Canada’s WestJet and Delta reportedly intend to resubmit their plans for a transborder joint venture, eight months after the carriers pulled their last application to the US DOT. WestJet CE Ed Sims reportedly said the two airlines remain dedicated to such an endeavour. While WestJet declined to confirm Sims’ exact words at the event and a recording was not made available, the airline says on 23 July that it is “committed to enhancing our strong partnership to increase transborder competition and bring more benefits to travellers”. “We are working together to decide our next steps in that evolution,” WestJet adds. Atlanta-based Delta declined to comment. Last November, the two airlines withdrew their application for a transborder joint venture saying the DOT’s conditions for antitrust immunity approval were “arbitrary and capricious”. The DOT had tentatively approved the JV a month earlier. It said at the time that in light of the downturn in passenger commercial air traffic due to the coronavirus pandemic, antitrust immunity would be appropriate to help the industry back on its feet.<br/>
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Embattled Garuda Indonesia saw its domestic market share erode in 2020, as full-year traffic tumbled significantly amid the coronavirus pandemic. The airline — now subject to restructuring efforts — saw domestic market share drop 9.34 percentage points year on year to nearly 21%. Its low-cost unit Citilink increased domestic market share marginally, at nearly 1.3 percentage points to 14.4%. Taken together, the Garuda group captured 35.4% market share among domestic carriers, an 8-percentage point decline year on year. Garuda disclosed the figures in its annual report, released days after it put out its financial results for the year ended 31 December 2020, where it plunged to a record $2.2b operating loss. Underscoring the devastating effect the pandemic has had on the troubled airline group, both Garuda and Citilink saw passenger numbers across international and domestic networks plunge 66% year on year, to 10.8m. Garuda carried just 4.5m domestic passengers for the year, representing a 71% decline, while its international passenger numbers plummeted nearly 82% to just 770,000. Citilink, meanwhile, carried 5.5m passengers in 2020, a 55% decrease year on year. <br/>