Malaysian long-haul budget airline AirAsia Xhas proposed a separate restructuring programme for its aircraft lessors that aims to tackle their concerns, citing chance to recover rental losses, a document seen by Reuters shows. The airline, an affiliate of AirAsia Group, has for months been trying to reconstitute 64.15b ringgit ($15.89b) of debt into 200m ringgit of debt. More than a dozen creditors, mostly lessors, had intervened in court to challenge a proposal that would have meant a haircut for them of 99.7%. The new proposal for lessors is a key step as the airline looks to win creditors’ approval for its restructuring. The proposal seeks to address lessors’ concerns about their forward commercial agreements and the viability of the airline’s business after recapitalisation, according to the document, which comprises slides describing the plan. Under the revised proposal, AAX said lessors are expected to recover at least 60% of what they are owed. A person familiar with the matter said the earlier descriptions of the debt haircut were inaccurate as they “excluded returns from ongoing leases”, referring to recovery of rental losses and outstanding debt. AAX urged lessors to agree to a “pre-packaged lock-up” deal to expedite the restructuring process. The person said the airline wanted to lock in terms of the deal with lessors before convening a creditors meeting to vote on the restructuring.<br/>
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Lawyers representing defunct Belgian airline ChallengeAir moved on Friday to seize Air Namibia’s headquarters after the state carrier failed to honour a E10m settlement agreement reached last month to save it from liquidation. Air Namibia survived liquidation attempts by creditor ChallengeAir SA in January when the two firms reached the settlement agreement minutes before liquidation proceedings were due to kick off. ChallengeAir filed in October for Air Namibia to be liquidated, arguing Air Namibia was insolvent and unable to repay about 253m Namibian dollars ($17m) in debt incurred for the lease of a Boeing 767 back in 1998. Air Namibia had cancelled the lease agreement, after finding that the aircraft was defective. Negotiations between the two firms have been deadlocked since 2019. In court papers filed on Friday, lawyer Sisa Namandje instructed the Deputy Sheriff for the district of Windhoek to seize and take over Air Namibia’s head office, valued at 45m Namibian dollars ($3m), to recover E5.8m that became due on Thursday.<br/>
Eastar Jet is reportedly eyeing a comeback, with several investors apparently interested in buying the grounded South Korean low-cost carrier. The company has received interest from “six or seven” potential investors, following the bankruptcy court’s permission to undergo a corporate rehabilitation process, the Yonhap news agency cites CE Kim You-snag as saying. The potential investors will make offers in March and a new owner for the privately-owned carrier will be selected. Subsequent to finding a new owner, the carrier will apply for a new air operator certificate with the hope of restarting flights in June. Kim did not name the new investors.<br/>
Russian civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia said on Friday it could not confirm that flights to Egypt’s resort towns were set to resume in March, following comments made by its Egyptian counterpart. On Thursday the head of Egypt’s civil aviation authority told Reuters that direct flights from Russia to the Red Sea resorts of Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada would resume next month after a hiatus of more than five years. Ashraf Noweir, Egypt’s civil aviation chief, said Russia’s Nordwind Airlines has submitted a request to start flights to both resort towns starting on March 28.<br/>
Mexican ultra-low-cost carrier Volaris is on track for one of the fastest recoveries in the industry even though the coronavirus continued to drag on results in Q4 2020, the airline said Friday. In December, Volaris’ capacity (in available seat miles) was up 102% year-on-year. Its load factor during the fourth quarter for domestic flights was 83.5%, and for international flights was 72%, bringing that number overall to 80%. “The capacity and load factor represents one of the fastest recoveries of any airline worldwide,” says Holger Blankenstein, the airline’s executive VP responsible for commercial operations. The carrier says revenue for the final quarter of the year was Ps8b ($392m), compared to Ps9.7b a year earlier, a decline of 16.7%. Revenue for the year was Ps22.2b, down 36% from 2019. Profit in the quarter fell to Ps897 million, down about 30% from Ps1.3b in 2019. For the full year 2020, the airline posted a net loss of Ps4.3b. During the quarter that ended in December, Volaris says it began operating two new domestic and seven new international routes. The airline transported a total of 14.7m passengers in 2020.<br/>
Emirates airline on Sunday said it operated its first flight serviced by fully vaccinated frontline teams across all customer touchpoints. Flight EK215, which departed this morning from Dubai for Los Angeles, was supported by check-in, security, business and first class lounge and boarding gate employees, as well as engineers, pilots and cabin crew who made the choice to be fully vaccinated, said the airline. The carrier rolled out its vaccination drive at pace just over a month ago, and since then, close to 26,000, or 44%, of the company’s UAE frontline aviation workforce have received both doses of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Sinopharm vaccines. “Our operational workforce is at the aviation frontline, helping people get to where they need to be, and moving essential goods to global communities,” said Adel Al Redha, COO, Emirates Airline. “We've seen a very positive response with high demand and take-up of the Covid-19 vaccine from our colleagues at the operational frontline, and there's continued momentum in the rate of vaccinations across the business.” <br/>