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JetBlue said Monday that it was beginning a tender offer to acquire Spirit Airlines after Spirit’s board rejected an earlier proposal, sticking with its plan to merge with Frontier Airlines instead. JetBlue said it was offering $30 a share to buy all of Spirit’s outstanding stock directly from shareholders, slightly less than it had originally offered to Spirit. That would set the purchase price at more than $3.2b. Spirit’s stock opened at $18.33 per share on Monday following the announcement of JetBlue’s tender offer, an 8% increase from its closing price on Friday. Spirit last week scheduled a vote on the merger with Frontier for June 10 and has urged shareholders to approve the deal. JetBlue said it was willing to increase its offer to $33 a share, the price it initially offered last month, if Spirit cooperated and shared the same information about its business with it as it had with Frontier. JetBlue said it had filed a “vote no” proxy statement calling for Spirit shareholders to reject the Frontier merger. JetBlue said that its all-cash offer was currently worth 60 percent more than Frontier’s cash-and-stock proposal. Frontier’s share price has fallen by about a third since it announced its merger with Spirit, reducing the value of its bid. Two weeks ago, Spirit’s chairman, Mac Gardner, said that “after a thorough review and extensive dialogue with JetBlue,” his company stood by its plan to merge with Frontier. He argued that it reflected the best interests of long-term shareholders, and that Spirit had concluded regulators were unlikely to approve the JetBlue deal. Story has more. <br/>

Unions are calling on the federal government to secure the return of five Canadian airline employees detained in the Dominican Republic. The flight crew has been held for more than 40 days after it discovered 200 kilograms of cocaine in the plane's avionics bay and reported it to police in Punta Cana on April 5, say three labour organizations representing 93,000 aviation workers. The Air Line Pilots Association, the Canadian Union for Public Employees and Unifor say their members were arbitrarily detained, threatened and prosecuted despite following Transport Canada protocols and international laws. The crew members — two pilots, two flight attendants and one part-time maintenance engineer on a Pivot Airlines charter flight — were jailed then later released on bail after surrendering their passports pending further investigation. “They’re being essentially held in a foreign country without proper evidence being presented. We’ve asked the government to intervene and return them home," pilots association president Tim Perry said in a phone interview from the Montreal airport. "We’ve heard credible threats against their safety." Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and the Prime Minister's Office have both acknowledged the situation to unions and airline, he added. Global Affairs Canada spokesman Jason Kung said in an email last month the department is aware of the detention and that consular officials are providing assistance, but privacy considerations prevent disclosing more information. “It's obviously a tense situation. Our member is certainly worried. He’s got a young family living at home," said Unifor spokesman Scott Doherty.<br/>

The European Union is set to drop its mask mandate for passengers on flights and in airports from Monday, following an update to guidelines for the aviation industry. The recommendation for mandatory wearing of medical masks in airports and on board a flight is being lifted on May 16, EASA and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said last week, while noting that a face mask is still one of the best protections against the transmission of Covid-19. The updated guidance takes into account the latest developments in the pandemic, “in particular the levels of vaccination and naturally acquired immunity, and the accompanying lifting of restrictions in a growing number of European countries,” the EASA said. The move is a big step forward and broadly aligns with public transport rules across Europe, according to EASA Executive Director Patrick Ky. “For passengers and air crews, this is a big step forward in the normalisation of air travel. Passengers should however behave responsibly and respect the choices of others around them. And a passenger who is coughing and sneezing should strongly consider wearing a face mask, for the reassurance of those seated nearby.” Meanwhile, the ECDC’s Director Andrea Ammon said that “while risks do remain, we have seen that non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccines have allowed our lives to begin to return to normal.” There are hopes that the removal of mask-wearing mandates will be a shot in the arm to an aviation and tourism industry hit hard over the last two years, as a significant number of people have put off travelling while there have been extra layers of Covid requirements, from Covid tests and vaccinations to passenger locator forms and mask wearing on board aircraft.<br/>

