SAS said Wednesday it had appointed Anko Van der Werff as new CE, who leaves the top job at Colombia-based Avianca Holdings, which is going through a bankruptcy restructuring. SAS said Van der Werff would join SAS on July 15 at the latest, while Avianca said it had appointed him to its board of directors and promoted Adrian Neuhauser to replace him. Van der Werff leaves Avianca, the first major carrier to file for bankruptcy due to the pandemic, in an uncertain position, still in the middle of a bankruptcy restructuring that the airline says should end this year. Van der Werff was appointed Avianca CEO in 2019 after United Continental Holdings staged a board coup to force out prior leadership. Avianca was already in a precarious financial position and Van der Werff was tasked with carrying out a tough turnaround, which was made more difficult when the pandemic hit, forcing the Chapter 11 filing. He was widely criticised last year, when Reuters and other Colombian media reported that Van der Werff and Neuhauser had been paid $6m in bonuses as thousands of employees went on long unpaid furloughs.<br/>
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Lufthansa Group carrier Swiss is set to announce a further reduction in the size of its business and an increased focus on leisure markets, according to the airline’s CE, Dieter Vranckx. Building on comments made at the end of March, when he hinted at more job cuts, Vranckx told the Routes Reconnected conference on 26 April that Swiss will “become smaller and not bigger”. Those changes will reflect a need to “adjust our size according to the market structure and market size”, he states, while reconfirming that an announcement with further details can be expected imminently. Swiss had already announced in October last year the loss of 1,000 jobs from its pre-crisis workforce of around 10,500 employees at Swiss and leisure unit Edelweiss Air. Then-CE Thomas Kluhr suggested further cuts could be necessary if a significant recovery in demand was not evident by the end of Q1 2021. Swiss’s financial results for that period are due to be announced on 29 April.<br/>
All Nippon Airways will introduce hands-free aircraft lavatory doors on 21 widebody jets from May, as part of efforts to limit physical contact on aircraft. The cabin solution, jointly developed with Japanese aircraft interiors company Jamco, features a large inner door-locking knob and an additional unlock handle for passengers to use their elbows to operate. ANA states that the hands-free door will be installed on 13 Boeing 787s, as well as eight 777-200s, which currently serve domestic routes. The carrier adds that it hopes to roll out the solution to its entire fleet in the future. ANA senior executive vice president for customer experience management and planning Shinichi Inoue says: “We have continued to invest in the development and implementation of innovative technologies because the health and safety of passengers and our staff is the top priority."<br/>