Emirates is leading a charge by airlines to escape the hefty payment processing fees levied by the credit card industry, after the carrier became the first to adopt a rival system developed by Deutsche Bank. The carrier has implemented a long-delayed scheme for electronic real-time payments for tickets devised by the German lender on behalf of the IATA, the airline industry’s trade body. The scheme enables real-time payments from customers who book tickets on the Emirates website, with the money transferred directly to the carrier without the involvement of third-parties. The aim for Emirates and other airlines is that customers opt to use it rather than pay with credit cards such as Visa and Mastercard. Emirates does not disclose the share of payments it hopes to process via the new system. Between 60 and 70% of all tickets sold by the Middle East carrier are paid with credit cards, while the remainder is cleared via country-specific payments options. Airlines have to pay credit card companies between 1 and 3% of the ticket price, with larger carriers closer to the lower end of that range, according to industry executives. By contrast, the system adopted by Emirates known as Iata Pay charges a fixed fee of just a few euro cents per transaction irrespective of the ticket price. “For us, this is a huge difference,” Emirates CFO Michael Doersam said, adding that fees to payment providers were one of the biggest components of its cost of sales. Iata estimates that prior to the pandemic, airlines globally stumped up $8bn a year for the procession of payments to credit card firms and other external payments service providers. <br/>
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Saudi Arabia plans to target international transit passenger traffic with its new national airline, going head-to-head with Gulf giants Emirates and Qatar Airways and opening up a new front in simmering regional competition. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is pushing economic diversification to wean Saudi Arabia off oil revenues and create jobs, announced a transportation and logistics drive on Tuesday aimed at making the kingdom the fifth-biggest air transit hub. Two people familiar with the matter said the new airline would boost international routes and echo existing Gulf carriers by carrying people from one country to another via connections in the kingdom, known in the industry as sixth-freedom traffic. The strategy marks a shift for Saudi Arabia whose other airlines, like state-owned Saudia and its low cost subsidiary flyadeal, mostly operate domestic services and point-to-point flights to and from the country of 35m people. The Saudi expansion threatens to sharpen a battle for passengers at a time when travel has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Long-haul flights like those operated by Emirates and Qatar Airways are forecast to take the longest to recover.<br/>
Ryanair’s passenger numbers surged in June, with the easing of travel restrictions and successful rollout of the Covid-19 vaccination programme prompting a flood of holidaymakers to seek out summer sunshine in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The no-frills airline, which in June reported the biggest annual loss in its 35-year history, carried 5.3 million passengers on 38,000 flights last month. In June 2020, Ryanair carried only 400,000 passengers. There has been a steady increase in passengers for Europe’s biggest airline in recent months – in April there were 1 million travellers and 1.8 million in May – as the easing of travel restrictions across parts of the continent fuels a gradual recovery in the hard-hit aviation industry. Ryanair said the most popular destinations booked by holidaymakers in June were Italy, Spain and Portugal. The green shoots of recovery are also evident in traffic figures issued by Ryanair’s rival Wizz Air, which carried 1.55 million passengers last month. This is more than triple the 502,000 passengers who flew in the same month last year.<br/>
Wizz Air will hand its CE Jozsef Varadi a GBP100m bonus if he can rapidly grow the low-cost airline as it emerges from the pandemic, setting up one of the biggest ever payouts from a London-listed company. Varadi will need to more than double Wizz’s share price from £48 to £120 over the next five years to hit the one-off award, which would be paid in shares over a four-year period, according to documents sent to shareholders ahead of the company’s annual meeting. The potential windfall underlines Wizz’s aggressive expansion plans across Europe, as well as its reliance on Varadi to execute them. It would also leave the Hungarian better paid than almost all his peers in the European airline industry, including Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, who signed a contract in 2019, which included a E99m payout from stock options, dependent on the airline’s share price or profitability over five years. Other big payouts in the UK include Bet365’s GBP421m package for Denise Coates for the year to the end of March 2020, which made the founder of the private gambling company the best-paid executive in the country. <br/>
Kazakh flagship airline Air Astana on Friday sued Embraer for at least $11.9m, accusing the Brazilian airplane manufacturer of leasing planes that were "unsafe to fly" and had to be grounded. In its lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan pursuant to a choice-of-law provision in the companies' lease agreement, Air Astana accused Embraer of engaging in "a course of conduct that was (at best) grossly negligent and displayed a reckless indifference to human life." Embraer said that the company denied breaching any obligations to Air Astana and will "vigorously defend" against any claims. "Air Astana is claiming compensation for its unilateral decision to suspend aircraft operations (and) was the only airline that suspended use of E2 aircraft, and they did so only temporarily and have since resumed all operations," the statement said. Air Astana claimed in the lawsuit that five Embraer E190-300 regional jet aircraft it leased from Embraer were plagued with serious safety problems. Those included failure of wing anti-icing system necessitating an emergency landing, a "cascading failure" of hydraulic systems during a landing, uncommanded changes in altitude and mechanical failures that resulted in missed approaches, according to the complaint.<br/>
The Indonesian unit of AirAsia Group Bhd will temporarily stop all flights for a month from July 6 to support the government’s effort to limit a spike in COVID-19 cases, the company said on Saturday. In a statement on Twitter, the budget airline advised passengers to reschedule, turn their tickets into credits or apply for a refund. (<br/>
South Korea’s Air Premia expects to receive its second aircraft in July and is close to launching revenue service. “We are at the final phase of getting the air operator’s certificate,” the start-up carrier said on 29 June via a LinkedIn post by its official account. “Air Premia looks forward to its first revenue flights once the AOC gets issued from the government authorities.” Air Premia describes itself as South Korea’s first hybrid carrier – combining “reasonable price and premium service” – that focuses on medium- and long-haul international routes. The airline will have three Rolls-Royce Trent 1000-powered Boeing 787-9s in its fleet, delivered by Air Lease from the lessor’s orderbook, according to Cirium fleets data.<br/>