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To cap off its 25th anniversary celebrations, Star Alliance will host a charity run in Singapore on October 9, 2022 in support of healthcare workers responding to Covid-19. Registration is now open online. Participants will not only contribute to a worthy cause, but also stand a chance to win thrilling travel rewards for themselves. The Star Alliance Run will be unique. Unlike other runs which recognise and reward only the fastest participants, here every eligible participant who finishes the run will stand a chance to win exciting travel prizes. These include business class tickets on Star Alliance member airlines, hotel stays and airport lounge access. Proceeds from the event will be channelled by Community Chest towards supporting front line healthcare workers under The Courage Fund and the Healthcare Humanity Awards to recognise the bravery and dedication of healthcare workers in Singapore. The awards were first given out in 2003 during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak and have continued till today, with recent editions focused on the contributions of healthcare workers contributing to the fight against Covid-19. Announcing the run, Star Alliance CEO Jeffrey Goh said: "For 25 years, Star Alliance has connected people and cultures across the world. This mission remains the same, even as the world slowly recovers from the pandemic. In the past two years, the selfless labour, resilience, and grit of front line healthcare workers has been critical in protecting our communities, helping us live with the virus, and making the safe resumption of travel possible. That’s why we feel a charity run that supports our healthcare heroes is a meaningful way to cap off Star Alliance’s 25th anniversary celebrations. This event will also allow us to give back to the community. "<br/>

United Airlines is being sued for $50,000 following a delay to one of its flights from Newark to Tel Aviv earlier this month. On August 6th, flight UA84 was scheduled to depart at 16:25, but was subsequently delayed until 07:00 the next day. United Airlines has said that the delay was due to a curfew at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport. However, this does not appear to correlate with what passengers were told at the time. An announcement was made by a gate agent, advising that “the pilots are refusing to take the flight at this time.” A lawsuit has now been filed on behalf of the plaintiff by Migir Ilganayev of the Ilganayev Law Firm, accusing United Airlines of a number of charges, including fraud, breach of contract, and negligence. The summons states, "[United] committed fraud and deceit against Plaintiff and all other passengers when its crew refused to perform their job, and United deliberately, and knowingly lied about the reason for its delay.” Following the delay on August 6th, United Airlines informed passengers that the delay was caused by a curfew, and this was subsequently confirmed as the reason for the delay on the airline’s website. However, when Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post contacted a spokesperson at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport for clarification, it was told that "there is no curfew. At all.”<br/>

SAS, which is working its way through a Chapter 11 restructuring in the US, cautioned that much more remains to be done to convince stakeholders to invest in the ailing Scandinavian carrier. The airline also needs to overcome the impact of a pilot strike and travel disruptions that hobbled its key summer season, just as as the price of jet fuel has soared and inflation accelerates. “Cost reductions across all of SAS remain in focus to secure our cost competitiveness,” the Stockholm-based airline said in a statement on Friday as it reported Q3 earnings. It’s “identified the vast majority” of the 7.5b kronor ($707m) in annual expenses it must slash. It reported total operating expenses of 24.4b kronor for the nine months through July, up by 10.8b kronor, adjusted for currency impacts. The tri-national airline has made meaningful progress on both its staffing crisis and financial restructuring plans over the summer. Earlier this month, Apollo Global Management Inc. agreed to provide the company with a roughly $700 million loan, known as debtor-in-possession financing, to help it through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process. Besides the loan agreement with Apollo, SAS is nearing results in talks regarding the renegotiation of contracts to reduce lease costs and to “right-size” the fleet, CEO Anko van der Werff said. “We are progressing on our ongoing discussions,” he said. “I think they will last for another few months.” August also saw the company’s pilots approve a collective labor agreement that the airline and unions reached last month to end a 15-day strike. The July walkout hit SAS at the busiest time of the year as it was forced to cancel 3,700 flights, affecting 380,000 passengers and costing $135m.<br/>

Scandinavian airlines SAS and Norwegian Air see what executives describe as a “normal” decline in passenger numbers as they look ahead to the coming winter, comparable to what they saw before Covid-19. The two competitors, which are the top two airlines in Scandinavia by number of seats, have few concerns over the threat of inflation or a possible economic recession and are making regular seasonal schedule reductions for the coming winter. Norwegian Air, which restructured during the pandemic into an all short-haul budget airline, is making the biggest change with plans to reduce seats by 24-28 percent from the end of October through February compared to its summer schedule. “I think this is the first time we have done that,” Norwegian Air CEO Geir Karlsen said during the airline’s second quarter earnings call on August 25. “And why are we doing it? Well, because we think that the demand will be lower.” Karlsen and his management team are laser focused on reducing unit costs excluding fuel to below 0.4 Norwegian kroner ($0.04) and achieving consistent profitability at Norwegian Air, which was plagued with losses prior to its restructuring. SAS CEO Anko van der Werff, speaking during the airline’s fiscal third-quarter — covering the May-to-July period — earnings call Friday, is taking a more conservative view of winter. He declined to provide guidance for the period given the airline’s US Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring and the potential for inflationary or recessionary headwinds. However, he was clear that SAS is seeing the “normal slowdown” in demand after the summer, and adjusting its schedule as it did prior to the pandemic. “Given the uncertainty at a macroeconomic level … I am not convinced yet about this winter,” Van der Werff said expressing some caution for the upcoming period.<br/>

Air New Zealand has unveiled a new domestic jet without its iconic koru on the tail. The A321neo will arrive in New Zealand in November and with 217 seats will be the largest aircraft in the domestic fleet. The new plane is the world’s first black Star Alliance aircraft. As part of being a member of the alliance, each airline occasionally paints one of its planes in a Star Alliance livery – with its large star logo on the tail – to promote the network. Air New Zealand’s Chief Transformation and Alliances Officer Mike Williams says the airline got special permission to paint this one all black. “While Star Alliance livery is typically white with a black tail fin, we asked if we could do something a little different and inverse the colours. They kindly allowed us this special privilege, in celebration of how important black is to Air New Zealand and New Zealand. “Kiwis missing the Koru need not look too far – our iconic Koru will feature on the wingtips in this one-off design,” Williams said. The plane has just received its paint job at the Airbus factory in Hamburg, Germany and is expected to arrive in New Zealand in November. It’ll have a long 17,825km multi-stop journey to Auckland via Muscat, Kuala Lumpur and Cairns. The aircraft is one of three new domestic A321neos that will arrive before the end of the year and will be used exclusively for flying around the country. The other two will be painted in the usual black and white colours, with a koru on the tail.<br/>