US regional carrier SkyWest Airlines reported a small profit for Q3 as it experienced increased demand for its services. Net profit at the St. George, Utah-based carrier came in at $9.7m, as revenue rose to $745m during the three months that ended on 30 September. That’s up 63% from $457m during the same period in 2020, but still slightly below the 2019 revenue figure of $760m, the company says on 28 October. Adjusted for a non-cash impairment charge on SkyWest-operated MHIRJ CRJ900 aircraft, the airline reports a net profit of $73.6m. The airline says those aircraft will be replaced by new Embraer E175 aircraft in 2022 and 2023 and are not expected to be extended under the existing flying contract. “We continued to see strong demand for our product during the third quarter,” says CE Chip Childs. “We are excited to place 45 new E175 aircraft into service in the next 18 months and remain focused on our long-term strategy as we continue navigating the pandemic.” The carrier, which operates under fixed contracts for United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and Alaska Airlines, ended the quarter with 486 aircraft in its fleet, up from 478 at the end of Q2, and 448 at the end of Q3 2020.<br/>
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Spirit Airlines executives say they learned much from the airline’s operational woes last summer, and that they will add staff and cut routes to prevent recurrences. During an 11-day stretch in August, the Miramar, Florida-headquartered ultra-low-cost airline cancelled nearly 3,000 flights because of inclement weather and other factors, creating an operational meltdown that threw its schedule into disarray. On the worst of those days, Spirit cancelled half its scheduled flights. Hundreds more left late and thousands of passengers were left stranded. The disruption cost the carrier about $50 million. “We are not pleased with our operational performance in this instance, but we have a proven record of reliable operations,” CE Ted Christie says on the company’s quarterly webcast on 28 October. “It was a tremendous stress on our resources.” Spirit blamed the issues on “weather, system outages and staffing shortages that caused widespread irregularities in our operation and impacted crew scheduling”. Leisure-travel demand skyrocketed during summer, rebounding from pandemic lows unexpectedly quickly and taking airline managers by surprise. <br/>
A US bankruptcy court has granted Chile’s LATAM Airlines Group more time to present a restructuring plan, setting the new deadline on 26 November. Earlier this month, the Santiago-based airline company had requested the extension. “[The] request enables the continued progress in the negotiations with the interested parties for the purpose of agreeing on the financial and submission terms of its reorganisation plan for approval,” LATAM says on 28 October. “This will allow it to successfully emerge from said process in compliance with applicable legislation in both the United States and Chile, considering the pre-emptive subscription rights of shareholders in Chile.” LATAM, like its Latin American peers Avianca and Aeromexico, voluntarily entered the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings last year after the coronavirus pandemic suddenly decimated demand for air travel. ”Through Chapter 11, subsidiaries will be able to resize their operations and adapt them to the new demand environment and reorganise their financial balance sheets, allowing them to re-emerge as more agile, efficient and sustainable businesses in a post-pandemic stage,” it says. <br/>
Newly launched Italian national carrier ITA Airways has entered a codeshare agreement with Air Malta which takes effect from the end of October. The agreement will enable passengers of each airline to access the networks of the other. ITA’s designator code ‘AZ’, which was used by predecessor Alitalia, will be applied to services operated by Air Malta. The Air Malta code ‘KM’ will similarly be carried by a number of ITA flights. ITA chief of network, fleet and alliances Andrea Benassi says the carrier is “seeking valuable partnerships” to support its “important start-up period”. “This agreement goes in the right direction,” he says. Italy is one of Air Malta’s most important markets, says the carrier’s CCO Roy Kinnear, and the new partnership will boost business travel and tourism and offer customers more options and better flight schedules.<br/>
Norwegian Air reported a 68% rise in Q3 revenue on Thursday, as European travel gradually recovers from the pandemic, and the airline said it would continue to scale up following a brush with bankruptcy that slashed its business. The budget carrier's sales for July-September amounted to 1.52b Norwegian crowns ($180m), up from 905m crowns a year ago when travel remained severely restricted by COVID-19 lockdowns. The pandemic sent the indebted airline into bankruptcy proceedings last year, forcing it to terminate its transatlantic network before emerging in a slimmed-down version in May 2021. "We are now in a strong financial position going into the traditionally more challenging winter months," CE Geir Karlsen said.<br/>
