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Kuwait’s Jazeera Airways laid off another 200 employees in September as the coronavirus pandemic continued to hammer demand for air travel. The airline instituted cost reductions at every level of business, CEO Rohit Ramachandran said. The layoffs, across all business lines but predominantly pilots and cabin crew, followed the termination of about 300 employees -- a third of the airline’s workforce -- in March. “We would love to have them back as soon as possible, once the situation improves,” Ramachandran said by phone after the airline reported a Q3 loss of 5.6m dinars ($18.3m). “As a prudent business, we have to look at all cost elements.” The low-cost airline has also renegotiated leases with all lessors, “which gave us significant cost savings for the year,” said Ramachandran, who last month took his first salary since February. Other members of the leadership team took a 50% pay cut, while shareholders agreed to retain dividends due to them in the business, he said. While commercial flights at Kuwait International Airport resumed on Aug. 1, following an easing of restrictions after a lockdown in March, flights from 34 countries are still suspended. Jazeera ended the nine-month period with a cash balance of 23.3m dinars.<br/>

All airlines are feeling the coronavirus pinch but one that hasn’t flown since April 2019 after collapsing under a pile of debt is the world’s best performing -- at least from a share price point of view. Stock in Mumbai-listed Jet Airways India has surged almost 150% this year versus a 42% plunge in the 27-member Bloomberg World Airlines Index, which comprises the globe’s biggest carriers. Its runaway gains have market watchers scratching their heads, especially since Jet Airways is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, has almost 17,000 creditors seeking claims of around $3.4 billion and has had most of its landing slots confiscated. It doesn’t have any employees to speak of, either. A panel of creditors did approve a resolution plan last month, bringing the recovery of any dues one step closer, but that doesn’t guarantee a resumption of flights. Retail investors are the last ones to get anything out of a bankruptcy, yet some are buying in the hope Jet Airways will successfully emerge from a restructuring, said Ajay Srivastava, managing director of advisory firm Dimensions Corporate Finance Services. The airline isn’t being thought of as a going concern, but a shell containing assets that may be sold, he said. In its heyday, Jet Airways was India’s No. 1 private carrier, taking on the monopoly of state-run Air India and offering intercontinental voyages with free gourmet meals and in-flight entertainment. But a slew of budget carriers that offered no frills, ultra-cheap tickets ate into its market share and Jet Airways started to drown in debt.<br/>

Air Canada Rouge on 2 November flew passengers from Toronto to Cancun, Mexico, marking the first time it has operated since the start of the coronavirus pandemic travel downturn in March. The low-cost leisure subsidiary of Air Canada is scheduled to fly only 4% of its schedule in November compared with that month in 2019, Cirium schedules data shows. Air Canada vice-president of network planning Mark Galardo says that “as leisure traffic resumes we will progressively add Air Canada Rouge to select North American leisure markets from Eastern Canada”. Travel on the Montreal-based mainline’s routes remains limited by quarantine restrictions in other countries and for travel between provinces in Canada. Ottawa has begun to partner with the government of Alberta on a joint initiative to test international and transborder travellers arriving in that province to provide a safe means to bypass quarantine restrictions.<br/>

Mexico’s low-cost carrier Interjet is on the verge of collapse after the airline cancelled flights over the weekend and a union representing its workers called for a strike to protest unpaid wages, according to media reports. Attempts to contact the Toluca-based airline by email and phone Tuesday were unsuccessful, and its website was down. Mexican media reports that the CTM union, representing aviation workers at the carrier, called for the strike after 5,000 airline employees had not received pay for the past two months. The move comes after the airline shut down operations completely on 1 and 2 November – cancelling about 50 flights that affected around 3,000 passengers. It claimed “cash flow” problems, and says it was unable to pre-pay its fuel bills, Latin American aviation website Aviacionline.com says. The carrier’s last social media post, on 1 November, says that it would resume operations on 3 November, but that had not been confirmed. Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed two Interjet flights currently in the air, but it was unclear if these were revenue flights.<br/>

