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Airline CEs say that for all intents and purposes the coronavirus pandemic that brought the industry to a near stand-still in 2020 has been conquered. Vaccination campaigns, in addition to restrictions on movement, have helped tamp down the spread of the virus across borders, and without state support, the industry would not be able to celebrate the milestone, the executives said at IATA’s World Air Transport Summit in Boston on 4 October. “The pandemic is in the rear-view mirror for us,” United Airlines CE Scott Kirby says. “We’re moving forward.” United, which was the first US passenger carrier to mandate vaccination for all employees, says 99.7% of its US-based staff has complied with that requirement. Those who did not are in the process of leaving the company. Other airline executives concurred. “In the medium to long term, I can see an end to [the pandemic],” Emirates Airline president Tim Clark says. “Probably by the end of next year and certainly into 2023 this will all be history” unless there is another, more-deadly variant. The all-important business travel segment will ”come bouncing back by the end of next year and be very, very strong in 23, 24 and 25”, he adds.<br/>

Global airline CEOs have no plans to mandate Covid-19 vaccines for travelers anytime soon. Instead, the industry will follow country-specific guidelines and require vaccines based on national rules in what many believe will become a de facto mandate for international flyers. That’s the word at the trade group IATA Annual General Meeting in Boston on Monday. “I’m totally supportive of it,” United CEO Scott Kirby said of an international traveler mandate. But asked whether the carrier will implement such a requirement, he said the airline “will just follow the government rules.” United was the first — and one of the few — U.S. carriers to mandate Covid-19 jabs for staff in August. The airline has achieved a more than 99.5 percent vaccination rate through that policy with the added stick of unpaid leave or worse to staff who do not get their shots. But, like with staff mandates in the US, Kirby is in the minority among global airline CEOs supporting a traveler mandate — even if he has no plans on implementing on at United. Most leaders prefer to leave such mandates to national governments, which they are then more than happy to follow. Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr said that by their latest estimate 90 percent of the airline’s workforce have gotten their jabs without a mandate. “Slowly we’ll get there — that flying will only be available to vaccinated or recovered passengers,” he said. Air New Zealand and Qantas are the only two major carriers to mandate Covid-19 vaccines for international travelers. The former will require it from February 1, while the latter has said it will do so when long-haul services resume, which Qantas forecasts will occur in November. <br/>

Lufthansa Group has highlighted the opening today of what it describes as the world’s first industrial plant producing “CO2-neutral, electricity-based kerosene”. The plant in Werlte, Germany, is operated by Atmosfair and produces synthetic aviation fuel from water, carbon dioxide and renewable electricity under a power-to-liquid (PtL) process. Lufthansa Group describes itself as a partner in the project and one its first customers under a joint purchase agreement with logistics firm Kuehne+Nagel. “Lufthansa’s airlines have been focusing on the research and use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) for many years,” says Christina Foerster, member of the executive board at Lufthansa Group. “Synthetic fuels from renewable energies are the kerosene of the future. They enable CO2-neutral aviation.” Lufthansa Group will purchase “at least 25,000 litres” of PtL fuel – or ‘e-fuel’ as it is sometimes known – annually over the next five years, it says, to be used by its Lufthansa Cargo unit. That equates to around 20 tonnes of jet fuel from the plant per year.<br/>

Delta and the Lufthansa Group are jockeying to become the new state-owned Italian carrier Italia Trasporto Aereo’s (ITA) strategic partner after it begins flying in October. Delta CEO Ed Bastian and Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr confirmed talks with the new carrier at the IATA Annual General Meeting in Boston on October 3. Though both emphasized that they were interested in a strategic commercial partnership of some sort — likely including a codeshare, interline and maybe joint venture — and not an equity investment at this time. “[ITA] has some more fundamental questions before they launch rather than who their international partners are, but we’re in conversations,” Bastian said. He cited Delta’s long partnership with ITA predecessor Alitalia, which dates to the 1990s. Alitalia was also part of the Delta’s transatlantic joint venture with Air France and KLM until the pact was updated to include Virgin Atlantic in 2020. Spohr was much more aggressive in his approach to ITA. Citing the fact that Italy is the Lufthansa Group’s most important foreign market after the US, he said a partnership with Lufthansa was the “natural home” for the new carrier. “If you look at Swiss, you see how good it was for them not to be called Swissair. I would assume that a new Italian airline copies the model of Swiss in two ways: Finds Lufthansa as a partner and adopts a new name. It’s the magic secret of success,” Spohr said. <br/>