Indonesia’s air accident investigator has sent five components of a crashed Sriwijaya Air jet to the US and Britain for examination, including the autothrottle that controls engine power automatically, the agency’s head said on Tuesday. The 26-year-old Boeing 737-500 crashed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff from Jakarta on Jan. 9, killing all 62 people on board. National Transportation Safety Committee Chief Soerjanto Tjahjono said the components had been sent for examination to help find out why an autothrottle parameter had changed. He did not identify the other parts. The plane’s flight data recorder (FDR) has been found and read by investigators but a maritime search is going on for the cockpit voice recorder’s (CVR) memory unit that Tjahjono said would help explain any human factors behind the crash. “If we only have the FDR, we do not know why the parameter changed, what was the reason,” he said of the autothrottle. “We need confirmation from the components that we sent to the US and UK and the CVR.” KNKT said last month it was investigating whether a problem with the autothrottle system contributed to the crash given an issue with it had been reported on a flight a few days earlier.<br/>
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Shares in listed subsidiaries of China’s troubled HNA Group, once the driving force behind a wave of overseas Chinese dealmaking, fell sharply after several of them revealed that billions of dollars in funds had been misused. The disclosures were the latest ugly twist in the collapse of the conglomerate, originally a domestic airline operator that grew rapidly thanks to a debt-fuelled dealmaking binge where it spent more than $40b, including on stakes in Deutsche Bank and hotel operator Hilton International. In a statement to the Shanghai stock exchange this weekend, Hainan Airlines Holding said that “self-investigations” revealed billions of dollars of company funds had been used for non-business purposes. Hainan Airlines, and two other HNA companies CCOOP Group and HNA Infrastructure Investment Group, also said in filings that they had failed to disclose debt guarantees between companies within the group. The revelations on Monday sent shares in the listed HNA division tumbling. Both Hainan Airlines Holding and CCOOP Group dropped almost 10%, the daily limit for exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen. The disclosures come as HNA creditors last week applied to commence bankruptcy proceedings, after a court said the company was unable to pay its debts. Story has more background.<br/>
Ryanair CE Michael O’Leary called on the EU to “get its act together” on vaccinations as the airline warned it was facing an annual loss of nearly E1b because of travel restrictions. The boss of Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier said he was hopeful for a “strong recovery” in passenger numbers this year, but European governments need to “catch up” with the UK, which has administered nearly 10m vaccine doses. “Europe sadly is lagging behind . . . that to us is not acceptable. Europe needs to get its act together,” O’Leary said Monday in comments alongside the airline’s results. But despite the uncertainty, O'Leary was confident the airline would benefit from a sharp recovery in travel this summer. “We expect to see a very strong return of British families travelling to the beaches of Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece in relative safety this summer,” he said. <br/>
JetBlue Airways on Monday revealed the first major redesign of its Mint seats since the premium cabin’s 2014 debut, featuring private suites that it hopes will win over trans-Atlantic customers from rivals. The New York-based airline is planning to debut the new cabins on its first flights to London that it’s aiming to launch in the summer, using new Airbus A321LR planes. Uncertainty still clouds the market for once highly profitable trans-Atlantic travel that has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic more than domestic flights. The new Mint suites have sliding doors and 1-1 configurations, meaning travelers won’t have a passenger right next to them. The planes will have 24 of the Mint suites. JetBlue will outfit the planes with two Mint “studios,” which feature an extra side table and a small second seat, a bid to appeal to business travelers. It also plans to outfit jets with 16 suites on some planes used for flights between New York and Los Angeles this year.<br/>
Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund plans to establish an airline company in collaboration with other investment entities, the online Maaal newspaper reported, citing unidentified people. The company will operate international and domestic flights, according to the report, which didn’t provide further details. State-owned Saudi Arabian Airlines is the biggest carrier in the kingdom. <br/>
German virtual start-up Green Airlines has postponed its planned debut to March 26, 2021, with the first turbo-prop flight scheduled to take off from Paderborn/Lippstadt to the upmarket holiday resort of Westerland on Sylt, a German island in the Frisian archipelago in the North Sea. According to a notice on the company's website, this first route will be followed by 4x weekly flights from Paderborn to Zurich in the summer of 2021, in addition to 2x weekly connections between Paderborn, Sylt, and Zurich, thereby connecting the popular German holiday island with Switzerland and providing onward international connections. Initial main route flights are to be operated with a wet-leased 70-seat ATR72-500 stationed at Paderborn-Lippstadt, with a smaller ATR42 and Beech 1900D, both leased from Chalair Aviation, to be deployed as a back-up depending on reduced traffic demand during the pandemic.<br/>
Vietjet Air reports a profitable year in 2020 despite the pandemic, banking on ancillary revenue and cargo. The airline posted a consolidated after-tax profit of D70b ($3m) for the period, it said in a Sunday statement. It adds that ancillary revenue accounted for nearly half of its total revenue, “showcasing Vietjet’s efforts to promote ancillary services to offset decreasing air travel revenue”. Cargo was another bright spot for the airline, with volumes growing 16% in 2020 compared with the previous year. In the fourth quarter, Vietjet Air recorded a 75% increase in freight revenue year-on-year. To boost cargo capacity, the company configured some passenger aircraft for freight transportation. The airline also has interline agreements with other carriers, which enabled it to extend its cargo network to the USA and Europe. The airline also launched Vietjet Ground Services Center at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, which has “helped the airline better manage its operating costs while improving the brand recognition and service quality”.<br/>