Southwest has scrapped a plan to put unvaccinated employees who have applied for but haven’t received a religious or medical exemption on unpaid leave as of a federal deadline in December. Southwest and American Airlines are among the carriers that are federal contractors and subject to a Biden administration requirement that their employees are vaccinated against Covid-19 by Dec. 8 unless they are exempt for medical or religious reasons. Rules for federal contractors are stricter than those expected from the Biden administration for large companies, which will allow for regular Covid testing as an alternative to a vaccination. Executives at both carriers in recent days have tried to reassure employees about job security under the mandate, urging them to apply for exemptions if they can’t get vaccinated for a medical reason or for a sincerely held religious belief. The airlines are expected to face more questions about the mandate when they report quarterly results Thursday morning. Pilots’ labor unions have sought to block the mandates or sought alternatives such as regular testing. Southwest’s senior VP of operations and hospitality, Steve Goldberg, and Julie Weber, vice president and chief people officer, wrote to staff on Friday that if employees’ requests for an exemption haven’t been approved by Dec. 8, they could continue to work while following mask and distancing guidelines until the request has been reviewed. The company is giving employees until Nov. 24 to finish their vaccinations or apply for an exemption. It will continue paying them while the company reviews their requests and said it will allow those who are rejected to continue working “as we coordinate with them on meeting the requirements (vaccine or valid accommodation).”<br/>
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Talks between Alaska Airlines and its pilots union took a turn when the pilots asked management to bring their benefits up to par with crews at competing airlines. The development is the latest chapter in negotiations that have run for more than 18 months. “We are asking for the same quality-of-life and job security improvements that pilots at other major airlines already enjoy,” the Alaska’s chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) said in a letter to airline CEO Ben Minicucci. “We are asking that you bring these provisions in line with our peers and for the opportunity to vote on a market-rate contract.” The primary request centers on scheduling flexibility, Will McQuillen, chair of the master executive council of Alaska’s ALPA chapter. PIlots are seeking more flexibility to add or drop trips and to schedule missions for a better work-life balance. “This flexibility does not exist in the current contract,” he said, adding that pilots at most other major carriers have the scheduling flexibility Alaska’s pilots seek. The current contract became amendable on April 1, 2020 and has been in force since 2013. In 2017, the contract was amended to incorporate former Virgin America pilots after the merger with that airline closed. Last year, negotiations shifted away from the details of the new contract to how the airline its pilots union would react to the Covid-19 pandemic. “There was a real stall in terms of negotiations,” McQuillen said. “Our contract is frozen in time a decade ago.”<br/>
The co-founder of low-cost carrier Breeze Airways has described the pilot shortage being experienced by US airlines as “acute” and a threat to the industry’s cost structure. When asked about the biggest challenges ahead for Breeze during a CAPA Live event on 13 October, Trey Urbahn observed that US airlines are having “a very hard time attracting and keeping their pilots”. Pondering whether “something structurally has changed with the labour market”, he states: “I don’t know if it’s that people don’t want to work anymore [but] certainly in our business, the shortage of pilots is acute.” The situation “threatens the cost structure of the industry”, Urbahn adds, because airlines “will be competing by having to pay people more”. That marks a big shift in outlook from “the period of time when we started the airline”, when his conclusion was that “the shortage of pilots is over, we don’t need to worry about that anymore”. Today, that is simply “not true”, he says.<br/>
As Canada's largest airlines struggle to pick up the pieces in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, an Edmonton-based discount carrier with ambitious expansion plans has been looking for opportunities amidst the wreckage. Flair Airlines - which bills itself as an ultra-low-cost carrier offering unbundled, bare-bones fares to budget-conscious travellers - announced Tuesday it is both increasing the size of its fleet and expanding its service to new destinations in Canada and the U.S. The airline said it will add four new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to its fleet in the spring of 2022. This brings Flair's total aircraft count to 16, and will allow the airline to expand its route offerings by 33 per cent. Flair will launch service this spring to new destinations including San Francisco, Nashville and Denver. It will also launch service between Toronto and Victoria and to Comox, B.C., for the first time. A privately held company, Flair launched in 2004 as a charter operator and transitioned to regularly scheduled service three years ago. But it's only been in the last 12 months - a period that coincided with an unprecedented collapse in demand for air travel due to the pandemic - that Flair has been aggressively pursuing growth plans, stating publicly that it wants to grow its fleet to 50 aircraft within the next five years. <br/>
