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JetBlue Airways said Monday it had boosted its takeover offer for Spirit Airlines to $33.50 as it works to convince the ultra-low cost carrier to accept its offer over rival Frontier Airlines' proposal. Spirit said last week it was in talks with JetBlue over its offer and expected to decide on the proposal by June 30. JetBlue said its proposal represents a 68% premium to the implied value of the Frontier stock and cash transaction. The new proposal includes what JetBlue termed a "stronger divestiture commitment" to complete the Spirit deal but does not include abandoning JetBlue's Northeast Alliance with American Airlines.<br/>

Industry watchers expect WestJet to remove routes from the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa triangle as part of the airline’s new strategy to focus future growth on Western Canada. But far from being a downsizing, experts say WestJet’s latest move is actually a “growth story” that will see the Calgary-based airline bulk up its fleet and add service to more communities across the West. On Thursday, the WestJet Group — which is owned by Onex Corp. — announced a plan to shift its resources in the wake of a strategic review of the company’s operations. CE Alexis von Hoensbroech, a former Austrian Airlines CEO who assumed the helm at WestJet in February, said the airline is at a turning point as it grapples with pent-up travel demand in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, spiking oil prices and staffing shortages at airports. Von Hoensbroech said to ensure its future success, WestJet has decided to focus its future investments on Western Canada, where it has a large portion of the market share and enjoys a reputation as the “home-team carrier.” “We will deploy our aircraft where they can be of greatest service to Canadians,” von Hoensbroech said. “While we will be investing the majority of our fleet in the West, as a national airline we will maintain a significant presence in the Eastern provinces, primarily through direct connections to our Western cities.” The announcement comes after WestJet has spent more than a decade adding routes to central and Atlantic Canada in an effort to go head-to-head with Montreal-based Air Canada.<br/>

British pilots at low-cost airline Ryanair (RYA.I) have voted to accept a revised offer on post-COVID pay restoration following negotiations, the BALPA trade union said on Monday. The breakthrough in one of Ryanair's largest markets came as unions representing cabin crew in Belgium, Portugal, France and Italy prepare to strike for between one and three days each later this week. "Following the intense negotiations Ryanair put forward a revised offer. BALPA members were balloted and voted to accept the offer," a union spokesperson said in an email. In July 2020 BALPA members voted overwhelmingly to accept temporary pay cuts in order to avoid jobs losses due to COVID-19 groundings. CE Michael O'Leary in January then said that management had begun discussions with unions across its network about accelerating pay restoration in a deal he said might result in the extension pay agreements by a year or two. Asked how many pilots had accepted deals covering post-COVID pay restoration, a Ryanair spokesperson said over 70% of its pilots are covered by "newly renegotiated agreements". There are pay agreements in place for all pilots, the airline said.<br/>

EasyJet has been forced to cut thousands more flights this summer in response to the staff shortages affecting the aviation industry, as it warned the disruption had been worsened by Brexit and would hit its finances. The low-cost airline on Monday said it would “proactively” cancel flights at sites where there had been significant disruption, including London Gatwick and Amsterdam, two of its biggest airports. Both airports have introduced flight caps in recent days to try to get a grip on disruption, and give passengers advance warning of problems following weeks of last-minute cancellations. EasyJet’s CE Johan Lundgren said the airline had been forced to reject 8,000 job applicants because of their nationality, most of whom were from the EU, following changes to immigration rules from Brexit. He said that meant 35 to 40% of potential recruits were being rejected because of their nationality, up from 2.5% before Brexit. He called again for ministers to give European aviation staff work permits to help ease the crunch. “There is a much smaller pool of talent available,” he said. The airline did not put a number on how many flights would be lost, but said it would now fly about 87% of 2019 levels in the three months to the end of June, down from the 90% it forecast in May. In the following quarter, this would rise to 90%, down from a previous expectation of 97%, which was equivalent to 160,000 flights.<br/>

Emirates has said it doesn’t see travel demand dissipating any time soon, even as the industry battles a string of challenges that have already sparked airport chaos ahead of the busy summer holiday season. Tim Clark, president of the Dubai-based carrier and an airline veteran, said that he had “never seen anything” like the headwinds currently facing the industry. Yet, holidaymakers don’t seem to be deterred from seizing newly resumed travel opportunities. “It’s unlikely that, irrespective of impediment — whether it be price, whether it be airport facilities — that demand is going to dissipate in the short-term,” Clark said. The airline industry has been hamstrung by a perfect storm of challenges, from labor shortages and supply disruptions to rising fuel prices, resulting in weeks of severe delays and cancellations across some of Europe and North America’s busiest airports. On Saturday, more than 6,300 flights were delayed within, into or leaving the US, and 859 flights were canceled, according to the flight tracking platform FlightAware. Similarly, tens of thousands of flights have been disrupted across Europe in recent days, with 5,000 passengers at London’s Heathrow Airport expected to be hit by cancellations on Monday alone.<br/>

Gulf carrier Emirates said it’s in talks to take delivery of A350 wide-body jets ordered from Airbus SE over a shorter period amid continuing uncertainty around the handover of Boeing Co.’s delayed 777X model. With the American plane now not due to commence deliveries until 2025, Dubai-based Emirates is looking to accelerate A350 arrivals once the first example from a 50-strong order is shipped, most likely in late summer 2024, Tim Clark, the airline’s president, said Monday in Doha. “We’re talking to Airbus about compressing the delivery scale so we probably get up to two a month,” Clark said in a briefing at the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting in the Qatari capital. “We’re trying to get this whole lot done in two years to pick up this big capacity.” Boeing in April put back 777X deliveries to 2025, five years later than originally planned, and said it won’t resume production until 2023, prompting some plane-leasing firms to suggest that the future of the re-winged and re-engined evolution of the popular long-haul model is in doubt.<br/>

Virgin Australia’s long-term goal remains to be publicly listed, confirms CE Jayne Hrdlicka, as the airline rebounds to profitability. Hrdlicka says it will “take a couple of years minimum to get that done”, but did not disclose a firm timeline. The Australian newspaper The Australian previously reported that the carrier was mulling an IPO in 2023, a timeline Hrdlicka said was “faster than we thought”. In her latest comments, Hrdlicka adds: “We are honoured that people are talking about [an IPO], because it means we have done a lot in a really short period of time… [and] we are back in a position where we are a very credible airline with a good business model and bright future.” The airline has seen “strong underlying demand” in its domestic network, with capacity hitting pre-pandemic levels. Virgin Australia recently announced plans to take four Boeing 737 Max 8s, on top of 25 Max 10s it previously ordered. The airline has also been steadily expanding its fleet of 737 aircraft since exiting administration in late 2020.<br/>