Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vucic accused Ukraine and an unidentified European Union country late on Sunday of being behind a series of false bomb threats to Air Serbia passenger planes. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in late February, more than a dozen Air Serbia flights were forced to return to Belgrade or Moscow due to bomb threats, and Belgrade’s airport was evacuated at least three times. “Foreign (intelligence) services of two countries are doing that. One is an EU country, and Ukraine is the another one,” Vucic said without providing evidence. Serbia, which is almost entirely dependent on Russian gas and oil, refuses to impose sanctions against the Kremlin and it maintains regular flights to Moscow. Vucic said it will continue to do so “out of principle.” “We are continuing these flights literally out of principle, because we want to show that we are a free country and we make our own decisions. Do not decide for us when to cancel flights,” he said. In recent weeks Belgrade voted three times for United Nations’ resolutions that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and suspended it from the main UN human rights body.<br/>
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A technical issue has delayed a number of Sunwing Airline flights, stranding some Canadian travellers as the issue hampers check-in and boarding. In a statement Monday, a spokesperson for Sunwing Travel Group said the airline's systems provider is experiencing a network-wide system issue, affecting carriers globally, including Sunwing flights. Sunwing's website shows virtually all flights scheduled for Monday — more than 40 — have been delayed, some by more than 12 hours. "We sincerely regret the impact this is having on our customers' travel plans and are working diligently with our technology provider to resolve the issue as soon as possible," the statement reads. Maintaining a computer system is the airline's own responsibility, said Gábor Lukács, a passenger rights advocate. "There can be some truly exceptional responsibilities like being hacked like internet cables being cut accidentally, but airlines have to have contingencies," he said. <br/>
An ongoing spike in jet fuel prices will have to be passed on to passengers - at least in part - even as competition ramps up among discount carriers, says the new president of budget airline Swoop. Bob Cummings, named head of the WestJet Group's ultra-low-cost subsidiary last week, said in an interview that budget carriers aim to minimize the impact of labour and fuel costs on airfares, but that market forces can't be ignored. “We're always adjusting, almost real time, to those market forces when input costs to go up. And they really do need to be passed through in order for the company to be financially healthy,” he said Monday, his first day on the job. “We'll be doing everything we can to minimize that and have affordable fares.” Fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, including sanctions and oil import bans, helped push up the price of jet fuel by 129 per cent year over year to nearly US$153 per barrel by April 8, according to the International Air Transport Association. The price has dropped slightly since. Fuel costs amount to a major headwind for airlines in the coming quarters, National Bank analyst Cameron Doerksen said in a note to investors last week. Cummings, who joins Swoop after a three-and-a-half-year stint away from the company following 13 years as a WestJet executive, nonetheless expects bookings to surpass pre-pandemic levels this summer. Other hurdles include rapid domestic expansions by rivals Flair Airlines and recent entrant Lynx Air as well as ongoing COVID-19 testing requirementsand a global pilot shortage.<br/>
Bahrain's national carrier Gulf Air has begun ramping up its operations to one of its prime markets - India beginning with 49 weekly flights this month. As the summer season approaches, the airline announced that by mid-May, it will boost its weekly flights to 75, which is more than 90% of its pre-pandemic schedule to India. Commenting on the network restoration, Gulf Air’s Acting CEO Captain Waleed AlAlawi said: "We are very excited to restore such an integral part of our airline’s operations. The national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain never stopped flying during the peak of the pandemic making it one of the most experienced and safest airlines to fly during these times, and today we are growing closer to our full network with some new additions coming online this summer such as Milan, Manchester and Rome. We are working on frequencies and connectivity to offer more choices and more convenience to our passengers and are confident that the months ahead will feature more milestones and success stories to tell." <br/>
Two senior executives involved with the AirAsia Aviation Group have called for Covid-19 travel restrictions to be further eased, as Thai AirAsia X names a new chief executive officer. Colin Currie, commercial president of AirAsia Aviation Group parent Capital A, and Bo Lingam, AirAsia Aviation Group chief, contend that coronavirus testing regimes have to be further eased, particularly in the group’s home country of Malaysia. “The majority of the world is now fully vaccinated and a sizable portion has also received booster shots,” says Currie. “Data in the region also shows that the chance of hospitalisation from Covid-19 for those fully vaccinated is very small.” He acknowledges the first steps Southeast Asian governments have made in opening borders after being all but entirely closed since early 2020. Still, he believes that testing requirements, extra paperwork, and coronavirus-related travel insurance still pose “onerous deterrents” to travel. Lingam observes that in many Asian countries the cost of Covid-19 tests can exceed the cost of some tickets offered by AirAsia. Lingam also takes aim at the bureaucratic hurdles travellers in the region face.<br/>