unaligned

A Southwest flight attendant has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the airline, alleging that lax COVID protocols during mandatory training last summer and slack contact tracing after an attendee tested positive led to her husband's death from the virus. Carol Madden, a 69-year-old Baltimore-based flight attendant who has worked for Southwest since 2016, is seeking more than $3m in damages for what the lawsuit says was the airline's negligence, according to the suit filed in US District Court in Maryland. She and her husband, Bill, a veteran and retired railroad signal engineer who drove her home from the one-day training session at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in July, got sick days after the training and eventually tested positive for COVID-19. Bill's oxygen levels plunged, and his health deteriorated so rapidly he couldn't take his own temperature. He died a few weeks later in a York, Pennsylvania, hospital, with COVID pneumonia listed as the first cause of death. He was 73. Southwest filed a motion Friday to dismiss the case. In the filing, the airline expressed its sympathy to Madden and others who have lost family members to COVID-19 but said blaming the airline for his death is "misplaced." The airline said it is required to provide a "reasonably safe work environment" for employees but that the "duty of care" responsibility does not extend to spouses or others in the household, even in cases of transmission of diseases at work. <br/>

JetBlue Airways has seen “meaningful progress” toward a sustainable rebound in recent weeks, with passengers returning to air travel in greater numbers and planning trips further into the future. The New York-based low-cost carrier on 27 April reported a first-quarter loss, but executives say demand has hit levels not seen since the beginning of the global health crisis more than one year ago. The company lost $247m in the first three months of 2021, slightly better than its $268m loss during the same period one year ago, just as the coronavirus crisis was making itself felt in the industry. In the first quarter of 2019, JetBlue earned a $42m profit. The airline’s Q1 2021 revenue fell 54% to $733m from the same three months in 2020. Revenue slipped 61% from Q1 2019. “We have seen meaningful progress in the demand recovery, and have started to gain momentum from the groundwork we have laid to emerge from the crisis as a stronger JetBlue,” says CE Robin Hayes. “We have seen positive cash from operations for March, and this milestone is our first step towards… returning to profitability.”<br/>

JetBlue Airways and Barclays are nearing a deal to renew their years-long credit-card partnership, according to people familiar with the matter. Barclays has entered exclusive negotiations to retain the portfolio, though talks could still fall apart, according to one of the people. JetBlue opened up a so-called request-for-proposal process -- inviting other banks to bid on the portfolio earlier this year -- that drew interest from issuers including Goldman Sachs. “We are in the middle of contract negotiations with the finalist and I describe it as a meaningful improvement over existing economics of our deal and we’ll be prepared to discuss more in the coming weeks,” JetBlue President Joanna Geraghty said during the airline’s Q1 earnings call on Tuesday, without naming the finalist. “We believe this will help us close the gap in loyalty revenue to our peers over the next few years.”<br/>

Hawaiian Airlines says it saw a marked increase in passengers from the US mainland, which helped stem the carrier’s losses for the first quarter of the year. Speaking on the Honolulu-based carrier’s quarterly earnings call on 27 April, CE Peter Ingram called the first three months of 2021 “an enormous turning point” in the airline’s recovery. But despite the positive domestic news, the airline now needs inter-island and international traffic to come back just as strong in order to make a sustained recovery. “We reached an important inflection point during the first quarter on our path to recovery with an encouraging rebound in demand, despite the challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic continues to impose on our business,” Ingram says. “Bookings in North America improved materially as we began to realize the pent up demand for leisure travel after a year of lockdown. I am more optimistic each day about our progress as we rebuild our network and capitalize on the resilience of Hawaii as a post-pandemic vacation destination,” he adds.<br/>

Pakistan International Airlines will lay off half of its 14,000 employees, replace some of its fleet and permanently close loss-making routes in a bid to become profitable for the first time in more than a decade. Pakistan’s cabinet approved the carrier’s restructuring, said Ishrat Hussain, an adviser to Prime Minister Imran Khan. It also requested to explore outsourcing management contract or sale of 26% stake in the airline after improving its balance sheet, he said. The plan follows revival attempts in the past that were blocked by protesting employees or political opposition. This time, there are “no grandiose plans to become like Emirates or Etihad or Qatar,” Hussain said in a recent interview. It will be “a very lean and efficient organization,” he said. The aim is to return PIA to profit by 2023. That would be some turnaround for an airline whose finances and reputation have taken a beating in recent times. Even without Covid-related border restrictions, PIA was banned from key markets including the US and Europe after Pakistan’s aviation minister said last year that almost a third of the nation’s pilots had fake licenses. <br/>

A unnamed investor has agreed to inject up to 3.15b baht($100.41m) into the Thai unit of AirAsia Group Bhd as part of a restructuring plan proposed by parent company Asia Aviation PCL, a Tuesday filing said. The investor will provide the amount via an interest-free convertible loan or bond, an Asia Aviation filing posted by AirAsia on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange showed. Asia Aviation said it had not been able to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and did not consider the situation to be returning to normal. In order to continue its operation “steadily and effectively”, it had contacted an investor at the beginning of year to seek support in increasing the company’s short-, medium- and long-term liquidity, the filing said. Thai AirAsia, the main operating subsidiary of Asia Aviation, is 45% owned by Malaysian budget airline AirAsia Group. Once Thai AirAsia has received regulatory approval to offer shares in an IPO, the investor expects to convert the loan or bond into ordinary shares at a rate of 20.3925 baht per share, the filing said, giving them a direct stake in the airline.<br/>