Finnair has extended the period over which it will repay a largely state-guaranteed loan, as it seeks to shore-up its financial position amid the business restructuring prompted by its exclusion from Russian airspace. The agreement relates to a E600m ($633m) loan from a pension fund – E540m of which was guaranteed by the Finnish government and E60m by a commercial bank – received by the Oneworld carrier at the height of the pandemic in 2020. The European Commission approved the loan and guarantees in May 2020 and Finnair drew it down in three tranches across the remainder of the year. While the loan was originally due to be repaid in two E300m tranches in December 2022 and June 2023, its maturity has been extended until 2025 and the repayment schedule amended, Finnair said on 12 December, so that it will now be amortised by E100m every six months. The loan will not be amortised in December 2022, as previously envisaged, and the last two E100m tranches will be paid in full on 15 May 2025, the airline says. Finnair explains that the action is necessary “to maintain its cash funds in the prevailing uncertain operating environment”, referring to the challenges created by the closure of Russian airspace to European carriers amid the war in Ukraine. Finnair has been particularly hard hit by the lack of access to Russian airspace, given services to Asia were at the core of its network strategy. <br/>
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Willie Walsh, BA’s ex-CE, said he had no regrets about making drastic cuts at the airline, which earned him the nickname Slasher Walsh. Walsh, now CE of Iata, told The Telegraph: “British Airways is in business today because of the measures that were taken to secure its financial performance.” He said there was nothing he would have done differently despite accusations service levels had dropped. However, Walsh admitted Virgin Atlantic was now attracting many BA staff to switch allegiances. Walsh has been a fierce critic of Heathrow, arguing it should have reinstated more staff to avoid the queues and capacity restrictions seen this summer. He said “heads should definitely roll” if there were similar problems next year.<br/>
A pilot on the lost flight MH370 lowered the doomed Boeing 777's landing gear in the last seconds of flight, suggesting a possible criminal intent behind one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries. Damage to a landing gear door from the Malaysian Airlines aircraft, found in the possession of a Madagascan fisherman 25 days ago, is the first physical evidence to suggest one of the pilots deliberately acted to quickly destroy and sink the jet with 239 people on board. Identified as a Boeing 777 landing gear component, known as a trunnion door, the wreckage has most likely been penetrated from the inside by the aircraft's disintegrating engines, making it highly probable the landing gear was down when the aircraft crashed into the southern Indian Ocean on March 8, 2014. The finding of the crucial piece of wreckage was not announced until Monday but has prompted calls for an urgent further investigation into the fate of the 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 14 different nations who are presumed to have died. The new analysis, by Richard Godfrey, a British engineer, and Blaine Gibson, an American MH370 wreckage hunter, suggests the airliner was crashed quickly and deliberately. When airliners have to emergency-land on water, pilots do not normally lower the undercarriage because the extended landing gear will dig into the water, disrupting contact with the surface and increasing the risk of violent breakup as the aircraft slows. Pilots are trained to perform emergency landings with landing gear retracted for a controlled, low-speed ditching. The flaps on flight MH370 are thought not to have been retracted to slow the aircraft, and extending the landing gear would have caused the immediate breakup of the fuselage once the Boeing hit the Indian Ocean at high speed. Deploying the landing gear would also increase the chances of an airliner sinking quickly, limiting the time for any survivors to evacuate.<br/>