American Airlines said Friday it would not provide special leave from next month to unvaccinated employees who have to quarantine due to COVID-19. Unvaccinated workers will have to use their sick time or medical leave if they miss work due to the disease, it said. "Given there is an FDA-approved vaccine, pandemic leave will only be offered to team members who are fully vaccinated and who provide their vaccination card to us," the carrier said in a memo to staff. Separately, Alaska Air said on Friday that it had stopped special pay for unvaccinated employee absences due to COVID-19 infection or exposure to a suspect. <br/>
oneworld
Last year, Aer Lingus, while it is not a member of the oneworld alliance, received permission from the US DoT to be a part of the Atlantic Joint Business (AJB) agreement between American Airlines, British Airways, Iberia, and Finnair. Now, the joint venture agreements will include the upcoming long-haul transatlantic Aer Lingus operations out of Manchester Airport under the Aer Lingus UK banner. In a letter to counsel for Aer Lingus, Todd M. Homan, Director of the Office of Aviation Analysis, confirmed that the DoT will consider Aer Lingus UK, as the entity exists today, as an immunized affiliate of Aer Lingus under the immunized AJB. The same provisions and obligations will bind the UK branch of Aer Lingus as the Irish branch of Aer Lingus. Aer Lingus UK will participate in the joint venture in a metal-neutral fashion. The airline will target transatlantic routes out of Manchester, a weaker airport for oneworld airlines in the United Kingdom. Aer Lingus UK will continue to be viewed as an immunized affiliate of Aer Lingus so long as it holds underlying economic authority to conduct and market air services between the United Kingdom and the United States. Certain actions, such as Aer Lingus UK independently marketing its own services using its own airline code, must be submitted to the Office of Aviation Analysis at the DOT for review.<br/>
British Airways pilots are to vote on whether to back a proposed new subsidiary at Gatwick, which the airline says will be a full-service, BA-branded carrier. The airline plans to base up to 17 short-haul planes at the UK’s second-biggest airport from next summer, but insists it needs to have a lower cost base to compete with budget rivals such as easyJet, which is dominant at Gatwick. BA has not flown from Gatwick since the start of the pandemic. It made thousands of workers redundant and issued inferior contracts to remaining staff last year as it suffered record losses, with passenger numbers dwindling under Covid travel restrictions. Gatwick employees had long retained traditional terms and conditions that BA had removed from crew joining at Heathrow from 2011. According to BA, its Gatwick short-haul business was not profitable even at the peak of flying in 2019. In a statement, the airline said: “While we want to restart flying short-haul from Gatwick, we will only do this if we have a competitive and sustainable operating cost base. From a customer experience perspective, the new airline will be British Airways branded and customers will continue to benefit from the same full standard of service that they currently receive from us, alongside competitive fares. These two principles are at the heart of our proposals for a short-haul operation which are subject to ongoing union discussions and a Balpa ballot.”<br/>
Investigators probing the destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down over Ukraine, are directing a renewed appeal for information on the missile transporter at Russian civilians and the military. Dutch national police are supporting the appeal by writing to citizens of Kursk, where the anti-aircraft missile brigade which owned the surface-to-air weapon was based. The inquiry has been tracing the Buk missile transporter’s route to the launch site in Ukraine where it was fired at the Boeing 777 in July 2014. “Perhaps you feel that this fact casts a shadow over the reputation of your city or your army,” says the police’s head of the investigation. “But the truth has to be told, even if the truth is inconvenient.” The communication, which refers to historical Dutch-Russian military ties, states that the investigation into the weapon’s movement has reached a “very advanced stage” but is not complete. “We would like to hear from everybody, also from the Russian soldiers, about what really has happened,” it says. “We assume that the crew [of the missile transporter] crossed the border with Ukraine not on its own initiative. Perhaps those persons and their commanders had different perceptions of the situation, and it is just as well possible that there was not enough information.” The police are asking whether the missile was launched by a “fatal error” or “defective material”, or whether the 777 was “downed intentionally”.<br/>
Qantas has confirmed that they still plan to resume travel between the UK and Australia before the end of the year. The airline is standing by plans to reopen flights to Britain from mid-December, along with routes to Fiji, Singapore, the United States, Canada and Japan. The move is in line with the lifting of Australia’s overseas travel ban, which was due to end on September 17 but has been delayed by three months. In an email to its customers, Qantas said: “With vaccinations continuing to roll out across Australia, we are getting ready to reunite our customers with their family, friends, colleagues and favourite destinations around the globe.” In a statement in August, Qantas said the ability to fly non-stop between Australia and London is “expected to be in even higher demand post-Covid”. The airline is investigating using Darwin as a transit point, which has been Qantas’ main entry for repatriation flights, as an alternative (or in addition) to its existing Perth hub given conservative border policies in Western Australia.<br/>