Spirit Airlines is promising to bring a little more comfort to discount travelers next year. The airline unveiled a new seat design last week, with more padding and an extra half-inch of width compared to their current economy options. The airline aims to make the middle seat more attractive, too. On Spirit, middle seats in every row are already an inch wider than the window and aisle seats. Economy seats in the new configuration will also have headrests and extra knee room, thanks to a curved back design. The new seats will start coming into service in late January, the airline said, and they're part of a long-planned overhaul of Spirit's cabin interiors. "Our cabin refresh in 2019 was a significant enhancement in the guest experience, and these new seats are another great step forward in increasing value for our guests." Lania Rittenhouse, Spirit's vice president of guest experience, brand, and communications said in a statement. For now, the airline only plans to install the new seats on newly-delivered aircraft. Spirit is expecting to take delivery of 33 Airbus A320-family aircraft in 2023.<br/>
unaligned
Allegiant Travel Comany, parent of Allegiant Air, reported a loss of $46.5mi in Q3 as revenue – and costs – surged significantly. The Las Vegas-based ultra-low-cost carrier’s operations generated just over $560m of revenue in three months ending 30 September, a 22% increase from $460m during the same period in 2021. Operating expenses increased more than 50% year-on-year, to $591m in Q3 2022 from $393m a year earlier. The quarterly loss includes $35m in property damage to Allegiant’s Sunseeker Resort in Charlotte Harbor, Florida caused by Hurricane Ian. The airline estimates that operational disruptions caused by the storm in September resulted in a further $3.5m loss of revenue. Demand remained strong throughout the quarter, said John Redmond, Allegiant’s CE, during the company’s Q3 earnings call 2 November. He notes that the airline’s bottom line benefited from the rise of so-called “hybrid travel”. “A new trend we are beginning to observe post-Covid is the increase in passengers combining business and leisure trips,” Redmond says. “A recent survey showed that nearly 15% of respondents were travelling for both business and leisure.”<br/>
The largest pilots union of Latam Airlines in Chile voted to strike on Wednesday, a day before the company said it was planning on concluding its exit from bankruptcy. The Union of Latam Pilots (SPL) said it represents 313 of Latam Airlines's approximately 500 pilots and that 99% of its members voted to approve the strike. In a statement released Wednesday, the union said it was looking to revert some pandemic-era cost-saving measures, including a 30% pay cut and a shift to "variable salary model." "What we're asking now is an act of justice that jumps into view: recover conditions we had before the adjustment that hit us hard," Mario Troncoso, president of the SPL said. Troncoso added that 240 pilots were fired during the pandemic and while company executives and other company employees recovered 100% of their pre-pandemic salaries, pilots are the only ones still receiving a reduced salary. The statement said that the company's proposal to link pre-pandemic salary to flight hours is unfeasible and could be reached, at best, three months out of the year.<br/>Latam Airlines refused to comment publicly on the matter.<br/>
Low-cost carrier Wizz Air has reported widening losses in the first half of the year but has said its operations are starting to “normalise” after months of disruption. In the July to September quarter the group returned to profit, but over the six months to September 30 it made an operating loss of E63.8m, according to results published on Wednesday. This compares with a E51.9mn loss for the same period in 2021. Revenue over the period more than doubled, from E880m to E2.19b. Severe disruption because of staff shortages and problems at airports pushed Wizz to an operating loss of E284m for April to June, Q1 of its financial year. CE József Váradi said the carrier, a fast-growing rival to low-cost operators such as Ryanair, was now in a position to become profitable. “Our operational performance has recently normalised and we are now back in line with our historically low levels of cancellations and flight disruptions,” Váradi said. Váradi added that the problems over the summer had been predominantly a result of issues such as shortages of air traffic controllers and delays at airport security. But he said the issues were now resolved. “If you look at the last months of operation of the airline, we’re back to our standards,” Váradi said. “We’re operating our flights with no significant disruption.” Váradi said Wizz had not yet reached the levels of fleet utilisation and load factors of before the pandemic.<br/>
Virgin Atlantic Airways CEO Shai Weiss pledged to resist any move to cap capacity at Heathrow airport in the lead up to Christmas after the hub said curbs may be needed due to staffing shortages. The airline controlled by billionaire Richard Branson intends to fly a full winter program and called on London’s biggest airport to use the 55 days remaining before Christmas to ensure no restrictions are needed after a turbulent summer. “Disrupting passengers now is completely unacceptable,” Weiss said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s just not possible. What are we going to tell people, you’re not going to see your family over Christmas? You’re not going to go on the vacation for which you’ve saved for two or three years? So we’ll be flying our full schedule.” The Virgin Atlantic CEO said he had expected Heathrow to confirm capacity curbs were a thing of the past after a ceiling of 100,000 departing passengers a day was scrapped at the end of the summer schedule, which was marred by lengthy delays due to a lack of workers. Instead, Heathrow boss John Holland-Kaye last week doubled down on warnings of further limits on the busiest days ahead of the festive season.<br/>