Aer Lingus will fly to 62 destinations next summer, including 13 in North America from the Republic, as it rebuilds following more than a year of Covid travel bans. The airline said on Thursday it would build from a “strong Christmas schedule” to next summer, when it will fly long- and short-haul services from the Republic and will continue offering transatlantic routes from Manchester. In a further boost to Irish air travel, Dublin and Shannon airports confirmed that US carrier United Airlines would restore its summer services from each next year. Aer Lingus plans to fly 71 routes serving 62 different destinations next summer, 16 of them in North America, which will include three services it is launching from Manchester to the US and Barbados. The carrier highlighted the return of transatlantic travel, which was key to its growth and profits before Covid restrictions shut down most routes.<br/>
Ryanair has promised to start refunding customers for cancelled flights within five working days, after criticism of its reimbursements policy during the pandemic. The Dublin-based carrier, which has previously described itself as a “no-refunds airline”, has also announced significant improvements to the way it treats customers whose flights are delayed or cancelled. At the start of the pandemic, when tourist travel was more or less banned, Ryanair, along with a number of other airlines, refused to refund customers who were unable to travel, if the flight went ahead. It prompted a wave of criticism and led to an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority into whether consumers had been treated fairly. The CMA later dropped the action, but a few days later it emerged that the airline was barring passengers who had pursued chargeback refunds for the flights via their credit card company, unless they returned the money. Separately, customers who were promised refunds for cancelled flights later found they had instead been given vouchers instead, often with expiry dates too early for them to use. Ryanair said on Thursday that it had introduced the new commitment to refund passengers within five working days. The EU rules require passengers on flights cancelled by the airline to be reimbursed within seven days, unless there are extenuating circumstances. <br/>
InterGlobe Aviation, which operates India's biggest airline, said on Thursday it was seeing a gradual recovery in revenue to pre-pandemic levels as travel demand rebounds, but warned that steep fuel prices were a concern after its quarterly loss widened. High fuel prices pose a threat to a recovery in the pandemic-battered aviation industry across the globe, with US airlines warning a complete return to profit may be delayed as higher prices overshadow strong demand. Revenue is fast returning to normalcy and passenger load factor, or the passenger carrying capacity being used, is expected to be around 76% in October, but fuel prices are worrisome, CEO Ronojoy Dutta said in a post earnings call. Average revenue booked per day in October was the same as it was in pre-pandemic January 2020, even though the airline was operating at 20% less capacity, Dutta added. IndiGo's yields, or the number of rupees earned for each passenger-kilometer flown, grew 20.4% to 4.19 rupees compared with the previous quarter, and Dutta said he expects higher yields to be sustainable going forward. The company, which has reported losses since 2020, said cash burn in the second quarter was 200m rupees a day, down 37% from the previous quarter. InterGlobe's aircraft fuel expenses in the quarter soared 207.8% to 19.89b rupees in the reported quarter, and total expenses surged 71.4%, the company said. IndiGo's net loss widened to 14.40b rupees ($192.32m) in the three months to Sept. 30, from 11.95b rupees a year earlier. Revenue from operations, however, rose 104.6% as COVID-19 vaccination rates picked up and the government eased most air travel-related curbs.<br/>
AirAsia Group has partnered with more than 20 airlines as it builds up its Super App into an online travel agency that also sells flights by competitors, the Malaysian budget airline said on Thursday. The airlines which joined airasia Super App as partners included Air Canada, Air France, Bamboo Airways, flydubai, KLM, Qatar Airways and Philippine Airlines. AirAsia said the app has more than 700 airline partners and can reach over 3,000 destinations. It partnered Kiwi.com in 2019, a travel tech firm that allows users to build itineraries to combine flights and ground transportation from more than 800 carriers. The new partnerships come as international travel gradually reopens after more than a year of slump due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "We see a strong V-shape recovery in the coming months," airasia Super App CEO Amanda Woo said at a briefing. Woo said the app aims to capture a 30% market share and become the top Southeast Asian online travel agency in five years. It competes with online travel agencies like Agoda and Traveloka. Through the collaborations, AirAsia will offer travel deals to more destinations outside its network across Europe, Oceania, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas.<br/>