Lufthansa CE Carsten Spohr said Thursday the German airline strongly backs US airplane manufacturer Boeing, which has faced criticism over program delays. Earlier this month, Lufthansa said it would buy 10 cargo planes including seven of the 777X version, also known as 777-8F, and boosted its order for Boeing 787s. "Boeing as a symbol of America will get back to its feet," Spohr said at a luncheon speech in Washington. He added to airline officials in attendance, "It's a good time to negotiate prices with Boeing right now." Spohr said Lufthansa's order came "at a time that Boeing is obviously going through some trouble." Noting that he has been asked why Lufthansa "so blindly believe in Boeing" while others have canceled orders or given up on delivery dates, Spohr said his answer was that the airline's employees "believe in Boeing as a company." He compared Boeing to the United States' getting back on its feet after various crises in past decades. Boeing has faced delays in some programs and concerns about whether it will win regulatory approval for the 737-MAX 10 ahead of a key December deadline. Last month, Boeing announced it was halting 777X production through 2023 due to a fresh delay in its entry into service after certification problems and weak demand. Boeing confirmed a delay in handing over the first 777X jet to 2025, from the previous target of late 2023. Lufthansa is seeing extremely strong summer travel demand. Spohr said the carrier's most expensive ticket for sale now is a $24,000 first-class round-trip ticket San Francisco-to-Frankfurt. "And we're sold out," Spohr said. He said the airline is not giving a full-year outlook because of the uncertainty of fuel prices, inflation and the potential of recession. "There are many more question marks for the rest of the year," Spohr said.<br/>
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Business travel is returning for Singapore Airlines, with forward bookings accounting for a similar proportion of ticket sales as before the Covid pandemic now that border restrictions have been lifted. “Since April of this year, when Singapore fully opened its borders, we have seen a strong rebound in corporate travel,” the carrier’s executive vice president of commercial operations, Lee Lik Hsin, said at a briefing Thursday. Lee was speaking the day after Singapore Airlines released annual results that showed its net loss narrowed to S$125m ($90m) in the second half through March. Demand has improved in all cabin classes as key markets—apart from China—remove travel curbs, the airline said, a point echoed by Lee. “The momentum that we are seeing in our forward bookings is coming across all customer segments,” he said, adding the airline expects strong passenger growth this year. After some gradual loosening from September, Singapore further relaxed its border restrictions in April so that fully-vaccinated people from anywhere in the world can enter without quarantine or Covid testing. Singapore Airlines’ passenger traffic last month reached 1.45m, the highest since the start of the pandemic, and 72.7% of its seats were filled. The carrier said inflation, particularly fuel prices, remains a concern. That weighed on its shares Thursday morning, when they slid as much as 2.8%, the most since Feb. 24. They eventually closed down 0.9%. Singapore Airlines’ fuel costs climbed to S$1.38b in the second half of the fiscal year as it operated more flights. Sales more than doubled in the period to S$4.79b. <br/>
The Singapore Airlines Group feels it has plenty of room for recovery growth before the continued closure of the China market makes itself felt. China was a strategic market for mainline SIA and low-cost carrier Scoot before the coronavirus pandemic started in Wuhan in late 2019, but now Mainland China remains all but entirely shutoff owing to tough travel restrictions stemming from the country’s ‘zero-Covid’ policy. SIA Group CE Goh Choon Phong says that the absence of China affects Scoot more than SIA, but believes there is nonetheless plenty of space to rebuild the group’s overall network. “We do not expect [China’s continued closure] to impact us significantly in this first year of recovery because we are ramping up on all of the other points,” he says. “We have plenty of room to ramp up from that point before we even start reaching the point where we need to add back China. This year’s growth is still going to be very strong even without China.”<br/>