Ireland’s sovereign wealth fund’s domestic investments in 2020 were almost exclusively in businesses impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, including a E150m loan to IAG’s Irish airline Aer Lingus. The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) was established in 2014 to invest in supporting economic activity and employment in Ireland. It was mandated last May to invest up to E2b directly in larger firms hit by the pandemic via equity, debt and hybrid instruments. It said on Monday that 90% of the E430m invested in Ireland in 2020 was for this purpose, mostly so-called “stabilisation investments”, including the three-year Aer Lingus loan and E40m committed to the Dublin Airport Authority. “It is a commercial investment, it’s not state aid,” Conor O’Kelly, the CE of the National Treasury Management Agency, which oversees ISIF, told a news conference in relation to the Aer Lingus loan. “Probably the reason that Aer Lingus would want liquidity from us is it’s possible that the banking system is going to find itself already over-exposed to the sector.”<br/>
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Sun Country Airlines, an ultra low-cost air carrier backed by private-equity giant Apollo Global Management, filed for an IPO on Monday, banking on a rebound in air travel as countries roll out vaccines against COVID-19. Minnesota-based Sun Country, which offers affordable flights and vacation packages to destinations across the United States and in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, said it would list its stock on the Nasdaq under they symbol “SNCY”. Founded in 1982 by Jim Olsen and a small group of pilots and flight attendants, Sun Country began flight operations in 1983 with a single Boeing 727-200 aircraft. The airline, which has been bought and sold a few times over the years, was forced to declare bankruptcy after the Sept. 11 2001, attacks on the US and was hurt again by the recession of 2008 and the revelation of financial fraud. The airline, a contract cargo operator for Amazon Air, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in 2008. The company was eventually bought by Apollo in 2017. Sun Country’s IPO comes as US capital markets are poised for another banner year, with January’s IPO haul totaling $33.9b, according to Refinitiv data.<br/>
Global demand for air travel will return naturally to pre-pandemic levels by 2023 without airlines having to make fundamental changes to their business models, providing COVID is dealt with meaningfully and vaccination programmes are successful. That is according to Emirates president, Sir Tim Clark, who said that he does not believe passenger behaviour will change so significantly that airlines will be forced to drastically adjust their models to recapture lost demand over the next few years. Sir Tim said that the airline industry will return to its “former glory sooner than other people are thinking” and that by around 2023, carriers will see the restoration of 2019 levels and begin to recapture the growth that had been going on until the COVID outbreak. “That assumes, of course, that the pandemic is dealt with meaningfully [and the] dissemination of the vaccine and its efficacy remains as good as people are told [it] is going to be. So why then should we not recapture what we were doing before? Why should there be fundamental changes to business models? It doesn't have to be like that.”<br/>
El Al announced Monday that it will operate several direct emergency flights between Israel and the US for cases approved by Israel's Exemptions' Committee. Flights LY011 and LY003 to the JFK International Airport in New York are expected to depart Ben-Gurion Airport on February 9, at 5:35 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. respectively. Flights LY012 and LY014 to Ben-Gurion Airport will depart JFK Airport two days later, on February 11, at 6:30 a.m. and 12:00 a.m. respectively. A third flight, LY010, will depart JFK toward Ben-Gurion on February 13 at 11:50 p.m. Passengers who have in their possession flight tickets that were canceled due to the pandemic will be allowed to redeem them for a seat on one of the offered emergency flights without an additional fee, so long as the passenger was approved by the Exemptions' Committee and can present a negative coronavirus test taken up to 72 hours before departure.<br/>
Icelandair Group is optimistic that it will be able to start ramping-up its network in the second quarter of this year, and intends to return its Boeing 737 Max fleet to service in spring. The company has six 737 Max jets which have been grounded for nearly two years. But it says that, following the recertification of the twinjet, it will restore the fleet to operation following “extensive updates and pilot training”. “The aircraft is both cost-effective and more environmentally friendly, giving us additional operational flexibility during the ramp-up as well as supporting the future development of our route network,” it adds.<br/>
A cat may have been stuck in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 for two weeks. Aviation photographer Ido Wachtel took a picture in which the feline can be seen lounging in the cockpit of the El Al jet parked at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. He shared his snap on Instagram with the caption, “Hello Captain”. But aviation fans soon worked out that the 737-900ER had made its last journey on 24 January, when it flew from Dubai to Tel Aviv, and that it had been grounded ever since. If the cat had been on the plane since then, it would have been trapped onboard for a total of 15 days. Luckily the adventurous feline has since been freed, according to Aeronews.<br/>