Southwest executives said Thursday that the airline's operations have struggled this summer as travel has roared back from pandemic lows, and said making the airline reliable again is their top priority. Southwest's on-time performance in June was just 62.4%, and stood at 67% so far in July, the company said. In the same months in summer 2019, when crowds were bigger, Southwest's on-time performance was 75.1% in June and 80.3% in July, respectively. "We need to and we will do better than that moving forward," Southwest COO Mike Van de Ven said during the airline's quarterly earnings conference call. The US DoT rankings for June and July flights won't be out until later this summer, but Southwest said it is in the middle of the pack so far in July. American Airlines had a bad June, too, but the airline cut flights in the first half of July to address the issue and says its operation is back on track. The issues go beyond Southwest's well-documented flight woes in June, first from several weather and technology glitches, and then from more bad weather and what the flight attendants union said was a high number of sick calls. Southwest executives said it is not a matter of staffing shortages, as businesses across the country are reporting, saying they were staffed appropriately when the summer began. They said they are seeing only pockets of hiring issues, mainly for ground service workers, including baggage handlers. The airline said it's the sudden surge of travel that arrived as it was "still ramping up the operation." <br/>
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Southwest has fully joined the Sabre global distribution system (GDS), allowing corporate accounts to more seamlessly access, book and modify travel on the low-cost carrier. The Dallas-based airline says on Monday that the move will help it “remove friction” from the booking process for business travellers. The airline’s executives said last week that they expect this segment of the flying public will return in greater numbers in the second half of this year. For the past quarter-century, it was already possible to book and cancel Southwest flights on the Sabre network. However, any other booking modification required a direct phone call to the airline. “Today’s announcement brings us up to an industry standard level, thus putting us on the same playing field and able to offer the same level of service on the airline business travelers and travel decision makers trust for their travel needs,” the airline says.<br/>
South African Airways subsidiary Mango Airlines will enter a local form of bankruptcy protection known as business rescue, SAA’s interim CE Thomas Kgokolo told eNCA television on Monday. The budget carrier is the fourth South African airline to be placed under business rescue since late 2019, with South African Express placed under provisional liquidation after rescue efforts failed. SAA, which itself exited business rescue in April, and Mango are among a handful of South African companies that have relied on government bailouts since before the COVID-19 pandemic, placing the national budget under additional strain. “What we can say is that the board and shareholders have agreed that Mango will go into business rescue,” Kgokolo told eNCA. “We are currently in consultation with our key stakeholders in terms of how we can manage that particular process.”<br/>
Signs of a long-awaited recovery in European aviation are growing after Ryanair reported a “surge” in late summer bookings and raised its forecast for passenger numbers over the next year. The low-cost carrier said the rebound was down to vaccinations, the introduction of an EU-wide digital travel pass at the start of this month and the rollback of isolation rules for vaccinated travellers in the UK. Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s CE, predicted a recovery in air travel over the winter and into next summer. “We have seen a strong rebound in pent-up travel demand,” he said. The carrier’s upbeat outlook mirrors rival easyJet, which last week said it would increase the number of flights it operates over the late summer in response to strong bookings, particularly from continental Europe. Heathrow airport also on Monday said the UK was “emerging from the worst effects” of the pandemic but said the country was lagging behind a quicker recovery in continental Europe. The industry has been desperate for any signs of a sustained rebound in demand for flying following 15 months of mounting losses. Ryanair produced a net loss of E273m in the three months to the end of June, with Easter largely a write-off. This compared with a net loss of E185m in the same quarter last year. The airline carried 8.1m passengers in the quarter, but outlined how flying has since rapidly rebounded, with 9m passengers forecast for July and 10m for August. Ryanair was taking 2m bookings per week in June, four times more than in March.<br/>
Low-cost airline Wizz Air Monday said it suffered three days of operational disruptions due to a cabin crew rostering issue last week but it rejected rival Ryanair’s charge that it was suffering “operational chaos.” O’Leary told an analyst call on Monday that he understood Wizz had cancelled hundreds of flights on a daily basis and had cancelled 14 routes from Vienna until September, where the Hungarian budget airline competes with Ryanair. He said issues were due to staff levels and staff not being current, referring to regulations that can force pilots and cabin crew to require additional training if they do not fly enough over an extended period of time. O’Leary said Ryanair flew some empty planes during the height of the pandemic to ensure pilots fulfilled this requirement. Wizz said it was affected for three days last week by a cabin crew rostering issue which resulted in operational disruptions. The issue was unrelated to pilots and has now been resolved, it added.<br/>