Low-cost airline Volaris will accept bitcoin in El Salvador, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said Tuesday. “This allows us to increase the offering of flights for Salvadorans, in addition to being the first airline in the world to accept bitcoin and of course Chivo wallet,” Bukele said in comments at a Volaris event shared on Twitter by the official account for the president’s office. Some other carriers, including Mexico’s TAR Airlines in 2015, have previously announced they would accept bitcoin. Chivo is the bitcoin digital wallet launched last month by El Salvador’s government as part of its adoption of bitcoin as legal tender, alongside the US dollar. Volaris, based in Mexico, said on its website that it was working to give clients in El Salvador the option to pay with the digital currency for services at the airport. El Salvador's civil aviation authority in August granted Volaris' local subsidiary authorization here to operate in El Salvador.<br/>
Easyjet has launched a competition inviting children to design a zero emission aircraft The airline has partnered with Airbus, zero-emission technology start-up Wright Electric, and designer Frank Stephenson, known for his recent work on designs for electric flying taxis, to launch the Aircraft of the Future competition, open to 7–16 year olds in the UK. The competition is calling on school children up and down the UK, aged from 7 – 16 to design a passenger plane for travelling across Europe, powered by a sustainable energy source. The airline says the competition aims to engage younger generations and inspire them to become part of the revolution of future air travel as aircraft designers and engineers. The competition has launched just in time for UK half-term. Families flying with easyJet over the holidays are encouraged to pack their pencil cases, for kids to take inspiration from their flight for their design, and help parents keep them occupied on board.<br/>
China’s long campaign to contain the fallout from the collapse of conglomerate HNA is facing growing opposition from disgruntled Chinese creditors, according to documents and private social media groups. Frustrated creditors have threatened to take their complaints about state administrators handling the group’s bankruptcy to the Chinese Communist party’s internal oversight body, in a dispute that could threaten one of the country’s most complicated and globally significant restructurings. “Our dignity cannot be trampled on! We will never give up,” one claimant said. The overhaul of HNA, which started as an airline and became a global conglomerate, is a critical test of Beijing’s ability to handle “too big to fail” entities, as the country’s economic planners grapple with worse than expected growth alongside crises stemming from property sector indebtedness and crippling energy shortages. Beijing’s approach to HNA, which collapsed after it amassed debts of $90bn, has attracted greater scrutiny amid fears over the fate of Evergrande and the fragility of Chinese corporate restructurings. Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property group, missed interest payments last month, sparking protests from domestic investors and rocking global markets. Tens of thousands of Chinese creditors owed money by Hainan-headquartered HNA have until Wednesday to vote on a proposal to revamp 321 group companies into four new entities, which would hand control of its aviation, airport, financial and commercial units to state and private shareholders. But the deal, which has been years in the making, has drawn scathing criticism from smaller creditors and former employees who believe that their interests have been disregarded in a rush to close an embarrassing episode for Chinese financial regulators. The vote planned for Wednesday is the latest twist in the decades-long saga of HNA, a sprawling conglomerate whose top executives had deep political connections, including to Wang Qishan, China’s vice-president and a close ally of President Xi Jinping.<br/>
French Polynesia’s Council of Ministers has approved a draft decree granting an air carrier license to low-cost startup, Motu Link Airline, for scheduled and ad-hoc inter-island flights ferrying passengers and freight. The Council announced the budget carrier would have a fleet of two ATR72-600s of undisclosed origin and plans to employ 162 people, but no further information on its ownership was disclosed. At the request of the government, the airline, based in Papeete, would serve 12 destinations in the so-called “free trade zone”.<br/>