After a bruising year for the airline industry, Hawaiian Airlines CEO Peter Ingram said he believes it’s only up from here. Airlines spent much of 2020 cutting routes and reducing flights due to the decline in travel demand from the coronavirus pandemic, but companies including Delta and United have announced some new additions in recent months. Hawaiian Airlines is joining the fray with new nonstop flights from Honolulu to Austin, Texas; Orlando, Florida, and Ontario, California, to be added in the spring. The Honolulu-based company anticipates a rebound in air travel in the new year and seeks to capitalize on population trends in the Southern states. “The reason it’s the time to announce three new routes is because … we’re very optimistic about 2021,” he said. “These are places we’ve been looking at for a long time. They have good strong demand for Hawaii.” Austin has established itself among the top tech scenes in the country, rivaling the traditional tech ecosystem that the San Francisco Bay Area is renowned for. The Texas capital city has drawn interest from multiple technology companies that have either opened up factories there or announced plans to relocate their headquarters from California.<br/>
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Peach Aviation is considering launching a new pass program that enables holders unlimited travel on any of the airline’s domestic flights for a set fee, according to informed sources. The airline plans to initially make the program available only for a month in February next year, the sources said Wednesday. Peach Aviation, based in Tajiri, Osaka Prefecture, will be the first airline to offer such an unlimited travel pass in Japan. The pass is planned to go on sale in January. Buyers will be allowed to fly with Peach Aviation in Japan as many times as they want in February. Thirty passes will be available for Y19,800 for a passenger without any checked bags and for Y29,800 for a passenger with one checked bag. Those prices will go up by Y10,000 each for the remaining passes. The number of seats available for holders of the passes will be limited to 180 per flight.<br/>
AirAsia Group plans to cut its stake in AirAsia India from 49% to just 13%, unnamed sources have told The Times of India, giving joint venture partner Tata Sons a significantly greater hold over the airline. However, the low-cost carrier will continue to use the AirAsia brand for some time, together with other arrangements such as aircraft maintenance and ticketing and accounting software. While the Malaysian group continues to run a common website for its operations in different countries, Tata Sons has started setting up a separate website for AirAsia India, according to the newspaper. The Indian conglomerate’s information technology subsidiary Tata Consultancy Services is also reportedly developing pilot and crew management software. “It is not going to be an instant divorce but a prolonged one,” a source said. Tata Sons and AirAsia Group continue to negotiate their differences, most notably over the sums each side is obligated to inject into their joint venture. AirAsia has said it is reviewing its investment in India after resolving to focus only on southeast Asia.<br/>