To the patient belong the spoils, this they could say of the privatization of Italy’s ITA Airways. The Lufthansa Group appears poised to win the contest for the state-owned carrier, even after an apparent loss this fall to the private equity-backed bid of Air France-KLM and Delta Air Lines. A new decree from the Italian government, which is expected to be signed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday, specifies that an airline must lead the equity investment in ITA, reports Italian daily Corriere della Sera. That change would effectively leave Lufthansa as the sole bidder given the capital in Air France-KLM and Delta’s bid comes entirely from Certares. And while the latter could restructure their offer, Air France-KLM is barred from investing in other airlines until it repays the coronavirus aid it received from the French and Dutch governments, something that is not scheduled before May 2025. Lufthansa had planned to be a minority investor in ITA, teaming with shipping giant MSC in its initial bid. However, after Italy reopened the privatization to the group, MSC bowed out in November and left Lufthansa to go it alone. The group intends to invest E230-240m ($244-255m) for an initial 40% stake in ITA, Corriere della Sera has reported. Lufthansa intends to take full control of the Italian airline in the future. A deal for ITA would achieve a long sought goal of Lufthansa: To secure a piece of Italy’s national airline. The group has been maneuvering for part of Alitalia, and now ITA that replaced Alitalia in October 2021, since at least 2008. More recently, CEO Carsten Spohr has said his group is the “natural home” for ITA amid repeated public overtures for the airline. The Lufthansa Group is already Europe’s largest airline conglomerate, including its namesake carrier plus Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, and Swiss.<br/>
star
Ethiopian authorities reiterated that the deadly Boeing Co. 737 Max jet crash near Addis Ababa almost four years ago was mainly due to a faulty safety feature, revealing little fresh insight into the accident. A final report into the Ethiopian Airlines Group incident concluded that all professionals and planes related to the crash were correctly certified, Dagmawit Moges, minister of transport & logistics, told reporters on Friday. The plane en route to Nairobi nosedived on March 10, 2019, killing all 157 people on board. The incident followed another fatal Max crash in Indonesia the previous year and led to regulators grounding the model worldwide, plunging Boeing into crisis. The U.S. planemaker has since made revisions to the model and addressed safety concerns, and was cleared to return to the skies in its home market in late 2020. Regulators in the European Union, UK, UAE and others followed suit, and Ethiopian Airlines itself returned the workhorse jet as a mainstay of the carrier’s fleet in February. The company, Africa’s largest airline, has taken delivery of five of the jets this year from Boeing, according to the planemaker’s website, while Boeing has reached a legal settlement with families of those killed. Ethiopia’s latest report built on interim findings released in March 2020, and is long overdue. That’s due to the complexity of compiling the report and challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Dagmawit said. In further mitigation, the country has been embroiled in a lengthy regional war, with efforts to restore peace after two years of fighting between government and rebel forces being undermined by neighboring Eritrea. Ethiopian’s interim conclusions highlighted the role of a malfunctioning safety feature known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, to which Boeing has since made several changes. Further details are still to emerge with the report not yet publicly available. <br/>
In establishing a new cooperation on initiatives aimed at manufacturing and procuring Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) overseas, ANA has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development (JOIN). Based on this newly minted partnership, JOIN will work on SAF projects and bring such supplies to ANA. Since the ICAO set a long-term goal of carbon neutrality within the aviation industry by 2050, ANA has made personal goals of replacing 10% of its jet fuel with SAF by 2030. However, stable procurement of SAF has been a struggle worldwide, as the higher cost of production has resulted in limited supply. Demand from airlines has also been insufficient to justify ramping up production scales. Knowing this is quite a problem, ANA co-founded an organization called 'ACT FOR SKY.' Established earlier this year in March, the organization aims to identify common issues for SAF production within Japan and exchange this information among members and related organizations for subsequent actions. Among the members are ANA and Japan Airlines, responsible for the procurement and utilization of SAF. Other members, such as engineering and food companies, are responsible for providing resources and waste materials and producing SAF on a commercial scale through various technological methods. However, ANA's effort in 'ACT FOR SKY' only solves the domestic supply of SAF.<br/>