. Now, even with the resumption of flights to the New York area and a longer route, the airline isn't breaking out the confetti to celebrate a new world's longest flight. A Singapore Airlines spokesman says that the official reason for that is because the airline measures a flight's length by block time, or the duration for which flight is scheduled, and not by distance. The Newark to Singapore flight is scheduled for 18 hours and 45 minutes, five minutes longer than the planned New York to Singapore flights. Despite aircraft having to fly a longer route by mileage, the return flight from New York is only scheduled at 18 hours and 40 minutes.<br/>
De Havilland Canada has delivered another two Dash 8-400s to Ethiopian Airlines, bringing to 30 the number of the turboprops received by Ethiopian and its affiliates. The Canadian airframer announced in recent days that it handed over the two aircraft. Ethiopian CE Tewolde GebreMariam attributes the Dash 8-400 as supporting “the cost-leadership strategy will rely on in our market, particularly in these unprecedented times during the Covid-19 pandemic”. De Havilland parent Longview Aviation Capital purchased the Dash 8 programme from former owner Bombardier in June 2019. Longview placed the programme into its newly created De Havilland subsidiary. At the time, De Havilland’s backlog of Dash 8-400s – the only remaining in-production Dash 8 variant – stood at 51 aircraft. That backlog now stands at 21 Dash 8-400s, according to the most-recent Cirium fleets data.<br/>