Philippine Airlines, owned by billionaire Lucio Tan, said it will cut 2,300 jobs or about a third of its workforce by mid-March as it continues to take a beating from the pandemic. “This has been an extremely difficult and painful decision,” President Gilbert Santa Maria said Tuesday. The job cuts, first announced in October, include voluntary and involuntary separations, the company said. Demand for air travel is “still far from pre-pandemic levels,” Philippine Air said, adding that it operates less than 30% of pre-pandemic weekly flights. Prior to the job cuts, the airline implemented furloughs and flexible working arrangements. <br/>
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Indian low-cost carrier IndiGo’s international operations may be struggling, but the division could make a full recovery by the end of the year, the airline’s CE said this week. Ronojoy Dutta of IndiGo, which is operated by InterGlobe Aviation, said the split between domestic and international segments for the airline has been a “tale of two cities.” Domestic recovery has been strong, while international recovery has “all the challenges of Covid and testing and quarantine,” he said Monday. The country last week extended a ban on international commercial passenger flights until the end of February. Local travel was allowed to resume in May. IndiGo is a low-cost carrier that primarily operates internal flights, and is India’s largest passenger airline. “We are struggling at only 28% of our pre-Covid capacity,” he said of international flights. However, domestic operations have reached 80% of pre-pandemic levels. I think we should be at 100% of domestic capacity by April at the latest... International will open slower, but by the end of calendar year 2021, we should be at pre-Covid levels internationally as well.”<br/>
Sunwing has turned to one of the federal government’s pandemic programs, a $375m emergency loan, days after flights to the Caribbean and Mexico were suspended through April 30. The government said Monday that Sunwing Vacations and Sunwing will now have access to $375m in liquidity. The loan is through the government’s Large Employer Emergency Financing Facility (LEEFF), a program aimed at providing large companies that have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic with bridge financing. Under the terms of the loan, Sunwing has agreed to maintain an account with the money it received from customers for travel that was cancelled due to the pandemic. The federal government has stressed that it will provide financial aid for the battered aviation industry only if airlines provide refunds to passengers whose flights were cancelled as a result of COVID-19. “This account will be maintained until the government's broader discussions with the airline industry conclude and a policy is established for the treatment of these prepaid amounts,” read a statement from the Canada Enterprise Emergency Funding Corporation, which operates the LEEFF program. LEEFF, which was first introduced last May, offers loans of $60m or more to large businesses facing cash problems as a result of the pandemic. But the program has proven unpopular among big businesses, as it comes with an interest rate that is above typical private-sector lending rates.<br/>
JetBlue Airways could triple the number of flights it offers at New York’s sought-after LaGuardia airport under its new alliance with American Airlines. New York-based JetBlue plans as many as 50-60 peak day departures from LaGuardia with the northeast alliance in place, airline spokesperson Philip Stewart told Airline Weekly. This would represent a more than three-fold increase for the airline from 18 departures in 2019. JetBlue could also add as many as 50 departures for up to 240 at Boston, 45 for up to 80 at Newark, and 65 for up to 240 at New York JFK, according to Stewart. US authorities signed off the alliance that some say borders on a joint venture in January. American and JetBlue are allowed to collaborate on flights from Boston and New York, including the former leasing some of its slots at JFK and LaGuardia to the latter. The DOT is requiring the carriers divest seven slot pairs at JFK — plus up to 10 more if growth targets are not met — and six pairs at Washington’s Reagan National airport. If all the slot shifts occur, JetBlue could leapfrog competitors at key New York airports. <br/>
The UK’s advertising watchdog has banned Ryanair’s controversial “jab and go” holiday TV campaign, saying it encouraged the public to act irresponsibly once they have received a coronavirus vaccination shot. The Advertising Standards Authority’s decision to ban the two TV ads, which have become the third most complained-about campaign of all time, comes days after the Ryanair chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said the vaccine programme would allow British families to flock to Europe for summer holidays this year. The ad campaign, which featured a small bottle labelled “vaccine” and a syringe, encouraged the public to snap up bargain deals to sunny European destinations such as Spain and Greece because “you could jab and go”. Launched on Boxing Day, the ad said “Covid vaccines are coming so book your Easter and summer holidays today with Ryanair”. The ads showed groups in their 20s and 30s engaged in activities such as jumping in a pool and being served at a restaurant, with no social distancing or use of face coverings. The campaign struck a nerve with the public, prompting 2,370 complaints to the ASA. Some complainants said it was misleading to suggest most people would be vaccinated by spring or summer and so be able to go abroad, and that being vaccinated meant no restrictions would be in place. Others said it was irresponsible because it encouraged people to believe that once they had even the first vaccination shot they would not need follow health restrictions.<br/>
Traffic figures from Ryanair, Europe’s biggest carrier by passenger numbers and the first in the region to report data for January, illustrate the extent to which heightened travel restrictions have further hit demand. Ryanair reported 1.3m passengers in January, compared with the 10.8m it carried in the same month last year. It marks a fall of 88%, the highest decline in passengers it has reported since last June, when its operations during the first peak of the pandemic were at a near standstill. The figure is down on the 1.9m passengers it handled in December, which was a fall of 83%, reflecting the further tightening of travel restrictions and lockdowns in several key markets. The carrier operated just 15% of its planned January schedule. Passenger load factor was down at 69% for the month. <br/>
An airline has said it will confiscate cabin crew passports during layovers after the second flight attendant in six months went missing. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) issued the directive after a member of crew failed to turn up for the return leg of a round-trip from Lahore to Toronto over the weekend. The unnamed employee from Islamabad flew out on flight PK798, touching down on 29 January, but did not show up for the flight back to Pakistan. A very similar incident occurred in July 2020, reports One Mile at a Time, when a PIA flight attendant named Yasir went missing from the crew hotel during a layover in Toronto. When contacted by the airline, he informed officials that he was going to stay in another city. After that he became unreachable. PIA said at the time: “The authorities have launched an investigation into the matter and action will be taken against flight attendant Yasir.” After the latest incident, the carrier’s general manager of flight services, Aamir Bashir, told Pakistani news site Dawn that “steps have been taken in view of the incidents of cabin staff slipping [away]”.<br/>
Virgin Australia has suspended the sale of all short-haul international services until at least June 19, 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to restrict air travel. The airline had been selling seats to and from New Zealand from March 28, 2021 - but those flights have now been cancelled. Virgin Australia says due to ongoing uncertainty around the trans-Tasman travel bubble and in order to manage customer expectation, it has suspended selling of seats on flights between Australia, Aotearoa and the Pacific. The airline says it "remains flexible" in its approach to short-haul international flying and that the sale of flights may recommence should circumstances change. "We are closely monitoring the developments should quarantine-free travel between Australia and New Zealand... occur and demand for travel returns," an airline spokesperson said.<br/>
South African low-cost domestic carrier FlySafair has been granted the route authorities to operate between Johannesburg and Mauritius in what constitutes the carrier’s second attempt to enter regional markets. The route's launch is expected in 2Q21, the airline said in a statement, adding that while a schedule was not currently available due to Mauritius’s travel ban on South Africa, FlySafair hoped to introduce 2x weekly services as soon as COVID-19 travel restrictions allowed it. This is FlySafair's second attempt to gain regional route rights after applying to serve Entebbe/Kampala in 2017. Although the carrier never initiated a scheduled operation to Entebbe, it gained an international license through the application. “This is an all-important milestone for the FlySafair team as we look to expand our operations,” commented FlySafair CEO Elmar Conradie. “We’ve had our sights set on offering services beyond South Africa for some time and hope this will be one of many announcements in the future.”<br/>