Virgin Atlantic job applications have doubled since the airline changed its dress code to allow male crew to wear skirts. Shai Weiss, Virgin's CE, said that there had been a 100% rise in candidates after it dropped requirements for staff to wear "gendered uniform options". As well as allowing male staff to wear skirts and female counterparts trousers, the need for cabin crew to wear make-up was removed and a ban on displaying tattoos was overturned. Gender-neutral pronouns were also introduced as part of Virgin's "see the world differently" campaign. Weiss said that the reforms to the historically conservative industry had been a "tremendous" help as airlines grapple with a red-hot labour market. "We saw a 100% uplift in applicants following the campaign, 'See the world differently'," he said on board Virgin Atlantic's inaugural flight from Heathrow to Tampa. Unlike many of its rivals, Weiss said that Virgin was not struggling to fill vacancies after being forced into radical cost-cutting measures during the pandemic.<br/>
Ryanairflew 15.7m passengers in October, a record high for the month and up 14% on pre-COVID levels, Europe's largest airline by passenger numbers said on Wednesday. Similar to September, the jump in traffic meant Ryanair flew more passengers last month than in any of its busiest summer months before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. It flew a record 16.9 million passengers in August. CEO Michael O'Leary told Reuters last month that bookings for the autumn mid-term and Christmas holidays were ahead of pre-COVID levels. The average proportion of empty seats per flight in October remained steady month-on-month at 6% compared to 4% in October 2019. Ryanair expects to fly 166.5mi passengers in the year to the end of March, significantly ahead of its previous record of 149m.<br/>
RwandAir has big ambitions to connect Africa. But realizing those ambitions has to wait, pending a delayed major investment by Qatar Airways in the airline. First unveiled in 2020, Qatar Airways plans to buy a 49% stake in state-owned RwandAir. That deal, as RwandAir CEO Yvonne Manzi Makolo said last year, will enable the carrier’s growth through numerous joint “commercial initiatives.” The first of which was a codeshare partnership and a loyalty program tie up that launched in December. Qatar Airways’ investment is understood to be worth more than $28 million, or 49% of RwandAir’s $57m in shareholder equity in 2019, according to financial statements submitted to the US Department of Transportation last year. But RwandAir’s pact with Qatar Airways is still pending with talks at “an advanced stage,” Makolo said at the International Aviation Club in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. “There’s lots of legal and stuff that’s happening” behind the scenes, she said when asked about the hold up. Makolo added that she “hopes” the deal will be done soon but declined to provide a timeline. The longer the deal is pending, the longer RwandAir’s ambitious expansion plans must wait. “This joint venture will allow RwandAir to grow into a more robust airline … and further improve connectivity within the continent,” Makolo said. When asked, she said additional aircraft for the airline’s 12-plane strong fleet would come under the partnership with deep-pocketed Qatar Airways.<br/>
Japan's mid-sized carrier Skymark has applied to relist on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as it hopes to benefit from post-COVID growth, Nikkei has learned. Skymark plans to use the funds it wants to raise from the relisting of its shares to strengthen its financials and invest in digital and aircraft upgrades. Like other airlines, its finances were severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Skymark was delisted in 2015 after filing for bankruptcy, but since then, capital injections from Japanese investment fund Integral and ANA Holdings, among others, helped it to restructure its business. In the autumn of 2019, the company applied to relist but later withdrew due to the deteriorating business environment during the pandemic. The company reported a net loss of 6.7b yen ($45m) for the fiscal year ended March 2022, a narrower loss than the 16.3b yen it reported in the previous year. However, as passenger demand starts to recover with the easing of COVID-related curbs, the company plans to shift from streamlining its business to an expansion in view of future growth of the travel sector. Skymark's business has improved, with sources saying that it recorded an operating profit in July. If its application to relist is approved, the earliest Skymark stock will be traded on the market is the end of this year. The relisting proceeds will help to improve the company's equity ratio, which had fallen to about 10% in the last fiscal year. It also plans to renew its Boeing 737 aircraft and invest in digital technology to improve its passenger management system and increase overall productivity.<br/>
Low-cost medium haul airline, AirAsia X Bhd (AAX) aims to be profitable by the end of 2023, banking on huge demand for air travel and its attractive low fares. AirAsia X Malaysia CEO Benyamin Ismail said the airline has benefitted from the group’s restructuring, enabling its cost structure to come down quite a bit, thus providing room for it to set lower fares. "The positive side is demand in the market is high but supply is very low. (The market’s) air fares are fairly high (at the moment), so we can benefit from it for the meantime. There's a big differential between our fares and other full service carriers. I think we will be attracting the people in the middle income who are not able to afford to pay high fares,” he told reporters here, today. Meanwhile, newly appointed chairman Tunku Datuk Mahmood Fawzy said AAX has put key performance indicators and targets in place as guidance for the management in achieving the turn around mission.<br/>