JetBlue Airways shares tumbled more than 6% Tuesday after a surge in costs drove it to another quarterly loss just as it plans its takeover of Spirit Airlines. The New York-based airline had a loss of $188m in Q2 on record revenue of close to $2.45b as it grappled with a nearly 35% increase in cost per available seat mile compared with three years ago. Fuel, labor and other expenses rose sharply last quarter. Despite the loss, JetBlue said it expects to return to its first profit since the Covid pandemic began this quarter and that it would remain cautious on growth while costs surge. JetBlue’s Q3 capacity will likely end up being down as much as 3% compared with 2019, a sign the carrier is holding back on growth like other airlines trying to improve reliability after a rocky start to a big summer travel season. “We reported a record-breaking revenue result for the second quarter, and we’re on pace to top it again here in the third quarter and drive our first quarterly profit since the start of the pandemic,” CEO Robin Hayes said in an earnings release. The airline estimated its revenue per available seat mile will be up as much as 23% this quarter as consumers swallowed high airfares that JetBlue expects to offset a jump in fuel costs. Excluding fuel, JetBlue forecast unit costs to be up 15% to 17% over 2019. The airline said it will complete its retirement of Embraer E190 planes in mid-2025, more than a year earlier than previously scheduled. The faster transition to its more fuel-efficient Airbus A220 planes would help it cut costs, the company said. Airfares have cooled slightly as the peak summer travel season fades but JetBlue said “early bookings keep us cautiously optimistic about the fall.” JetBlue last week announced it had finally reached a deal to acquire ultra-low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines for $3.8 billion in cash after a long bidding war with discounter Frontier Airlines. Frontier’s agreement to combine with Spirit fell apart hours before the JetBlue-Spirit deal was announced.<br/>
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Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport said on Tuesday that passenger caps introduced for the summer season to cope with long waiting times and other logistical problems will be extended into September and October. The airport will also continuing other measures, such as asking passengers to show up no more than four hours before their flights, it said. Schiphol said it had warned airlines that it expects more passengers than it can handle during the Dutch autumn break in late October. KLM, the Dutch arm of Air France-KLM, said the decision meant it would have to limit some ticket sales in the autumn. "KLM does not expect cancellations to be necessary to meet the limit on the number of passengers boarding locally," the company said. "However, fewer seats than usual will be available in the Dutch market." The carrier said in June that it would hold Schiphol responsible for financial damages resulting from the passenger caps.<br/>
The Ministry of Civil Aviation in Egypt is preparing to launch a low-cost airline, Air Sphinx, in the winter of 2022-2023. As a subsidiary of EgyptAir, the new carrier will operate from the international airports of Hurghada, Sharm El Sheikh, Luxor, Sphinx and Cairo, with the aim of stimulating incoming tourism and providing new services to a large segment of travellers and tourists at lower rates than regular airlines. Civil Aviation minister, Captain Muhammad Manar said all the major companies in the aviation world have an arm for low-cost aviation, pointing out that an entity affiliated with EgyptAir should have been established to be fully low-cost a long time ago. “We are in the process of contracting with a number of aircraft,” he stated in a phone interview on a TV show this week; “The plane from the inside is different from the normal plane; the plane is completely economical, the seat space is close, the number of bags accompanied by passengers, the service is entirely different from the big planes and works on tourist destinations.”<br/>Azizofegypt, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons “This translates to a difference price other than that of the regular ticket; the prices of domestic flights were up to 4600 EGP, and we were able to go down with ticket prices to Luxor and Hurghada between 1500-1800 EGP.” He continued, “Most of the companies that come from abroad to visit tourist destinations in Egypt are low-cost airlines, and the establishment of the new entity is going hand in hand with the Ministry of Tourism.” The new company will be called Air Sphinx, and it will operate from all tourist destinations from its base at the Sphinx Airport in Giza, where the airport has been renovated and deserves to be the airport dedicated to serving visitors and tourists of the Great Museum, which<br/>is scheduled to open at the end of this year, in a global event that will be the focus of attention in this area.”<br/>
Emirates has resumed flights to London Stansted airport, bringing to three the number London gateways again served by the Middle Eastern carrier. Long an operator into London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports, Emirates added Stansted flights in mid-2018, only for the route to be dropped in March 2020 when the pandemic hit international travel. Daily services to Stansted resumed on 1 August, Emirates says, using Boeing 777-300ER jets. “We first started Stansted back in June 2018 and then a year later it went double-daily, so it’s been a great success story for Emirates,” the carrier’s UK divisional vice-president Richard Jewsbury told FlightGlobal on 2 August. “We are very pleased to be building back the UK operation.” As the demand recovery continues, Emirates says that by October this year it expects to be undertaking 110 weekly flights to the UK, comprising six daily services to London Heathrow, twice-daily operations at London Gatwick, the relaunched daily service to Stansted, three-times-daily services at Manchester, a double-daily service at Birmingham, five-times-a-week flights at Newcastle and a daily service at Glasgow. “Come October we’ll be around 75% of the way back [to pre-Covid levels],” says Jewsbury. “Over the next six to 12 months we’ll work towards getting back to where we were and then we’ll see what opportunities come thereafter.” <br/>
Indian low-cost carrier SpiceJet Ltd (SPJT.NS) said on Tuesday it had cleared all its outstanding principal dues with the state-run airport operator Airports Authority of India (AAI), sending its shares up nearly 5%. The airline will revert to advance payment mechanism for its daily operations, and AAI will release a 500 million rupees ($6.33m) bank guarantee, the company added. The airline has been under the spotlight lately after a slew of incidents of technical snags on its flights and one of its Dubai-based lessors asked the regulator to deregister three of SpiceJet's planes. Adding to its woes, the aviation regulator last week ordered the airline to slash its approved fleet to 50% this summer for eight weeks citing safety snags. The airline said on Monday its flight operations remained normal. Shares rose as much as 4.5% to 42 rupees in early trade.<br/>
Nok Airlines has defended the hour-long evacuation of passengers from the plane that crashed off the runway after landing at Chiang Rai on Saturday night, saying it was in strict compliance with safety procedures. Nok Airlines gave the explanation in a statement issued on Tuesday in response to complaints by passengers that most of them had been kept inside the stuffy aircraft cabin for over an hour, without lights and without an adequate air flow, told only that they were waiting for buses. Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) director Suttipong Kongpool, said on Monday that the chief pilot of Flight DD108 would be summoned to explain the delay. The Don Mueang-Chiang Rai flight with 164 passengers and six crew slid off the runway and its undercarriage collapsed as it landed in heavy rain at Mae Fah Luang international airport about 9.06pm. Passengers said the captain turned off the engines, leaving the passenger cabin in darkness and without airconditioning. They had been left in stuffy conditions for over an hour before being evacuated. Nok Air offered an apology for any inconvenience and miscommunication that might have incurred passengers' displeasure. It said the airline had followed maximum safety procedures by taking into consideration the passengers in the flight and coordinating with a work unit about evacuating them via a slide from the front door, as a stairway could not be placed properly aganst the aircraft because of the heavy rain and wet ground. Moreover, there might also have been animals around which could have posed a danger to the passengers.<br/>