The disappearance of billions of dollars’ worth of orders from troubled budget carrier Norwegian Air has left Europe’s Airbus with more cancellations than orders so far this year, company data showed on Friday. Norwegian last month obtained an Irish court’s agreement to cancel all 88 aircraft on order from Airbus as it staves off collapse. It remains at loggerheads with Boeing over the status of a separate order for 97 U.S. passenger jets. The airline’s name was dropped from a monthly update of orders issued by Airbus on Friday, leaving the European firm with a negative total of 81 orders for January and February. The hefty upcoming order cancellations were reported on Feb. 23, on the eve of a court hearing at which agreement over the terms of the cancellation was announced.<br/>
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The return of budget airline Flybe could be in the balance, after the resignation of a hedge fund manager who was driving the revival of the collapsed business. Lucien Farrell of Cyrus Capital has quit his role as director of the company Thyme Opco, the Telegraph reported. Farrell's departure last week comes after a hearing on 26 February between regulator Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), administrators EY and law firm Freshfields. EY said that take-off and landing slots worth tens of millions of pounds each should be handed over to Thyme Opco, with the company also applying for an operating licence at the hearing. But, according to industry insiders the aviation watchdog delayed the part of the hearing relating to the transfer of of the slots after failing to reach a decision. Story has more.<br/>
Philippine low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific has secured a Ps16b ($329m), 10-year loan today, from a syndicate of private and government banks. Proceeds of the loan will go towards funding “capital expenditures and other general corporate purposes” and “provide a cushion against unexpected working capital requirements that may stem from fuel price and foreign exchange rate volatility”, the airline says in a same-day statement. The move comes on the back of Cebu Pacific’s Ps12.5b rights offering for convertible preferred shares, which began on 3 March. <br/>
AirAsia Group said it is seeking to launch a flying-taxi business as soon as next year. “We are working on that right now,” Tony Fernandes, the company’s CEO and co-founder, said Saturday. “I think we are about a year and a half away from launching.” With the airline business taking a hit from the coronavirus pandemic, AirAsia has been expanding in the digital space. It launched a “super app” last year that offers services from travel and shopping to logistics and financial services. “We took it as an opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to recast your business, re-look at things,” the CEO said. AirAsia expects to start its own e-hailing services in April, Fernandes said. The flying taxis it hopes to begin providing next year will come with as many as four seats and will be powered by a quadcopter, he added. Separately on Saturday, the company announced that it’s partnering with a state agency called the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre to develop an urban drone delivery service. While AirAsia is looking for further opportunities to expand its services into new areas, Fernandes is optimistic that air travel will soon rebound with the rollout of vaccination programs. The group offers low-cost flights linking 22 countries, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region. “I hope interstate travel will start in the next two to three weeks” within Malaysia, he said. He expects international borders to start opening in July or August.<br/>
Turboprop manufacturer De Havilland Aircraft of Canada was entitled to terminate a Dash 8-400 purchase agreement with Indian carrier SpiceJet after the airline stopped making payments and taking delivery of aircraft, a judge has ruled. SpiceJet originally ordered 25 of the type from Bombardier – part of a September 2017 agreement for up to 50, the largest single deal for the aircraft type – before the airframer sold the programme to Longview Aviation Capital, which placed it under the De Havilland brand. De Havilland has pursued a $42.95m claim against SpiceJet after the airline took, and paid for, the first five aircraft but failed to take delivery of the next three or make pre-delivery payments on either these or 12 subsequent ones. The airframer served notice terminating the deliveries of all outstanding aircraft and cancelling the purchase agreement.<br/>
Pegasus Airlines saw local restrictions in Turkey dent demand towards the end of 2020, but it remains hopeful of a strong traffic rebound going into the second half of 2021. Reporting a full-year net loss of E211m Friday, the Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen-based operator claims to have “outperformed the industry in capacity recovery” across the 12 months to 31 December 2020, with ASKs at 51% of 2019 levels on a load factor of 80%. A recovery in demand that began in the second quarter was reversed to an extent, however, in December, as ”weekday curfews and full weekend lockdowns” weighed on domestic travel options. Looking ahead, Pegasus notes signs of traffic bouncing back in January 2021 and says its base scenario is achieving 90% of pre-crisis capacity in the third quarter of this year, and 70-75% for the full year, “depending on the evolution of Covid-19 and travel restrictions”. The carrier offers no guidance on its financial outlook, “due to continuing uncertainty”.<br/>