Robert Jordan will inherit a long list of challenges when he becomes the sixth CEO of Southwest Airlines, which is struggling to recover from a pandemic that battered its finances and left it a much smaller company. Southwest had never lost money over an entire year in its half-century history until 2020, when it lost $3b. The Dallas-based carrier is likely to have finished 2021 in the black — it will report results later this month — thanks to more than $1.1b in federal pandemic relief. After thousands of employees left in 2020, staffing shortages contributed to high numbers of canceled and delayed flights on Southwest last summer and again in October. The airline is now on a hiring spree to catch up. Jordan joined Southwest in 1988 and rose through a series of finance and strategy jobs, including overseeing the $1.4b acquisition of AirTran Airways in 2011. In June, Southwest announced that Jordan would succeed Gary Kelly, who is retiring as CEO on Feb. 1 after 17 years leading the airline. Story features interview with Jordan about those flight disruptions, whether Southwest will charge for checking bags, and what kind of legacy he wants to leave. <br/>
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UK carrier Virgin Atlantic is to launch flights to Texas state capital Austin this summer, marking its first new route to the USA since 2015. It will serve Austin four times a week from London Heathrow using Boeing 787-9 aircraft. The service will launch on 25 May. Virgin already operates to 11 US destinations from Heathrow and is part of a transatlantic joint venture with part-owner Delta Air Lines and Air France-KLM. British Airways is the only other scheduled operator on the route, which it has served with 787s since 2014. Chief commercial officer at Virgin, Juha Jarvinen, says: ”Since US borders opened to UK travellers on 8 November, it feels extra special to be launching new flying, especially to the fantastic city of Austin. “There are so many synergies between Virgin Atlantic and the city of Austin. We love their philosophy and desire to celebrate local brands, businesses and communities and we cannot wait to welcome customers, both existing and new, on board, flying them safely to explore this fabulously quirky city.” Virgin identified Austin as a potential future route when in 2019 it outlined a future network it could operate from a Heathrow airport expanded with a third runway. Delta offers connections to 10 US cities from Austin, while KLM also this summer will begin thrice-weekly Austin services from Amsterdam.<br/>
An Iranian couple has filed a rare lawsuit against three senior officials over the deaths of their children in the 2020 downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane, a newspaper reported Monday. The jet was shot down shortly after take-off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport on January 8, killing all 176 people on board, mostly Iranians and Canadians. Three days later, the Islamic republic's armed forces admitted to downing the Kyiv-bound Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 "by mistake", at a time of heightened tensions with arch foe the United States. Bereaved father Mohsen Assadi-Lari told reformist daily Shargh the lawsuits targeted Ali Shamkhani, Major General Hossein Salami and Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh. Shamkhani is the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Salami heads the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Hajizadeh is commander of the Guards' aerospace force. "We have lodged a complaint against Shamkhani, Salami and Hajizadeh," said Assadi-Lari, a former director general of international affairs at the health ministry. He and his wife Zahda Majd, a university professor, lost their son Mohammad-Hossein, 23, and daughter Zeinab, 21, in the downing of the plane. On Monday, the Guards issued a message of condolences to the Assadi-Lari family on their Sepah News website from their leader. "While expressing his condolences to this dear family and to the other families of the martyrs... General Salami has said 'we will not spare any effort to ease the suffering of all families," said the message.<br/>
Iraqi Airways’ first Airbus A220-300 landed in Baghdad on 9 January amid government optimism that the airline will soon be able to resume commercial flights to Europe. The aircraft arrived at Baghdad International airport from Manchester airport in the UK, on a two-legged delivery journey that began at the airframer’s Canadian facility at Mirabel. “The receipt of this newly-made aircraft coincides with a time when Iraqi Airways is very close to resolving the lifting of the European ban on it, which gives it enough space to enter strongly in competition with other carriers,” says Iraq’s transport minister Nasser Hussain Bandar Al-Shibli during a ceremony at Baghdad International airport. Iraqi Airways was added to the European Commission’s airline blacklist in late 2015 because of “unaddressed safety concerns” and has remained there since. The list was last updated on 26 November 2021 and is also followed by the UK. The airline served European destinations including Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, London, Malmo, Stockholm and Vienna before the ban was imposed.<br/>
Virgin Australia said on Monday it would reduce capacity across its network by around 25% for the rest of January and for February due to reduced travel demand and staff being required to isolate as COVID-19 case numbers rise in Australia. The airline said it would cut some flight frequencies and suspend 10 routes temporarily. Australia on Monday surpassed 1 million COVID-19 cases, with more than half of them recorded in the past week, as the Omicron variant ripped through most of the country driving up hospitalisation numbers and putting a strain on supply chains. Virgin Australia CE Jayne Hrdlicka said the surge in COVID-19 cases had affected customer confidence. "Virgin Australia remains focused on growing its network and consumer reach and will resume services as soon travel demand improves," she said.<br/>