Spain is considering taking a direct stake in Air Europa as part of a revised plan to rescue the troubled airline after the collapse of its proposed sale to IAG, according to people familiar with the matter. Under a new structure under discussion, state-backed coronavirus bailout loans could be converted into a government holding of about 40% in the carrier, according to the people, who asked not to be named while negotiations are in flux. IAG, the owner of British Airways and Spanish flag-carrier Iberia, would also likely acquire a stake, leaving the Hidalgo family, Air Europa’s current owners, with a small holding, the people said. The talks are ongoing and there’s no guarantee an agrement will be reached, they said. Representatives for Air Europa, which is owned by the Hidalgos’ Globalia Corp, declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for IAG. Spain has guaranteed E475m in loans to Air Europa to keep it alive during the pandemic. About E240m are participatory loans convertible into equity. Nadia Calvino, Spain’s first deputy prime minister and economy minister, didn’t rule out such a conversion to protect the public interest. “At this stage, we are exploring all available options,” she said Friday. One consideration is whether any new proposal would withstand European Union antitrust scrutiny. The bloc’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, said in December that remedies offered by IAG in the aborted transaction weren’t enough to allay her concerns over the impact on the Spanish market. <br/>
oneworld
Hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens were advised to evacuate on Sunday as waves of more than a metre hit coastal areas, public broadcaster NHK reported, after the eruption of an underwater volcano off Tonga triggered tsunami warnings. Around 230,000 people were advised to evacuate across eight prefectures due to the tsunami risk, NHK reported. The alert included areas hit by Japan's deadly 2011 tsunami. Ten boats were capsized in Kochi prefecture on Shikoku island in southern Japan, NHK said, and Japan Airlines cancelled 27 flights at airports across the country.<br/>
As Omicron spread to at least 50 people in Hong Kong last week the government looked to one place in particular for blame – the city’s flagship airline, Cathay Pacific. Two crew were accused of breaching their home quarantine, going shopping or meeting friends, and spreading the highly transmissible variant in the city. As numbers rose, infection flow charts were published marking cases with the airline’s brand while the government launched inquiries and threatened legal action. Pro-Beijing figures and state media called for punishment. The airline had just come off a government ban on flying key international routes, a punishment for carrying Covid-positive passengers. Around the same time the ban was imposed in late December, quarantine rules were tightened after a pilot tested positive, and then again just days later after three crew also did, and then again after the latest incidents. On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s CE Carrie Lam described the airline as “a very big noncompliance case” and accused it of sending some crew back to the territory on empty cargo flights to access shorter quarantine periods. “This has to be put under full investigation, and we will take legal action once we have the full evidence of what wrong they went into,” Lam said. “It’s quite obvious that the flag carrier for Hong Kong is in deep trouble,” said Frederik Gollob, the chair of the European chamber of commerce in Hong Kong. “Cathay is of course a corporate company but has also had a social function for Hong Kong for decades. It’s certainly not a great sign seeing almost all flight activity for passenger flights [drop] and the significantly reduced capacity on the cargo side happening at the moment, as a result of very strict regulations for Covid-19. We’re extremely thankful to all the Cathay crew and the company for doing everything they can to keep us connected to the outside world and keeping up goods flow. Also the international carriers who do the same.”<br/>