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Two of Europe’s largest airlines took the rare step of restricting sales of all but their most expensive tickets while cancelling another set of flights as the disruption gripping aviation worsened. Lufthansa and KLM put the measures in place to help ease the travel problems caused by staff shortages and the rise in demand for seats since the relaxation of Covid-19 rules. Andrew Charlton, managing director at consultancy Aviation Advocacy, said airlines had long used flexible ticket prices to manage demand and revenue but that it was highly unusual to “blatantly” use it for logistical reasons. It is part of a wider problem as airlines across Europe resort to drastic and sometimes unorthodox measures to try to avert last-minute cancellations and disruption, with the industry selling far more seats than it can comfortably handle this summer. Lufthansa said it had stopped the sale of some low-cost tickets “for a short period of a few days” to allow passengers affected by cancellations to rebook. While the special measures were in place, journeys were priced at a flat rate of E500 per flight, leaving even domestic return trips costing E1,000. The airline said the plan had “worked” and that the restrictions had been lifted by Friday. The Dutch operations of Air France-KLM also said it would “strongly restrict” the sale of remaining tickets for flights to European destinations on KLM and its regional airline KLM Cityhopper. The cheapest London to Amsterdam economy return trip in July on KLM was GBP700 on Friday afternoon, up from about GBP140 last month, according to Google Flights data.<br/>

SAS cancelled almost 70% of its flights on Friday as it scrambled to bring home thousands of tourists stranded overseas by a pilot strike that has deepened a financial crisis. The Scandinavian airline has been forced to cancel hundreds of flights since Monday when talks with pilots over a new collective bargaining agreement collapsed. A further 181 were cancelled on Friday, flight tracker FlightAware's data showed. SAS, whose biggest owners are Sweden and Denmark, has filed for US Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It held a first court hearing on Thursday in a process which may take up to a year. As travel rebounds from pandemic lows, strikes and staff shortages are forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights and causing hours-long queues at major airports across Europe. Loss-making SAS has estimated the strike by some of its pilots is costing $10m to $13m a day. "I'm with the back against a wall," SAS CE Anko van der Werff said of talks with the unions, adding that their relationship needed to follow a Scandinavian model, where labour deals are typically struck on an industry-wide basis. "I am also not in a position to sign a deal that will prevent investors from coming in. If we get no investors, then we're (going) nowhere," van der Werff said. While SAS has contended with repeated strikes over the past decade, the industry-wide negotiations adopted in other sectors in Scandinavia has tended to limit conflicts. Striking pilots have said they would consider pay cuts, but cannot accept SAS hiring new pilots through two new subsidiaries, under what unions say are worse terms.<br/>

Scandinavian airline SAS (SAS.ST) is not able to agree to the current demands made by unions representing pilots on strike because such a deal would scare off potential new investors, the company's chief executive said on Friday. "That would be very damaging because it doesn't allow us to get investors in," Anko van der Werff said.<br/>

Air China said it had fixed loose wing screws on one of its passenger aircraft after a video clip of the problematic fairing during flight was shared widely online. This comes after a passenger on Air China flight CA1921 from Beijing to Hengyang on Thursday noticed that a wing screw on the Boeing 737-NG was loose. He recorded a video and posted it on Chinese social media platform Weibo. The topic went viral soon, prompting the airline to issue a late-night statement. “Air China attached great importance to the loose screws in the inboard canoe fairing of the left flap of Air China flight CA1921 shared on the internet, and immediately inspected the relevant parts of the aircraft, repaired the loose screws, and checked the relevant fleet,” the statement read. The part where the screw was located in the inboard canoe fairing of the aircraft is mainly used to regulate the airflow, so as to reduce drag and save fuel. Such screws are used to fix the flap track fairing tail cones, which are a part of the inboard canoe fairing. There was no official explanation as to why the screw was loose or whether a loosened screw could affect flight safety. “According to personal maintenance experience, there are two reasons for this problem,” Qiu Qing, an aviation blogger with more than 300,000 followers, posted on Weibo. “One possibility is that the supporting target in the fairing was broken; another possibility is that the screws were loose due to long-term vibration at this position.”<br/>

A perfect storm of winter weather, staff shortages and engineering issues is causing problems at airports across the country as airlines face their busiest school holiday period in years. As a result Air New Zealand is warning passengers to prepare for disruptions and potential flight changes in the coming days. Air New Zealand is facing its busiest July school holiday period in two years. Over the next two weeks, more than 672,000 customers are booked to travel, both domestically, and overseas. But the airline is urging travellers to prepare for flight changes as winter weather, a wave of illnesses, and engineering issues hit the network at peak time. Its CEO says most flights are full with limited capacity to move customers around but staff are doing everything they can to limit disruptions. Air NZ chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty said its teams are working "around the clock" to get our customers where they need to go. "We anticipate delays and cancellations may continue across the coming few days and we are actively working to reduce the disruption to our customers as much as possible," she said. "When flights are cancelled or disrupted, we do our best to reaccommodate passengers on alternate services. Domestically, our flights southbound are fully booked over the coming few days, largely due to the school holiday period, so reaccommodating those who have been disrupted is more challenging than usual." She added Air NZ has reinstated its flexibility policy, which allows customers to hold the value of their fare in credit for 12 months. <br/>