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Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday approved a decree to sell an initial minority stake in ITA Airways with the aim of facilitating the full privatisation of the state-owned carrier, a government statement said on Wednesday. A draft of the decree seen by Reuters stipulated that another airline must end up with a majority stake in ITA after the privatisation process is concluded, making clear the government did not want a fund to purchase the carrier. It also allows bidders to buy stakes in ITA through one or more capital increases Lufthansa is the frontrunner to enter ITA's capital, sources have said. They added that the company has said it wants a minority stake in the immediate term. Lufthansa and ITA declined to comment on the government's move, but ITA CE Fabio Lazzerini said earlier on Wednesday that talks with the German company were ongoing "in a very collaborative way". In an effort to speed up the sale process, the decree removed an obligation for the Treasury to immediately sell a majority stake in the carrier, as laid out by the previous government of Mario Draghi earlier this year. However, it said the Treasury must have a say on any new shareholders during the sell-off process. The privatisation of the carrier, which officially replaced loss-making Alitalia in 2021, has proved a headache for the Treasury.<br/>

Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s plans to retroactively pay out manager bonuses contravene agreements made with the government as part of the airline’s rescue package, according to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s chief spokesman. The state stepped in during 2020 to rescue Lufthansa after pandemic-related restrictions all but grounded air travel. While the airline repaid its E9b bailout ahead of schedule — and the government offloaded the stake it took in Lufthansa at a profit — the terms of the package prohibit bundling bonus payments from earlier years and paying them out at a later date, Scholz spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said Wednesday. “We need to discuss these two different interpretations of the law with Lufthansa and see what comes out of that,” Hebestreit said. “There are agreements that were made and from our point of view what Lufthansa has planned is not in line with those.” Lufthansa didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. German labor unions VC and UFO, which represent pilots and flight attendants, said on Wednesday that they were “surprised” by reports that Lufthansa executive board members will receive millions in bonus payments for 2021 and 2022.<br/>

Poland’s national airline LOT has fired its chief executive Rafal Milczarski, it said on Wednesday. Milczarski was also dismissed as the CE of LOT’s parent company Polish Aviation Group, following a decision by the Supervisory Board. Until replacements are found, Katarzyna Lewandowska will serve as CE of LOT and Elzbieta Bugaj will take over at PGL. Milczarski had been CE of LOT since 2016 and took up the post at PGL in 2018. Some trade union leaders welcomed his dismissal. “Milczarski will go down in the history of (LOT) as one of the worst bosses who notoriously violated workers’ rights and persecuted independent union leaders,” Piotr Szumlewicz, chairman of the Trade Union Alternative, told private Radio Zet. “He should have lost his job a long time ago.” Industry executives say he had defended labour reforms which he viewed as necessary for the airline to survive the industry’s worst economic crisis following the pandemic, which prompted widespread restructuring in the sector.<br/>

SAS is to begin the first direct services from Gothenburg in west Sweden and Aalborg in Denmark to the USA after announcing summer flights from both cities to Newark airport. The carrier will operate the routes three-times weekly from April 2023 using Airbus A321LR narrowbodies. SAS will deploy the aircraft in a three-class, 157-seat configuration. SAS executive vice-president Erik Westman says: “The Airbus A321LR is a slightly smaller long-distance aircraft and perfect in size for servicing the regional markets. Having a comfortable way of travelling with fewer stops to exciting cities such as New York, is something we believe will be highly valued by our customers.” He says the new routes form part of SAS’s strategy to strengthen its regional offering in Scandinavia. ”We see a demand from secondary cities and are delighted to connect even more parts of the world,” he says. SAS, which is restructuring under a formal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection process, has until now served the USA from its home country capitals of Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm – with the exception of a briefly-operated service connecting oil industry cities Stavanger and Houston, Cirium flight schedules show. The Aalborg and Gothenburg flights add to its existing Newark services from Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, while it will also add its first service to New York JFK airport from Copenhagen next summer.<br/>

China’s Juneyao Airlines will resume all international flights from 2023, and is also planning some long-distance intercontinental routes, the company said. Flights routes from Chinese cities including Shanghai and Nanjing to destinations in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries will be resumed in 2023, Juneyao Airlines said. <br/>

Airbus plans to deepen its industrial presence in India, Chief Executive Guillaume Faury said on Wednesday after meeting the country's prime minister. "We will continue to support civil aviation growth and deepen our industrial footprint in India," Faury said on Twitter alongside a photograph of his meeting with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He did not provide further details. Faury's comments on industrial presence come as India is increasingly involved in the civil supply chain. A senior Boeing official told ET Infra in September that India had shown resilience during the pandemic and that Boeing and other companies would make increased use of its suppliers. The meeting between the world's largest civil planemaker and the leader of the world's fastest growing airline market also coincides with a potentially huge Air India jet purchase, though industry sources said this was not the main focus of the visit. Air India is in the advanced stages of negotiating a major fleet renewal and expansion under new owner Tata Group that industry sources say could involve 250 Airbus jets including 200-210 A320neo-family jets and over three dozen A350s. Airbus also hopes to secure a new home at Air India for six A350s originally earmarked for Russia's Aeroflot, though it remains unclear whether these are included in the main order.<br/>

Air New Zealand has changed the flight times for almost 2000 overseas flights next year, which could affect hundreds of families’ holiday plans. About 90% of the flights have been moved within 60 minutes of their original flight times or have changed aircraft. But the remaining 10% of flights won’t be able to leave on the day they originally booked, which could leave people scrambling to change connecting flights or accommodation. These travellers have been offered a flight on either side of the day they originally booked, Air New Zealand sales officer Leanne Geraghty​ said. Geraghty said the changes would affect 1900 flights across eight months. “As we did in August this year, we’ve made some changes to our long haul schedule between the end of March and October to build flex and certainty into our network.” By late May in 2023, the company would have all seven of its 777 planes flying again, Geraghty said. That would help “further ease the capacity constraints we are seeing”. In 2020, the airline sent four of its largest planes – the 777-300ER – to a storage facility in California in the United States. It was part of a wider grounding of its 777 fleet. The first of those planes arrived back in New Zealand in August. Seven hundred more staff would also be joining the company by the end of February, Geraghty said.<br/>