Mexico’s biggest airline is forging a rebound from the travel collapse by using discount fares to tap demand for leisure trips. After the pandemic hit, Volaris lowered fares 30% to coax people back onto routes that primarily serve the friends-and-family market, said CEO Enrique Beltranena. While a drag on revenue, the move helped the company boost passenger totals to more than 70% of last year’s levels, outpacing domestic rivals and counterparts in the US. The carrier is currently reviewing options to raise as much as 3.5b pesos ($170m) after getting a green light from investors last month. Volaris is exploring alternatives such as offering shares, debt or convertible bonds, and hasn’t set a deadline for a decision. Unlike US carriers, Mexican airlines haven’t received government aid. “We need to find the correct timing,” Beltranena said. “But there’s no rush. We’re going to take our time to do the right thing for our investors." “Few airlines in the world are reporting this level of recovery,” Helane Becker, an analyst at Cowen & Co., said in a note to clients last week. In Mexico last month, Volaris carried 71% of last year’s passengers, compared with 44% for Grupo Aeromexico SAB and just 5.5% for Interjet, according to data compiled by the Mexican government. Volaris has negotiated to push back payments for almost $400m by rescheduling jet deliveries from Airbus, Beltranena said. In addition, the airline negotiated delays in more than $100m in aircraft lease payments. Volaris plans to end the year with 86 Airbus planes. The fleet will only expand by one jetliner by the end of 2021, although the company is looking to replace some of its A320 aircraft with the more fuel-efficient A320neo.<br/>
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Malaysia’s AirAsia Group has lowered its projected recovery rate in Malaysia to 60% of its pre-COVID-19 capacity by year-end, it said on Monday in its Q3 operating statistics. The airline in August had said it expected a 70-75% recovery in Malaysia by the last quarter. AirAsia Group’s biggest market, it said it saw a 52% increase in domestic capacity in September compared to 40% in July, but stricter curbs on movement in October due to rising COVID-19 cases had reined in growth. It said it now expected a return to 45% of pre-pandemic capacity in Indonesia, up from a previous expectation of 35%, but lowered its view on India to 65% from 75%. It is aiming for its Thai operations to exceed pre-COVID-19 capacity levels. Group load factor - a measure of how full its planes are - grew 7 percentage points in September versus July, the group said, without providing further detail. It said passengers carried in that period increased by 36% for Malaysia, 79% for India and 65% for Thailand.<br/>
Argentine low-cost carrier Flybondi has strongly protested the government’s decision to keep Buenos Aires’ secondary airport El Palomar closed as the country slowly reopens following the coronavirus crisis. El Palomar, located near the centre of the sprawling Argentine capital, had been the chosen airfield for low-cost carriers such as JetSmart and Flybondi as they expanded their services to an ever growing middle class prior to the global pandemic. The country’s government-owned flag carrier, Aerolineas Argentinas, and other international carriers use the larger Ezeiza International airport, on the city’s far southwestern outskirts. Last week, Argentina’s airport authority ORSNA ruled that Ezeiza was the only one of the region’s three airports that satisfied the health and safety requirements to re-open during the global health crisis, effectively freezing out El Palomar and the LCCs which operate from the field. The city’s third airport, Jorge Newberry Aeroparque, also near the city’s centre, closed in August for major repairs - including expansion of a runway and a terminal - and won’t reopen until at least February 2021. That airport was primarily used for domestic flights, which have been transferred to Ezeiza until the construction is complete. “Flying from Ezeiza is not a commercial option for Flybondi nor for our passengers, and the government authorities and regulatory bodies are aware of this reality,” says Flybondi president Esteban Tossutti on 25 October. “Their decision shows the lack of respect for passengers who purchased tickets to fly from El Palomar…in addition to the thousands of passengers who can only travel by plane if they do so from an airport that can be reached by public transport.”<br/>
EasyJet is planning to make 418 crew in Germany redundant as it almost halves its fleet in Berlin amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The UK low-cost carrier is withdrawing 16 of its 34 aircraft from its base in the German capital starting December, it disclosed Monday. Having originally proposed 738 job losses among its 1,500 strong workforce in Germany, the airline has reduced the number after discussions with pilot and cabin-crew representatives. The remaining 320 jobs will be kept until at least June 2021 using the government furlough scheme, at which point the airline will review whether those are again at risk of redundancy. “Pending a hoped-for recovery of the current market situation next summer and further discussions on alternatives like part time, it will then be assessed if and how many of these positions can be maintained or need to be made redundant,” says EasyJet.<br/>
A man was removed from a flight by police after shouting racist abuse at fellow passengers onboard the aircraft. The unnamed white man, who was caught on video by several other travellers during the incident, initially became angry after finding there was no space for his bag in the overhead lockers, reports local media. He then became embroiled in an altercation with a black woman over seating allocations, which sparked a racist tirade. In one of the videos taken onboard the aircraft, the man, who is wearing a Burger King cardboard crown, claims the woman had kneed him in the stomach. “Call the f***ing police right now, I know you saw it,” he shouts in footage shared on social media. “Excuse me, I’m part West African, I can say n****r anytime I want,” he went on. In other footage shared online, he shouts: “Get that n****r bitch off the plane.” Cabin crew can be heard trying to calm him down and asking him to stop shouting while they sort out the situation, to no avail. The situation escalated into a full-on fight, with the man shouting the n-word repeatedly and other passengers weighing in and trying to hit him. Police were called to attend the scene and the man was later filmed being escorted through the airport to applause and cheering from other passengers. The incident took place on a JetBlue flight from Kingston, Jamaica to New York on 20 October, prior to take-off. A spokesperson for JetBlue said that the man had been banned from flying with the airline.<br/>