star

United Airlines continues to frustrate long-standing attempts by competitor American Airlines and Philippine Airlines to initiate code-shares between the United States and the Philippines via Japan. The airlines' application has been subject to a ping-pong match of filings between the applicants on the one side, and United on the other, over the past 11 months. In a February 22, 2022, regulatory filing to the US Department of Transport (DOT), United reiterated its previous calls on the DOT to continue to defer approval of American and PAL’s joint application for the codeshares until United’s own ongoing slot access issues at Manila Ninoy Aquino Int'l had been “adequately resolved”. It said the applicants' latest filings had contained “strawman arguments” to convince the DOT to approve their application without further delay. On February 11, 2022, American and PAL had reiterated previous requests for the immediate authorisation of their application – first filed almost two years ago on March 17, 2020 - for exemption authority to implement a codeshare partnership inked on March 6, 2020. According to the initial regulatory filing, PAL would codeshare on eight American domestic routes from Los Angeles Int'l, the US city it has the most flights to. These would include Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson, Denver Int'l, Houston Intc'l, Las Vegas Harry Reid, Miami Int'l, New Orleans Int'l, Orlando Int'l, and Washington Dulles. American would not codeshare on PAL’s flights between the Philippines and the continental US but would fly to Tokyo Narita and then codeshare on PAL from Tokyo to Manila Ninoy Aquino Int'l and Cebu. American also sought to codeshare on PAL’s flights from Manila to Honolulu, Hawaii, and Guam Int'l.<br/>

Egypt's national airline, Egyptair, will start a new Dublin to Cairo service this summer. The new route, which begins on June 2nd, will operate four times per week and will be Ireland’s first scheduled air service to and from Egypt. It's part of Egyptair's strategy to expand its network to cities and hubs around the world. Egyptair is headquartered at Cairo International Airport, its main hub, and operates scheduled passenger and freight services to more than 75 destinations in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Vincent Harrison, managing director at Dublin Airport said: “We’re very pleased to welcome Egyptair to Ireland and to add Cairo to Dublin Airport’s extensive route network. Cairo is one of the world’s great cities and we will be working closely with Egyptair to promote this new route, which will be welcomed by both business and leisure travellers.”<br/>

The South African government said on Thursday that its planned sale of 51% of shares in national airline South African Airways to the Takatso Consortium was progressing and would now need approval by regulators. A cabinet statement read: “The Sales and Purchase process has now been concluded and signed by the Department of Public Enterprises and Takatso Consortium. The next step involves the approval of this transaction by various regulatory bodies.” The South African government in June had signed an agreement with the Takatso Consortium to sell the stake in the beleaguered state-owned carrier to the consortium, which had promised to invest over 3b rand to revive the airline. “Takatso is confident that the re-launched SAA has strong growth prospects domestically, regionally and internationally,” the consortium said Thursday. It said it would also consider partnerships with other aviation players to achieve the airline’s growth strategy.<br/>

Planemakers Boeing and Airbus have met executives from India’s Tata Group in recent weeks to discuss future plane orders for Air India, two people familiar with the matter said. Tata last month regained ownership of state-run carrier Air India after nearly 70 years in a $2.4b equity-and-debt deal. While the airline has lucrative landing slots, the group faces an uphill task to upgrade Air India’s aging fleet and turn around its financials and service levels. Air India has a mixed fleet of over 140 Airbus and Boeing planes, and industry executives estimate it would cost Tata more than $1b to refurbish the aging aircraft. No comment was immediately available from any of the companies involved. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Tata had begun preliminary discussions with the planemakers and lessors for jets including Airbus A350-900s and Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners, citing people familiar with the matter. The airline, with its maharajah mascot, was once renowned for its lavishly decorated planes and stellar service championed by founder JRD Tata. Air India was founded in 1932 and nationalised in 1953. Since the mid-2000s, however, Air India’s reputation has declined as financial troubles mounted. It flew widebody planes with business class seats in poor repair and grounded some of its new 787s to use for spare parts. <br/>

Singapore Airlines posted its best quarterly results since the pandemic began, thanks to stronger cargo and passenger performances, due in part to the introduction of vaccinated travel lanes (VTLs). The airline racked up net profit of $85m for Q3 of financial year 2021/2022 on the back of a revenue of $2.32b. This compares with a loss of $142m in the October to December period in 2020 on turnover of just $1.07b. Despite strong numbers for the three months to Dec 31 - traditionally a peak travel time - the group remained in the red for the first nine months of the year to the tune of $752 million. Still, this is a huge turnaround from a loss of $3.61 billion during the same period in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Revenue for the nine months rose 90 per cent to $5.14b from $2.7b a year earlier. The expansion of operations resulted in expenditure growing $842 million year on year to $2.24b in Q3 of financial year 2021/2022. Net fuel costs rose to $633m, mainly on higher prices and an increase in volume, which was partially offset by a swing from a fuel hedging loss to a gain. Group expenditure increased by $791m year on year to $5.7b. The SIA group carried 1.1m people in Q3, including 646,000 who travelled in December last year alone. The numbers were double that of the second quarter and more than five times the number from Q3 2020. But this is still a far cry from the pre-Covid-19 numbers when the SIA group - SIA, Silkair and Scoot - carried 5.89m passengers during the period from October to December in 2019 (Silkair has now been absorbed into the SIA fleet).<br/>