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Southwest will reduce its flight schedule for the last four months of the year after employees assailed the discount carrier for understaffing operations during a summer marred by delays and cancellations. Average daily flights will fall by 27 to 3,304 from Sept. 7 through Oct. 6, Southwest said in an emailed statement Thursday. The carrier will cull an average of 162 flights a day from Oct. 7 to Nov. 5, leaving about 3,420. Other schedule adjustments are likely for non-holiday periods in November and December, the company said. “To any Southwest customer whose journey with us fell short of their expectation this summer, we offer our sincerest apologies,” said Southwest CEO Gary Kelly. He told employees, “As our business recovery continues, we’re 100% dedicated to improving the quality of your work day.” Southwest unveiled the schedule cuts two weeks after warning that surging virus infections were crimping sales and prompting customers to cancel flight reservations. The company has also absorbed a wave of employee criticism, with flight attendants complaining of overwork and pilots threatening to protest publicly if operations don’t improve. Southwest suffered a rash of delayed and canceled flights this summer as travel rebounded. The cuts come atop previous reductions Southwest made to adjust for the typical slowdown in September and to respond to a surge in new Covid infections that have curbed travel demand. Last week, Southwest COO Mike Van de Ven told employees that the surge in summer travel demand “has taken a toll on our operation and put a significant strain on all of you.”<br/>

A business plan that aims to put Mexico’s troubled Interjet back in the skies in 2022 is ready, according to the firm the airline hired to advise on restructuring $1.25b in debt. Argoss Partners submitted the plan to Interjet management at the end of July. It calls for debt forgiveness of over 90%, partial payment to workers, preliminary agreements for new aircraft leases and a management team revamp. Partner Igor Marzo said its firm reached memoranda of understanding with several airplane lessors, many of which are based in Europe and had previously worked with Interjet. Contracts with them could be signed as early as next month but would need the final approval from the judge in charge of overseeing the bankruptcy proceeding in Mexico. At least 10 US investors have shown interest in injecting fresh funds into Interjet with likely initial commitments in the neighborhood of $250m, Marzo said. The airline didn’t directly comment on the plan laid out by Argoss, which has completed the first phase of restructuring with Interjet and is seeking to continue working with the company. “There are very serious conversations with investment funds that will soon take shape, as well as a constant dialogue with the different suppliers and the workers themselves,” Interjet said. “We will fly again very soon.” The future remains uncertain for Interjet, with pending labor issues and local rivals like Viva Aerobus, Aeromexico and Volaris scaling up and adding capacity as the market rebounds from the worst months of the pandemic. Former lessors may be tempted to work with the Mexican airline again since they have excess aircraft they need to put to use, but the company’s rocky history could give them pause.<br/>

Holders of around $70m in troubled bonds issued on behalf of state-owned Air Seychelles have filed a petition to wind up the African airline, they said, after a standoff over the unpaid debt. The move is the latest effort by creditors to recover $1.2b owed by Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways and airlines it partly owned when the debt was issued in 2015 and 2016, such as Air Seychelles. At the time, Etihad owned 40% of Air Seychelles and it was in a consortium along with the Gulf airline and other carriers that borrowed the money through special purpose vehicle EA Partners. "The Noteholder Committee (acting on behalf of the EA Partners bondholders) ... filed a petition dated 19 August 2021 for the winding-up of Air Seychelles, and on 24 August 2021, such petition was served on, and acknowledged by, Air Seychelles," the creditors said Wednesday. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck last year, Air Seychelles said it was struggling to honour its $71.5m portion of the EA Partners debt and started restructuring talks with a steering committee of creditors in July. A Seychelles government official told Reuters in May that Air Seychelles wound not pay more than $20m to settle the debt. The creditors said on Wednesday that they were still open to work with the government, the airline's sole shareholders, to reach a resolution to the debt challenges. But they said that there had been no "substantive engagement, nor any sense of urgency" from either Air Seychelles or the government, leaving no choice but to file a petition for the winding up of the airline to recover the money due.<br/>

Afghanistan’s main commercial airline has flown some of its fleet across the border to Iran in the wake of the Taliban’s return to power. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation says that the country received an unspecified number of Kam Air planes after a request from the company. Desperate Afghans were pictured climbing onto the company’s planes during chaotic evacuation scenes in Kabul. “Following the escalation of clashes and tensions at Kabul airport, the owner of the private Afghan airline Kam Air requested the transfer of a number of the company’s airplanes to Iranian airports,” said CAO spokesperson Mohammad Hassan Zibakhsh. “Iran has also issued a landing permit for these planes in line with international cooperation standards with neighbouring countries.” None of the aircraft had any passengers onboard, said Zibakhsh. Kam Air was set up by businessman Zamaray Kamgar in 2003 and carried around one million passengers a year on its fleet of 12 Boeing and Airbus planes. <br/>

SpiceJet said Thursday it expects Boeing's grounded 737 MAX jets in its fleet to return to service at the end of September following a settlement struck with lessor Avolon on leases of the aircraft. Later in the day, the country's air safety regulator, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said it had cleared 737 MAX aircraft to fly with immediate effect, after nearly two-and-a-half-years of regulatory grounding. The resumption of MAX aircraft services would be subject to regulatory approvals, SpiceJet, India's second-largest airline by market share and the only one in the country to fly the aircraft, said. Avolon declined to comment.<br/>

Virgin Australia said on Friday it would add nine Boeing Co 737-800 planes to its fleet from October in preparation for an expected increase in domestic travel as vaccination rates rise and state borders reopen. The airline said the increased capacity would bring its fleet to 77 planes and help it meet its target of gaining a one-third share of the domestic market, where it competes against Qantas Airways and Regional Express.<br/>