United told more than 40,000 employees on Friday that their jobs are safe when federal Covid-19 aid for the sector expires this fall thanks to a rebound in travel demand. The recovery in bookings, led largely by US leisure travelers, has encouraged airlines, including United, American, Delta and Spirit, to set plans to resume hiring pilots. “Given the increase in customer demand and our current outlook for the future, we’re excited to announce that we will not need to furlough flight attendants assigned to active, open Inflight bases again this fall when the current Payroll Support Program (PSP) funding ends on October 1,” wrote John Slater, senior VP of inflight services, to United’s roughly 23,000 flight attendants. “This news provides great relief to many of our flying partners who were facing an uncertain future.” Airport operations workers and customer service agents on Friday received similar memos which said that United “will not furlough” them when the latest round of aid expires. “With vaccination rates continuing to climb across the U.S. as the pace of infections decline, additional countries are reopening to vaccinated visitors,” said United. “Given the current outlook for the future of United, we continue to move closer to full frontline staffing levels to support our operation.”<br/>
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Lufthansa will deploy Airbus A350 and Boeing 747-8 widebodies on flights from Frankfurt and Munich to the Spanish island of Majorca this summer, in response to a “significant” increase in demand. The German carrier normally deploys Airbus A321 narrowbodies on the two short-haul routes but says it is taking “extraordinary measures” after booking figures for Palma increased by 25 times between April and the beginning of June. Lufthansa will operate its Frankfurt-Palma route with a 364-seat 747-8 on four Saturdays in a row from 17 July. It will begin operating a 293-seat A350 on its Munich-Palma service on 31 July. Both Spain and Germany have relaxed Covid-19-related travel restrictions for a number of countries in recent weeks.<br/>
South Africa will sell a majority stake in its collapsed national flag carrier to local investors in the first privatisation of an ailing state-owned company since President Cyril Ramaphosa took power in 2018. Harith General Partners, an African infrastructure investor and Global Aviation, a local airline operator, will take over 51% of South African Airways, Ramaphosa’s government said on Friday. SAA was once the continent’s biggest carrier but needed tens of billions of rands in bailouts to survive in recent years, adding to the strain on South Africa’s public finances during a long period of stagnation in Africa’s most industrial economy. “The new SAA will not be dependent on the fiscus. It will be agile enough to cope with the current uncertainty, and improvement, in global travel,” said Pravin Gordhan, the minister overseeing state-owned companies. The government will retain the remaining 49% of SAA. It will have a golden share in the airline of a third of voting rights that is also applicable to “certain areas of national interest,” it said. The investors plan to list the new airline “as one way of addressing future funding requirements and to enable all South Africans to take part in its success,” the consortium said. The investors will have a major task in turning round SAA, which has a history of political interference by the ruling African National Congress.<br/>
All Nippon Airways has begun a COVID-19 vaccination program for employees. The Japanese carrier is believed to be the first firm in the country to inoculate its workers on the job site. It kicked off vaccinations on Sunday at a conference room in the Haneda Airport terminal building. Pilots and cabin attendants for international flights had a temperature check before entering the room. The medical staff asked about their health status before giving a shot. Fifty pilots and cabin attendants are to be vaccinated on the first day. Pilots have to wait at least two days before their next assignment while cabin attendants should wait at least a day. ANA started the program ahead of schedule, saying that it had secured enough vaccines and medical stuff. The airline says it will increase the number of vaccination sites and plans to offer shots to over 46,000 employees including group company employees and contractors. <br/>