Ryanair on Monday posted a E355m loss for the pandemic-hit 12 months to end-March, but said it was impossible to accurately forecast anything beyond hoping for a return to “reasonable profitability” this year. The Irish airline, which is operating more flights than any other European airline according to air traffic regulator Eurocontrol, said it planned to grow its traffic to 165m passengers this year, up from 97m a year ago and a pre-Covid-19 record of 149m. However, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said it was “impractical, if not impossible” to provide a sensible or accurate profit guidance range at this time given the potential continued risk the war in Ukraine and Covid-19 poses to booking. “This recovery remains fragile,” O’Leary said in a statement. He added that while bookings have improved in recent weeks, Q1 pricing continued to need stimulation. Ryanair is cautiously optimistic that peak summer fares would be somewhat ahead of pre-pandemic levels due to pent-up demand. The full-year pre-exceptional loss of E355m was less than a forecast loss of E370m in a company poll of analysts and a loss of E1b in its previous financial year. The airline made a profit of E1b in the year to March 2020.<br/>

Ryanair’s CE Michael O’Leary has called for Boeing to make sweeping changes to its senior management to help fix a run of delayed deliveries and lost business to rival Airbus. The Irish executive on Monday said the top bosses at Boeing’s commercial planes business were “not up to the job”, and had not fought hard enough to stop the Seattle-based aerospace company’s market share being “wiped out” by Airbus. Announcing results for the year to March, O’Leary said Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun was “running out of time” to fix the problems, but stopped short of calling for him to leave the company. “There has been very poor delivery for the last two years, and we think they need management changes on the civilian aircraft side because the management team in Seattle is not delivering. It has not delivered for two years and they’re not up to the job,” O’Leary said. Ryanair is one of Boeing’s biggest customers, and O’Leary has been publicly sparring with the manufacturer over a possible new order worth billions of dollars for 737 Max 10 jets, which the airline called off last year because of differences over prices. Despite giving his qualified backing to Calhoun, who he said was doing a “reasonable job”, O’Leary said he needed to change management “pretty damn quickly”. “If he presides over more loss of market share, then maybe, you know, there’ll have to be wider management changes at Boeing generally,” he said. Ryanair has had problems in the deliveries of the smaller 737 Max plane from this year, and has been forced to “chop and change” its schedules because “Boeing keep missing delivery dates”, O’Leary said. O’Leary’s criticism is the latest sign of growing frustration among Boeing customers as the US group grapples with a string of production delays and certification issues on its major aircraft programmes, stoking concerns over its management. Domhnal Slattery, chief executive of the world’s second-largest lessor, Avolon, told an industry conference this month that the company had “lost its way”.<br/>

Yemen's national airline operated on Monday its first commercial flight from the capital Sanaa since 2016, raising hopes a U.N.-brokered truce could be a stepping stone towards a lasting peace that could improve the lives of desperate Yemenis. Dozens of Yemenis, including patients who waited years for medical treatment, went through security checks in the airport's terminal which has been deserted since 2015, excited and relieved at the prospect of being able to travel. "We have waited for this trip for three years. Because of my father's health condition, we couldn't take him by land to Aden. Praise be God, the relief has come," said Ismail al-Wazan before boarding a flight to Amman with his father in a wheelchair. As the first Yemenia flight landed empty in Sanaa from Aden, where the carrier has been operating relatively normally, water cannon sprayed the runway to celebrate the milestone. The flight then carried on to the Jordanian capital with the passengers. The seven-year conflict has pitted a Saudi-led coalition against the Iran-aligned Houthis and put Middle East security in peril. The coalition, which controls Yemen's airspace and seas, intervened in the civil war in 2015 after the Houthis ousted the internationally recognised government the previous year. The two-month truce came into effect on April 2 and has largely held but resumption of select flights agreed under the deal stalled after the Saudi-backed government insisted all passengers from Sanaa need government-issued passports.<br/>

Air Seoul, a Korean low-cost carrier, said Tuesday it will resume the Incheon-Boracay route next month to meet pent-up travel demand amid eased virus curbs. Air Seoul will provide four flights a week on the Boracay route from June 17, the company said. On Saturday, the carrier resumed services on the Incheon-Guam route and will expand the number of flights from four to seven a week starting July 1, it said. With six A321-200 chartered planes, the carrier currently serves flights on the domestic routes to Jeju Island and international routes to Guam, Yantai and Saipan. Air Seoul is a budget carrier unit of Asiana Airlines. <br/>