Air Canadasaid Wednesday it will more than double its capacity for the year as travel demand recovers and domestic airline competition heats up. The Montreal-based airline said it will boost its full year seat capacity by 150 per cent compared to 2021 levels as COVID-19 restrictions ease in Canada and around the world and demand ramps up. But a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels will take longer, as this year's capacity levels represents 75 per cent of what Air Canada flew in 2019. The airline said it expects capacity to reach 95 per cent of its 2019 levels by 2024. "The overall recovery is indeed getting closer," Air Canada's CCO Lucie Guillemette said at the company's annual investor day on Wednesday, adding that the airline will add new routes this year flying out of its main hubs in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. "We predict to be close to full recovery by 2024. This is buoyed by a strong domestic recovery, a strong rebound in the visiting family and relative market, and the overall pent up demand for leisure travel," she said. "The recovery in business segments or business markets will lag. However, we anticipate a strong strong rebound in 2023." Air Canada is also bracing for increased competition in the domestic market, which has seen the several smaller carriers ramp up capacity through the COVID-19 pandemic.<br/>
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Scandinavian operator SAS has named Erno Hilden, formerly with Finnair, as the company’s new CFO. He will succeed Magnus Ornberg who is stepping down from the position this spring. Hilden had served as CFO of Finnair until 2015, and had also been the airline’s COO. He became an executive vice-president at Saudi Arabian flag-carrier Saudia, in the field of privatisation. Hilden describes SAS as a “strong brand” and says he is “excited” to be playing a central role in the company’s transformation plan ‘SAS Forward’. “[His] extensive financial experience combined with aviation expertise makes him a valuable addition to SAS’s top management team,” says the carrier’s chief, Anko van der Werff. Hilden will take up the SAS post in April.<br/>
In times of crisis, airlines can reinvent themselves, recalibrate and adapt. For instance, airBaltic renewed its fleet at a higher pace than it had previously planned due to the pandemic, transitioning to an all-Airbus A220 fleet. Could there be more changes in the near future for the Latvian flag carrier? AirBaltic CEO Martin Gauss said that airBaltic's first aircraft to be based outside of the Baltics would be stationed in Tampere, Finland. He added that from there, it would serve Frankfurt and Munich, which are major Lufthansa hubs, as well as Copenhagen and Oslo, hub airports for SAS Scandinavian Airlines. This makes sense, as both airlines have codeshare agreements with airBaltic. (The Tampere-based jet will also operate services to leisure destination favorites Malaga and Rhodes.) However, if the all-Airbus A220 operator was to contemplate taking the collaboration a step further and join the Star Alliance, of which SAS and Lufthansa are both a part, what would that mean? The Riga-based airline has codeshare agreements in place with several other carriers. From Star Alliance, these include Aegean Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and LOT Polish Airlines, but also carriers from different alliances. Among them are oneworld's British Airways and Iberia, as well as SkyTeam's Air France and Romanian flag carrier TAROM. airBaltic also maintains interline agreements with almost all Star Alliance members such as United Airlines, Turkish Airlines, and Air Canada. However, there are also partnerships with operators such as Delta Air Lines and Qatar Airways, members of SkyTeam and oneworld, respectively. Story has more.<br/>
Egypt's parliament gave the thumbs up on Wednesday for a government-drafted law on providing insurance to EgyptAir to offset the difficulties faced by the national airline amid the Ukraine crisis. The law, which was approved by the House's Budget Committee on Sunday, allows the finance minister to provide EgyptAir with an insurance guarantee covering risks – such as wars and hijacking – that it might face due to operating flights to and from Russia. Fakhri El-Fiqi, chairman of the House's Budget Committee, read out a report on the law, saying that the EgyptAir Holding Company "has recently faced a number of crises, at the top of which is the breakout of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, which had a disastrous impact on the world transport industry." El-Fiqi explained that the Russia-Ukraine war has led to the European Union imposing sanctions against Russia that include banning European insurance and reinsurance companies from providing insurance or paying compensations to certain Russian individuals or entities. The report added that EgyptAir has stopped its flights to Russia since 2 March due to the EU sanctions. El-Fiqi explained that the European Union law forced Egypt's Misr Insurance Company to stop providing insurance to EgyptAir's flights to and from Russia. "Due to this, EgyptAir tried to seek alternative insurance from Russian companies, but they declined on the grounds that they cannot cover non-Russian airlines," said El-Fiqi, adding that "in the end, EgyptAir asked the government to allow the Ministry of Finance give it the insurance guarantee necessary to help it operate flights to and from Russian airports."<br/>
China's three biggest airlines on Wednesday reported wider losses in the final quarter of 2021, marking the second year in the red due to COVID-19 as hopes for a recovery remain distant while the country tries to halt the virus' fast spread.Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines, said its net loss rose to 4.05b yuan ($637.64m)from 2.95b yuan in Q3, taking its full-year loss to 12.2b yuan. That is deeper than an 11.8b yuan loss in 2020. Beijing-based Air China said its net loss widened to 6.32b yuan in Q4 from 3.54b yuan and it posted a full-year loss of 16.6b yuan. China Southern fell to a Q4 net loss of 5.98b yuan, after posting 1.43b yuan in the red the previous quarter. It reported a full-year loss of 12.1b yuan. The Guangzhou-based airline also forecasted a pickup in deliveries of the Boeing 737 series aircraft from 2022, as Chinese carriers are set to resume commercial services of the 737 MAX, which was grounded in China for over two and a half years. China's domestic travel market, which had rebounded quickly due to its successful containment of the COVID-19 virus in the early days of the pandemic, is nursing heavy losses as authorities struggle to stop the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant under its strategy of eliminating cases. More than two-thirds of planned flights are being cancelled every day across China, according to third-party aviation data providers, while financial capital Shanghai is in the middle of a two-stage lockdown of 26m people.<br/>
Air New Zealand shares dropped nearly 6.5% down to NZ$1.28 earlier this morning as investors digested the implications of the airline's plans to raise $2.2 billion in equity and debt. From next week Air New Zealand starts the process to issue more than two billion new shares. Under the two for one rights offer existing shareholders can buy shares for 53c each. When you add this new capital to the current value of all the shares in the company and divide that by the total number of shares that will be on issue the share price lands at 81c. This is known as theoretical ex-rights price or Terp and the airline has said it expects a share price reset. Greg Smith, head of retail at Devon Funds, said he wouldn't expect the share price to fall towards that level until the rights offer opens next week. Most shareholders would be assessing the details of Air NZ's offer and the substantial discount to buy more would be attractive. Aside from the implications of the rights offer for the share price, the airline faces headwinds, said Smith, with rising oil prices a big obstacle. Oil prices had moderated from recent highs but had risen overnight and was a substantial cost to the airline. The stock is popular with Sharesies investors and the firm today said it couldn't offer any financial advice on whether or not an investor should take part in any offer. "We do, however, aim to educate about corporate actions such as a rights offer and we are doing as much as we can throughout the offer period to ensure those who want to exercise their rights to buy more Air NZ shares at the deep discount can do so."<br/>