Southwest has resumed flight service to Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport after a seven-year absence. Southwest flights returned to Jackson this week. Flyers will now be able to travel domestic and international routes through the airline, including nonstop flights to Atlanta, Houston, Orlando, Florida and the Baltimore-Washington D.C. metro area. Southwest stopped flying into Jackson in 2014 after 17 years of service. At the time, the airline provided 27% of available seats out of Jackson, according to a Jackson State University study. Like airports everywhere, Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. <br/>
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Countries are opening up for tourism and El AL is offering free tickets to children up to the age of 12, in anticipation of the summer holidays and the Jewish High Holy Days after the summer months die down, the company announced on Monday. Children up to the age of 12 will only have to pay airport taxes when they arrive to board their flights. The offer will be valid only for regular tickets that include a checked bag and pre-seating. Story has details of routes.<br/>
Hong Kong Airlines is preparing to cut hundreds of more jobs and temporarily carry only cargo on its passenger planes under its latest pandemic-survival plan, the Post has learned. The new blueprint drawn up by the embattled all-Airbus airline calls for grounding its entire fleet of A320s with only eight A330 jets flying in the interim and prioritising cargo over passengers, according to two sources familiar with the plan. Once positioned to challenge Cathay Pacific, the airline has long been in the grips of a cash crisis that has engulfed both the company and its controlling shareholder, the now-bankrupt mainland China conglomerate HNA Group. The fresh cuts represent a further blow for anxious and weary staff, who have endured pay reductions of up to 60% during the Covid-19 crisis. In December last year, the carrier cut 250 flight attendant jobs after culling 400 across various departments in February. This April, it offered exit packages to pilots, warning there was no guarantee their work visas would be renewed. About 120 pilots were expected to be retained to operate revenue-generating air freight flights, sources said. At the airline’s peak, it employed about 650 pilots. It is unclear how many flight attendants will be retained or how consequential the impact of downsizing will be on ground and office staff, and associated businesses.<br/>
IndiGo, India's biggest airline, expects domestic air travel to recover by its October-December quarter, the company's CEO said on Monday, and has started to see a pick up in passenger numbers despite a resurgence in COVID-19 infections in the country. Air travel in India had started to recover from the impact of the pandemic in early 2021. February was the best-performing month for IndiGo since the pandemic hit, with passenger numbers rising to as high as 180,000 a day. But since March a second, more deadly wave of infections has hit airlines and forced them to raise funds and cut costs. In a "best case scenario", IndiGo expects to return to the February 2021 levels by the third quarter (October-December) of the current fiscal year, CEO Ronojoy Dutta said on an analyst call. Dutta also expects that any meaningful recovery in international travel will now be pushed to the fiscal fourth quarter - January to March 2022. Interglobe Aviation, which runs IndiGo, reported its fifth straight quarterly loss on Saturday and has plans to raise up to 30b rupees ($412m) to strengthen its balance sheet. CEO Dutta said that while the carrier expects revenues to be impacted in April and May due to travel disruptions amid lockdowns, the airline has started to see a steady pick up in passenger numbers and expects an improving revenue trend for the rest of the year. "We are hopeful that with the reducing trend in COVID cases and increased pace of vaccinations, passenger confidence and airline traffic will gain further momentum," he said.<br/>
Jeju Air, South Korea's biggest budget carrier by sales, said Tuesday it has resumed flights to Saipan in a preemptive measure to absorb post-coronavirus travel demand. Jeju Air started to provide one flight a week on the Incheon-Saipan route on the day following permission from the transport ministry, a company spokesman said over the phone. "We expect most of the initial passengers to be businessmen, Koreans residing overseas and their family members. But pent-up demand for travel (to the U.S. territories) is expected to rise depending on the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations," he said. Guam and Saipan currently allow exemptions from a two-week quarantine for incoming passengers who received Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen vaccines. AstraZeneca vaccine recipients and unvaccinated people are required to take a coronavirus test at the territories' airports and undergo a two-week quarantine at local facilities. In South Korea, passengers from Saipan are required to undergo a mandatory two-week quarantine in their homes or other places. The Saipan route has been suspended for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with most of the international routes operated by local airlines. Jeju Air has suspended most of its flights on international routes since early last year due to countries' entry restrictions.<br/>