Wizz Air has reported plunging passenger numbers as the pandemic continues to pummel the aviation industry. The Hungary-based low-cost airline said on Tuesday that it saw passenger numbers fall by 69% to 1.15m in October, down from 3.71m in October 2019. The airline reported capacity down 55% and a load factor of 66%. In the year to date, it saw total passenger numbers slide by 43% to 21.8m. The carrier appears to be planning for growth in the long term, however. It recently opened new bases in both Norway and Italy, and acquired two new Airbus A320neo aircraft. It comes as Europe's biggest budget airline Ryanair reported half-year profits, which topped GBP1b in 2019, tumble to a GBP180m loss. The Irish carrier saw passenger numbers fall by 80% to 17m in the period. Airlines could be hit further in the coming month, as latest lockdown rules ban any international travel from England, unless for work purposes. Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary on Monday branded the looming second shutdown "a cover-up for political mismanagement". He said : “Lockdowns don’t address the issue. You can’t keep bouncing an economy in and out of lockdown.” Calling instead for a massive escalation in test and trace, he said: “We need to learn to live with this virus until a vaccine is available.”<br/>

The UAE’s low-cost carrier, Air Arabia, has for the first time been ranked number one among the world’s top 100 airlines in a list based entirely on financial and performance data. Airfinance Journal’s annual list of top 100 global airlines assesses operational and financial parameters, including total revenue, net income, EBITDA margins, fixed charges, liquidity, leverage, fleet size and average age of fleet. “The fact that Air Arabia managed this year to rank first in the world underlines the strong fundamentals of our organsiation, and our commitment to operational excellence,” said Adel Al Ali, group CEO of Air Arabia. The list measured the financial and performance metrics of all 100 airlines’ last twelve-month (LTM) figures from 31 March 2019 to 31 March 2020. Next year’s list is likely to look very different as the financial performance of airlines around the world has crashed amid the Covid-19 crisis. Low-cost carriers, however, have fared better than most airlines and have largely managed to maintain a degree of liquidity and strong bottom line. Ali told Aviation Business that while the crisis has been “difficult” for Air Arabia, he thinks the airline is in a much better position than most legacy carriers. He is also confident that airlines in the UAE will be among the first to recover due to the simple fact that the population has a need to travel in and out of the country constantly.<br/>

Low-cost carriers are ready to lower domestic airfares after the cabinet approved the extension of jet fuel tax reduction. Santisuk Klongchaiya, CE of Thai AirAsia (TAA), Thailand's largest low-cost carrier, said the decision from the government is good news that will help airlines save operation costs and allow them to maintain average airfare prices. If the government asks carriers to keep lowering airfares in exchange for the extension, TAA will discuss seeking practical solutions with the Transport Ministry. Santisuk said the average ticket price is quite cheap. The rate per flight is around 900-1,000 baht depending on the destination and booking period. While TAA can carry on with providing domestic flights by flying 30-40 of 63 jets in its fleet and expects better performance in the last quarter of the year, the carrier still needs the soft loans, which domestic airlines have been requesting for months, he said. PM Prayut Chan-o-cha has met airline executives and agreed to allocate 24b baht in soft loans to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. The request has yet to be granted. "We still have weak demand for weekday flights because of the lack of international tourists who would normally fill this void," said Santisuk. Nuntaporn Komonsittivate, head of commercial operations at Thai Lion Air, said the extension of the excise tax reduction definitely helps lift the cost burden as jet fuel normally takes up 30% of total operations.<br/>

European carrier Volotea is crediting a shift of its network strategy to focus on domestic flights for a July-September traffic performance in which declines in passenger levels were kept to less than a quarter. Volotea says it handled 2.4m passengers in Q3, down only 23% on the same period the previous year. Bookings were only 9% down in the peak August month. The airline says load factor stood at 90% for the period, seven points down on the same period in 2019. After resuming scheduled services in June, the airline says it operated 247 routes during the third quarter. Of these, 56 were new services, reflecting a strategic shift to serve domestic markets to help counter the challenge of international travel restrictions. Cirium schedules data illustrates how the airline has increased capacity on domestic routes in its three biggest markets – France, Italy and Spain. It lifted domestic flight capacity in its biggest market Italy by almost a fifth and by 40% in France compared with Q3 2019. Domestic routes accounted for more than four-fifths of Volotea’s capacity during Q3 – though its overall flight capacity was down almost a fifth.<br/>