United has warned of possible disruptions to its cargo flight schedule in March as it juggles its fleet after its decision to ground 24 Boeing 777-200 aircraft, according to a notice sent to cargo customers. United temporarily removed the 777-200 planes from service after an engine failure on Saturday forced an emergency landing on a passenger flight soon after take-off. “As we review options for swapping aircraft in for scheduled passenger flights, we will be readying planes that have been parked in storage, reconfiguring some cargo-only flights to return to the passenger schedule, and modifying the March cargo flight schedule,” United Cargo said in the notice on its website, posted late Monday.<br/>
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The South African government’s attempts to resuscitate the embattled national airline were justified because failing to do so would erode the creditworthiness of other indebted state companies, with negative repercussions for the entire economy, a cabinet minister said. SAA has been in bankruptcy protection since late 2019 and was grounded in March last year. The National Treasury has set aside 10.5b rand ($713m) to help get the airline flying again, but efforts to revive it have been hobbled by the Covid-19 pandemic and a resultant decline in demand for air travel. While civil-rights groups and opposition parties say the country has more pressing priorities than bailing out SAA, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, an acting minister in the presidency, said allowing the carrier to fail would erode confidence in the ability of other state entities to settle their debts. “If you don’t bail out SAA and you don’t ensure its survival, then lenders will look at your other companies,” Ntshavheni said Monday. “The view will be that government dumped SAA. What guarantee do they have that the same won’t happen” elsewhere? she said.<br/>
Singapore Airlines will proceed with plans to retrofit three more Airbus A-380 aircraft despite the Covid-19 pandemic. The airline has moved one of its A-380s from the Alice Springs storage facility in Australia to Sydney. The plane will undergo routine checks in the city before being moved back to Singapore for a scheduled retrofitting and maintenance programme, SIA said Monday. The carrier plans to retrofit two other A-380 planes by its 2022/2023 financial year. SIA said: "The aircraft, registration 9V-SKQ, has been moved to Sydney to undergo routine checks following its storage before returning to Singapore where it will be retrofitted with the latest A-380 cabin product. "This is part of our plan to have all 12 remaining A-380s in our fleet fitted with the latest A-380 cabin product." Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the airline had a fleet of 19 A-380s. It grounded the fleet around March last year as the coronavirus outbreak rapidly worsened. Twelve of the planes were parked at Changi Airport and seven sent to long-term storage at Alice Springs. The carrier had said in a business update last November that it would retire 26 planes deemed surplus to fleet requirements - including seven A-380s - after a review of the longer-term network. Of the remaining 12 A-380s, four had been retrofitted. Five others had been delivered to SIA with the newer cabin configuration.<br/>
German billionaire Heinz Hermann Thiele, the biggest shareholder in Lufthansa airline, died Tuesday aged 79, announced Knorr-Bremse, the company through which he built his fortune. Thiele, a rail industry tycoon and one of Germany's richest men, died "surrounded by his family in Munich", Knorr-Bremse said in a statement. Derided as a "caveman capitalist" by trade unions and dubbed a "patriarch" by others, Thiele had become Lufthansa's largest shareholder last year with a 15.5% stake. He battled with Germany's government last June, making no secret of his scepticism about plans for the state to take a 20% stake in Lufthansa in exchange for a huge rescue package to keep it afloat during the pandemic.<br/>
Lufthansa will begin offering preflight verification of digital Covid-19 testing results on Feb. 26. The carrier will first offer the service in a trial on three routes: Newark-Frankfurt, Newark-Munich and Istanbul-Frankfurt. In March, Lufthansa Group carrier Swiss will add the offering to Newark-Zurich flights. Passengers traveling on these flights will receive advance notification and a link to a portal where the relevant contact data and certificates can be uploaded, Lufthansa said. After the carrier checks the documents, customers will receive a confirmation by email as to whether the certificates meet the entry requirements or feedback if the documents are not sufficient. If the trials are successful, Lufthansa said it will enable digital testing document verification for all of its flights. The carrier also said it plans to integrate digital health passport apps into its operations eventually.<br/>
THAI has no plan to buy 30 planes within 2025, acting president Chansin Treenuchagron said on Tuesday, adding that if flight demand increases the company would look into a rental option first. A news source had said last week that THAI is planning to buy 20 to 30 planes in 2025 to strengthen its fleet and replace sold/decommissioned planes. “There is a rumour that THAI would submit a plan to buy new planes along with the company’s business rehabilitation plan to the Central Bankruptcy Court on March 2, but this is not true,” said Chansin. “Before entering the rehabilitation process, THAI already had a plan to decommission old planes that required high maintenance cost and had low fuel efficiency,” he added. “In the next five years, the company aims to downsize its air fleet as well as reduce maintenance cost to only necessary level, as well as find new revenue sources and increase administration efficiency in accordance with the current market demand."<br/>