Lufthansa subsidiary Austrian Airlines said on Thursday it was cancelling 52 short- and medium-haul flights because of the first round of in-person staff meetings since the pandemic. Around the world, flights have been cancelled as demand as bounced back following the pandemic and staffing levels have not recovered from deep cuts as airlines laid off workers when revenues dropped during lockdown restrictions on movement. Austrian law did not allow companies to shed employees but the country has not escaped disruption and unions say there is a shortage of staff. Austrian law also requires staff meetings to be held. The airline did not respond when asked why the meetings could not be rescheduled rather than held ahead of a holiday weekend in many European countries. An AUA spokesperson told Reuters long-haul flights would not be affected, but the situation on Thursday was that 26 round trips (or 52 flights) would be cancelled of a total of 400 planned flights, affecting about 5,200 passengers. Daniel Liebhart, chairman of the aviation section at Austria’s vida trade union, said a shortage of controllers and airport ground staff was likely to cause further disruption. “We will only get through the summer months by the skin of our teeth, if at all. It is simply wrong to say that things are better in Austria,” he said.<br/>
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A group of foreign investors is exploring a takeover of Scandinavian airline SAS, Swedish financial daily Dagens Industri reported late on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources. The investors have appointed advisors to help facilitate a takeover, but any investment in SAS would be conditional on cost cuts and a restructuring of the Stockholm-based carrier’s finances, according to the report. Loss-making SAS on Tuesday said it hopes to convert debt to equity and raise 9.5b Swedish crowns ($966m) in new cash, warning of liquidity problems if it falls short. The carrier, part-owned by Sweden and Denmark, has been struggling for years and on Tuesday said it had not yet made sufficient progress on a restructuring plan presented in February.<br/>
The day after Wuhan went into a lockdown in January 2020, Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong called a crisis meeting at Airline House, the company’s massive, factory-like headquarters at the end of Changi Airport’s runways. The question to be answered: How bad is this going to be? Within weeks, as China locked down more cities to try to stop the novel coronavirus spreading and nations began to shut their borders, a chilling reality emerged. Goh and other executives realized that if they didn’t take drastic action fast, the airline that Singapore spent seven decades building into one of the world’s largest and most respected international carriers could go out of business. “At that point, absolutely we were serious about it,” Goh said in an interview on Tuesday. The company could not take for granted that it would be bailed out, he said. What emerged over those tense weeks of meetings, while airlines around the world filed for bankruptcy or sought state help to stay alive, was a new strategy at Singapore’s flag-carrier — one that not only allowed the airline to weather the pandemic, but would set it up to capitalize on the weakened state of its competitors once travel began to rebound. “The virus was spreading across the world and borders were closing one after another,” Goh said. “So the first priority obviously is to make sure that we have enough funding to outlast this crisis.” Story has more.<br/>