Gol will operate 50 aircraft in April, down from 63 the previous month, in response to reduced demand for air travel as Brazil battles rising Covid-19 infection rates. However, the airline is confident that as the country’s vaccination programme rolls out, demand for leisure and business travel will start to “reactivate” from the middle of the second quarter. In its latest monthly investor update, Gol says that searches for its airline tickets fell by a quarter in March, compared with the previous month, while the volume of daily ticket sales was down 40%. It attributes this to the increase in Covid-19 cases across Brazil and the transition to the low season. Pointing to Brazil’s immunisation programme, Gol says it is forecast that all priority groups and individuals over the age of 60 will have received a vaccine by the end of the second quarter, with the remainder of the population set to be immunised during the second half of this year. “The company anticipates that the successful rollout of vaccinations through Brazil’s national immunisation programme will reactivate demand in the leisure and corporate segments as of the middle of the second quarter of 2021,” says Gol.<br/>
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Norwegian Air now aims to raise up to 6b crowns (US$711m) in fresh capital, up from a planned 4.5b crowns, to bolster its resources before emerging from bankruptcy protection next month as the pandemic continues to curb travel. Financed largely by debt, Norwegian Air grew rapidly, serving routes across Europe and flying to North and South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East before the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the airline into crisis. "We want to take a conservative approach at a time when the pandemic and travel restrictions continue to create unpredictability in the travel sector," CE Jacob Schram said Wednesday. Courts in Oslo and Dublin have recently given their approval for Norwegian to sharply cut its debt by converting it to stock, but the rulings were conditional on the airline raising at least 4.5b crowns in additional funds.<br/>
EasyJet expects British tourists to travel freely to most European countries from next month, as it banks on borders reopening in time for the summer season. The airline on Wednesday revealed it lost about GBP700m over winter after surging coronavirus cases and border closures across Europe grounded most of its fleet. The carrier plans to fly 20% of its normal schedule between April and June, with expected capacity levels to increase from late May as CE Johan Lundgren puts his faith in international travel rebounding strongly in the coming months. “I still believe there can be a strong summer,” he said. The UK government has said holidays could be allowed from mid-May in England under a “traffic light” system, but initially only a small number of destinations are expected to be on the green list and opened up for quarantine-free travel. The cautious outlook has disappointed the airline industry, but Lundgren struck an optimistic tone as he forecast major European holiday destinations would make the green list of approved countries for travel immediately. “Unless something happens that we don’t foresee from now, I couldn’t see there would be many countries in Europe that won’t be in the green category,” he said.<br/>
Flybe, the regional British airline which failed last year, is set to relaunch this summer after the sale of the former company’s business and assets to a new company backed by investor Cyrus Capital. “We plan to launch a new and much improved Flybe sometime this summer on many of our former routes,” said a spokesman for the new company, called Flybe Limited, on Wednesday. The administrators of the former company Flybe, which fell into insolvency at the beginning of the pandemic last March, said on Wednesday that they had completed the sale of the business and assets to the new company.<br/>
Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways is planning to offer a 5%-7% stake in a third-quarter U.S. initial public offering to raise about $200m, giving the airline a market capitalization of as much as $4b, chairman Trinh Van Quyet said by phone. The plans come after the carrier said it had planned a listing on a Vietnam exchange by Q3. The Vietnam listing is now considered a backup plan and will depend on market conditions, Quyet said.<br/>
China Southern Airlines is reviewing the future of its five Airbus A380s amid uncertainty about the return of international travel. Guoxiang Wu, the Guangzhou-based carrier’s senior vice-president of international and corporate relations, said of the A380: “It is still in our consideration how we can solve this problem.” He continues: “Maybe it’s too large for the routes and the operation cost is very high.” Citing the similar dilemma faced “not only by… China Southern but also for many airlines”, Wu says the operator “must [be] rethinking” the superjumbo’s future when forecasts show international travel could take years to recover from the impact of the pandemic. He further states that China Southern has “just started to retire some old aircraft, such as the Airbus [A330]” in response to that challenge. “From our view, the international network still faces many difficulties in the future,” Wu explains. “We must [rethink] our structure, our business model, our future.<br/>
Virgin Australia, the country’s No. 2 airline, said on Thursday that 10 leased Boeing 737 planes would return to its fleet as part of plans that would see it reach more than 80% of pre-pandemic domestic capacity by mid-June. The carrier, now owned by US private equity group Bain Capital, had last year entered voluntary administration after the pandemic hit and sent many of its 737s back to lessors. The Australian domestic market outlook is now improving having been hobbled for months by pandemic-related state border closures. “More aircraft means more flying, and with easing travel restrictions, there are more opportunities to further support domestic tourism and the nation’s economic recovery from COVID-19,” Virgin Australia CE Jayne Hrdlicka said. Virgin Australia said it had finalised deals to reintroduce 10 Boeing 737-800s it had previously operated, with the addition of further planes under investigation. The first three will join the airline’s fleet this month, with the remainder set to progressively enter service by October, the airline said.<br/>