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Alaska Airlines is offering flight attendants double pay to pick up extra trips this spring in hopes of avoiding staffing shortfalls ahead of an even bigger jump in travel demand in the coming months. Airlines rolled out incentives such as bonuses and up to triple pay to pilots and flight attendants late last year to stem staffing shortfalls during the busy year-end holidays, but a wave of Covid omicron infections still sidelined crew members, contributing to thousands of flight cancellations. Alaska’s offer shows the carrier is willing to pay crews more to avoid flight disruptions from staffing shortfalls, a problem that can quickly spread through an airline’s network. The incentive kicks in when flight attendants work more than 100 trips per pay in a month, which is generally calculated based on trip length. “Like many other airlines, we are facing general staffing challenges,” Alaska said. “In response, we’re offering flight attendants pay incentives to fill gaps in staffing for a short period of time this Spring.” The airline has recently hired and trained 165 new flight attendants and plans to bring 700 more on board this June. It had more than 5,500 flight attendants as of the end of 2021. Alaska is the fifth-largest US carrier with more than 120 destinations in North America and hubs on the West Coast and in Alaska. The Seattle-based airline approached the flight attendants’ union about the incentive pay, according to a note to cabin crews sent Friday. Alaska executives will outline its plans for the coming year in an investor day on Thursday.<br/>

South Africa’s aviation regulator has temporarily suspended the aircraft maintenance organisation approval of Lufthansa Technik Maintenance International (LTMI) pending the resolution of two outstanding issues raised in a recent audit. On 15 March, the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) carried out audits of the two MRO firms that have been maintaining Comair’s fleet. It came after an earlier probe of Comair resulted in the temporary suspension of the South African airline’s operating licence. SACAA says its audit of LTMI resulted in four Level 1 findings – which are viewed as posing an immediate risk that needs addressing. While LTMI was able to submit evidence and corrective action plans to address two of the issues, the remainder of the findings are still to be resolved. LTMI is a Lufthansa Technik subsidiary which operates maintenance services for its customers outside of Germany. ”LTMI now has 24 hours to resolve two open topics that were identified during last week’s audit and could not yet be remedied,” says Lufthansa Technik. ”Safety is the top priority for the entire Lufthansa Technik Group. LTMI is therefore in permanent exchange with the authorities and has set up a special quality management team to remedy the identified deficiencies sustainably and as quickly as possible.”<br/>

Indonesia’s safety agency has underlined the risks of high ATC workload after an air proximity incident between two Citilink Indonesia aircraft. The incident came about as two Citilink Airbus A320s (PK-GLH/3147 & PK-GTA/7466) converged on Surabaya’s Juanda International Airport in darkness conditions around 18:20 on 17 January 2018, says the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) in its final report into the incident, which it designates as serious. PK-GLH had departed from Pontianak’s Supadio International Airport and PK-GTA from Balikpapan’s Muhammad Sulaiman’s International Airport. Both aircraft carried six crew and 180 passengers. An air traffic controller, who at the time was handling five aircraft, assigned both aircraft to hold over waypoint EMARA at 20,000ft. At 18:31, the horizontal separation between the two aircraft was 5nm, with negligible vertical separation. One of the pilots notified ATC of a TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) alert. The controller immediately deconflicted the aircraft. The flights continued uneventfully and there were no injuries. Story has details.<br/>

AirAsia Aviation Group expects to domestic and international capacity to hit pre-pandemic levels by year-end, as key markets — including its home country of Malaysia — are swinging open international borders. The low-cost airline group says it has already more than doubled domestic flight capacity since October 2021, with international flight capacity increased by 50% since early March. The Malaysian government on 8 March announced the country would fully reopen borders to all vaccinated travellers from 1 April, as part of a broader shift towards living with an endemic Covid-19. It joins a growing list of countries in Asia-Pacific — such as Australia, New Zealand and India — which have, or are intending to, fully reopen borders after two years of the coronavirus pandemic. Says AirAsia: “While the airline currently has a number of international services already operating, the announcement of the nation’s reopening will provide a welcome boost to support additional capacity in many of its core international markets in line with significant pent-up demand.” <br/>

AirAsia Aviation Group has formed its board of directors, whose members include the former head of ST Engineering’s aerospace division. The low-cost airline group underwent a reorganisation in early February and appointed Jamaludin Ibrahim as independent non-executive chairman, as part of the creation of an independent board of directors. The group on 23 March announced four other members from across the Southeast Asia region will join the board. Among them is Singapore-based Lim Serh Ghee, who was the former president of ST Engineering’s aerospace business until 2020. Lim later became the company’s operating chief before stepping down in 2021. Other members of the board include Thai investment banker Suvabha Charoenying, corporate lawyer Francisco Lim from the Philippines, as well as Malaysian Olympic council president Mohamad Norza Zakaria. “The announcement of a new board of directors is among the first few initiatives to reflect AirAsia Aviation Group’s commitment to deliver a new strategic direction for growth and gold standard corporate governance,” the airline group states. <br/>

Rex Airlines has announced that fares across its regional and domestic network will be going up by at least $10 within days in light of “spiralling fuel costs” and other “inflationary pressures”. The carrier revealed that from Friday, 25 March, all fares will be increased by at least $10, with larger increases to be imposed on current sale fares. The move has been made “in response to the steep increases in operational costs due to spiralling fuel costs and overall strong inflationary pressures”, Rex said. Rex general manager of network strategy Warrick Lodge said this marks the first time in over three years that Rex has decided to increase airfares.<br/>