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Passenger volume at the Turkish airline Pegasus Hava jumped in July from a year ago but remains well below pre-pandemic levels as travel restrictions continue. At 2.49m, travelers for the month were up 137% from July 2020 but down 19% from 2019, the Istanbul-based low-cost carrier said in an exchange filing on Friday. In June, passengers were 1.78m. Separately, in a presentation, Pegasus said it was outperforming its peers in capacity recovery while still facing a “heavy and unforeseeable restrictive environment” on international travel. Pegasus flies domestically and to destinations in Europe and the Middle East.<br/>

Aer Lingus has resumed its Dublin to Washington Dulles route as it seeks to rebuild Ireland-US services suspended during the pandemic. The airline will operate a route from the Irish capital to Washington four times weekly, it said. The direct route takes to four the number of US cities Aer Lingus flies to from Dublin, with the others being Boston, Chicago and New York’s JFK airport. However, its network of routes remains well shy of the pre-pandemic situation. “Safety remains our priority at Aer Lingus and we continue to implement measures such as mask requirements and additional cleaning, as has been in practice across the airline for the past year,” Aer Lingus chief operating officer Peter O’Neill said as flights restarted on Friday. “We are also committed to making the flight experience as comfortable as possible and customers can enjoy our in-flight food, drink and entertainment services on board.” The airline said fares from Dublin to Washington would start at E259 each way.<br/>

Romanian low-cost carrier Blue Air is to launch services from London Heathrow to Nice, a move underlining its intent to both operate from primary airports and to expand outside of its home market. Blue Air will fly four weekly services from Heathrow to the French Riviera resort city from 16 September, operating Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays and Mondays in a bid to target demand for long weekend trips. The UK earlier this month removed France from its “amber-plus” Covid travel status, meaning fully vaccinated travellers no longer need to quarantine on returning from the country. Blue Air chief commercial officer Krassimir Tanev says: “[The] French Riviera is a highly demanded product for our London customers and represents an important development in Blue Air’s network strategy.” Following the disruption to air services due to the pandemic, the Romanian carrier has launched flights from a number of major network airports. That includes London Heathrow, at which there were next to no budget carriers operating before the crisis, and from where it now serves both Bucharest and Cluj in Romania. London-Nice has been a mainstay of budget carrier schedules since EasyJet added a Luton service to the French city in 1996 – the carrier’s second ever international route. But British Airways is the only operator on the route from Heathrow. Cirium schedules data shows EasyJet also serves Nice from London Gatwick, and that both EasyJet and Ryanair served Nice from London Stansted before the crisis.<br/>

Emirates airline said a flight to Kabul on Sunday was diverted due to the temporary closure of the runway at the airport, while fellow Dubai state-owned carrier flydubai suspended services. The Emirates Boeing 777-300 flight circled over the Afghanistan capital, aircraft tracking website FlightRadar24 showed, before returning to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. "We are monitoring developments around the situation in Afghanistan and are working closely with all the relevant authorities to ensure the safe operation of our services," an Emirates spokesperson said. Flydubai said earlier that a Boeing 737 service to Kabul on Sunday returned to Dubai mid-flight and that the airline had suspended its services to the city until further notice. The Taliban militant group entered Kabul earlier on Sunday. <br/>

Spring Airlines and Japan Airlines are anticipating a post-pandemic tourism boom between China and Japan for their joint-owned budget carrier, even though Japan still lags behind major economies in reopening its borders. Spring Airlines Japan had operated seven routes from Narita to Shanghai, Tianjin, Nanjing, Wuhan and other cities, but five of them were suspended due to the virus. Even so, the carrier is eyeing new routes to Chinese coastal cities with populations of more than 10 million people, potentially by March 2024, Akira Yonezawa, said Spring Japan’s new CEO and former JAL executive. Even amid tight restrictions, Japan is becoming the top destination among Chinese for post-virus travels, with 18% saying they want to visit, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Some 90% of Spring Airlines Japan’s international passengers are nationals from China. “Japan is close to China so it’s easy to travel and there’s a lot of expectation” for traffic between the countries, Yonezawa said. On top of that Spring Airlines offers “a deep relationship” and a platform to sell tickets in China, the CEO added. Japan was betting on a tourism boom from the Olympics, with Chinese visitors pouring money into restaurants and souvenir shops, although that dissipated with the decision to hold a spectator-less games the closing of the borders in 2020 because of the pandemic. Even so, Japan is sticking to its target of attracting 60m annual tourists by 2030.<br/>

Bangkok Airways narrowed its second quarter operating loss to Bt493m ($14.8m) from Bt2.7b a year earlier, as it continued to suffer from the collapse of Thailand’s tourism market amid the coronavirus pandemic. According to the carrier’s earnings release for the three months ended 30 June, total revenue – which includes airports, catering, and other businesses - more than doubled to Bt1.4b, but this is still a fraction of the Bt6.1b revenue recorded during the same period in 2019. Taken separately, airline revenue was Bt212b, up from Bt108b a year earlier. Overall net losses narrowed to Bt686m, compared with Bt2.97b previously. The carrier also cut total Q2 expenses by nearly 50% to Bt1.9b. During the quarter the company operated 1548 flights, twice as many as in the April-June period of 2020, when Thailand was mostly locked down. Still, the country’s third wave of Covid-19 – and more lockdowns – hurt overall demand in the second quarter of 2021. Rising coronavirus cases also caused people to postpone travel during the normally busy Songkran festival in April. Owing to the third wave and travel restrictions, the airline cut frequencies on domestic routes from Bangkok to Koh Samui, Chiang Mai, Sukothai, Lampang, Phuket, and Trat.<br/>