United will stop flying over Russia for its daily flights to India, becoming the last major US passenger carrier to withdraw from the airspace following the invasion of Ukraine. The airline expects short-term disruptions as it reroutes flights to Mumbai and New Delhi from its hubs in Chicago, Newark and San Francisco, spokeswoman Leslie Scott said Tuesday. United hasn’t decided whether any of the four flights will need to be suspended because of the operational challenges, she said. Because of range limits for flights returning to the U.S., the two Indian cities were the last destinations for which United was using Russian airspace, the airline said. United had routed other flights around Russia since the Feb. 24 invasion. Scott declined to discuss the rationale for the changes. The US FAA barred US airlines from flying over Belarus, Ukraine and part of western Russia on Feb. 24, but hasn’t issued further restrictions. <br/>
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The pilot situation in the US is getting worse before it gets better. United Airlines will end 17 routes, and exit one city, in its latest round of staffing-related schedule reductions. The Chicago-based carrier will exit Alexandria, La., on June 2 when it ends flights from its Houston Bush Intercontinental hub, Cirium schedule data show. The city joins at least eight other smaller communities that United has exited citing a pilot shortage at its regional affiliates. In addition, United will end 16 routes from its Denver, Chicago O’Hare, Houston, Newark, and Washington Dulles hubs in May and June. Chicago and Washington will see the most cuts with the former losing flights to Bismarck, N.D., Charlottesville, Va., Jackson, Miss., Pasco, Wash., and Redmond-Bend, Ore.; and the latter to Allentown, Pa., Lexington, Ky., Madison, Wis., Oklahoma City, and Pensacola, Fla., according to Cirium. Some of the routes are operating and will end, while others were due to begin in June and have now been pulled from schedules entirely. United previously cut 14 routes at Dulles due to the shortage. A United spokesperson said the cuts were part of its “regular adjustments to our schedule in response to market demand and staffing resources.”<br/>
SAS airlines will reroute its once-weekly Copenhagen-Shanghai service to avoid Russian airspace and has paused its once-weekly Copenhagen-Tokyo service, it said on Tuesday. The Swedish-Danish airline said it had also decided to cancel two flights to St Petersburg during Easter because of the uncertainty. <br/>
Swiss International Air Lines and its parent Lufthansa Group have agreed with synthetic fuel group Synhelion to use its solar aviation fuel, the Swiss airline said on Tuesday. “This will make SWISS the first airline in the world to use ‘sun-to-liquid’ fuel,” it said. The process devised by Synhelion, a spinoff from the Swiss Institute of Technology, uses concentrated sunlight to produce carbon-neutral kerosene, it said. “Our next-generation carbon-neutral solar kerosene is an economically and ecologically viable substitute for fossil fuels,” Synhelion co-founder and CEO Philipp Furler said. “The commitment of SWISS and the Lufthansa Group underlines the aviation sector’s keen interest in our solar fuel.” Synhelion will build the world’s first facility for the industrial production of solar fuel in Germany this year, the statement said. SWISS is set to become the first customer for the solar kerosene in 2023. The deal calls for SWISS and the Lufthansa Group to support development of Synhelion’s planned commercial fuel production facility in Spain as well.<br/>
Turkish Airlines generated a full-year net profit of $959m for 2021, sharply reversing the net loss of $836m for the previous year and exceeding pre-crisis performance. International passenger revenues were $5.5b, down 44% on pre-crisis levels, while domestic revenues, which make a much smaller contribution, were down 37%. But Turkish Airlines lists a doubling of revenues classified as ‘other’, totalling $4.4b. The company generated overall revenues of $10.7b – the lowest figure since 2016 outside of the crisis-hit 2020 – but managed to keep operating expenses to $9.4b. The company’s pre-tax profit for the year was more than $1b. It says its capacity levels for Q4 reached 84% of that supplied in the same period of the pre-crisis 2019. “Thanks to the advantage it has on the cost side, wide flight network, effective capacity management, rapid recovery in diversified passenger segments and successful cargo operations, the group showed a faster recovery than its competitors in both financial and operational results,” it adds. Cargo operations are continuing at full capacity with its freighter fleet and about 15 long-haul passenger aircraft utilised for freight operaitons.<br/>
Asian airlines are canceling more international flights to cities in Russia and Ukraine in the wake of Moscow's invasion of its western neighbor. "SIA apologizes to all affected customers for the inconvenience caused," Singapore Airlines announced Monday after it suspended until further notice service between Singapore and Moscow. Turkish Airlines said flights between the southern Russian city of Sochi and Minsk, the capital of Belarus, had been canceled, along with service between Chisinau, Moldova, and Rostov, a Russian city not far from eastern Ukraine. The carrier had already announced that it was forced to suspend service to six Ukrainian cities: Kyiv, Kharkov, Lviv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, after the country's airspace was closed Thursday. Although the Turkish flag carrier normally operates 86 flights to Ukraine every week, it announced as of Tuesday that flights would be halted until March 15. Despite the large number of cancellations, the Turkish carrier said in a statement: "We are continuing our preparations to evacuate our citizens in Ukraine after flight security is maintained and necessary permissions are granted." While Thai Airways International does not operate direct flights to Russia or Ukraine, the company's board member in charge of the company's rehabilitation, Piyasvasti Amranand, said at a news conference on Monday: "Since 2014, Thai Airways has not flown over Ukrainian skies." In 2014, 298 people on a Malaysia Airlines jet flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed after it was shot down over eastern Ukraine by suspected pro-Russian separatists.<br/>
Turkey's Ilker Ayci said Tuesday he will not take on the role of chief executive of Tata Group's Air India, days after the announcement of his appointment led to opposition in India over his previous political links. Tata last month announced Ayci's appointment as CEO of previously state-run Air India after taking over the debt-laden airline in January in a $2.4b equity and debt deal. But last week, a Hindu nationalist group close to India's ruling party called on the government to block Ayci's appointment citing his previous political links in Turkey, which has strained relations with New Delhi. Ayci, a former chairman of Turkish Airlines, was an adviser in 1994 to Tayyip Erdogan when the Turkish president was mayor of Istanbul. Ayci said that in a recent meeting with Tata Chairman N Chandrasekaran he declined to take the post after reading about attempts "to color my appointment with undesirable colors" in some sections of the Indian media. "As a business leader who has always prioritised professional credo ... I have come to the conclusion that it would not be a feasible or an honorable decision to accept the position in the shadow of such narrative," Ayci said.<br/>