Greece welcomed the first direct flight from Shanghai last month after the country’s flag carrier Air China announced the launch of routes to Athens International Airport (AIA). Air China reinstated its flights to Greece for the first time after stopping its routes due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The flight from China’s largest city to the Greek capital lasts 10 hours and 30 minutes. Air China currently connects Greece to China with one flight a week from Beijing to Athens Airport and one from Shanghai. The news was welcomed by local and Chinese tour operators. Air China was planning to increase its direct services between Athens and Beijing to meet high travel demand in 2019 but then Covid-19 broke out and all airline operations were suspended in 2020. Last week, ahead of China’s opening to tourism, Ambassador to Greece Xiao Junzheng referred to the Athens-Shanghai link, adding that cooperation between Greece and China was developing a strong momentum.<br/>
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A family visit or heading off on vacation – many took the Christmas season as an opportunity for air travel. During the holidays Austrian Airlines welcomed about 400,000 passengers on board, thus almost reaching pre-crisis level. Romantic city breaks to Paris but also to London and Barcelona were the three most popular destinations. About 29,000 passengers flew with Austrian to warm destinations during the holidays. Bangkok and the long haul destinations Malé, Cancún and Mauritius were especially popular. "As Austria’s home carrier, we are very happy that we could take many Austrians home to their loved ones or to their vacation“, says Michael Trestl, CCO Austrian Airlines. This was also the case at Christmas and at the turn of the year. On December 24th and 31st, Austrian flew more than 17,000 passenger to their destination on each day. Long haul destinations with white sandy beaches and crystal clear seas were high in demand. This is why Austrian Airlines has doubled frequencies to Maldives Islands: during the Christmas season six instead of three aircraft of Austria’s home carrier were taking off from Vienna to Malé per week. Also the frequencies to Mauritius and Cancún were increased by one flight each, so Austrian Airlines was flying to Mauritius four times and three times to Cancún per week. <br/>
Turkish Airlines has received a new airplane, expanding its fleet, Bilal Ekşi, the CEO of the flag carrier has announced. The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner joined the company’s fleet on Dec. 31. “In 2003, we had 65 airplanes. Now we are entering 2023 with 393 airplanes,” Ekşi wrote on Twitter. Last month, Ekşi said that the carrier plans to hire 2,600 new cabin crew members and 1,200 pilots in 2023 and that the company targets more than 10% growth this year. He noted that Turkish Airlines ranked 35th in the world in the terms of the fleet size in 2003. In the first eleven months of 2022, Turkish Airlines carried a total of 66.3m passengers, 3.7% lower than the travelers the company served in the same period of 2019. The international passenger tally grew 5.6% compared with January-November 2019 to 42.7m people, while domestic passengers fell 17% to around 24m.<br/>
The three national airlines from the former Yugoslavia will expand their destination networks in 2023 as the aviation sector continues its strong recovery. Croatia Airlines is continuing to implement its post-Covid strategy in 2023, which will culminate with the delivery of its first Airbus A220 aircraft next year, which is set to transform the airline. The carrier plans to introduce four new routes during the upcoming summer. They include services from Split to Skopje and Oslo, from Dubrovnik to Prague, and from Brač to Munich. The airline has so far scheduled flights from Brač to the Bavarian capital, with the rest expected to be put on sale during this month. “We’ve been continually working on increasing the quality of our service and expanding our flight network. At one of the world’s biggest and most famous tourism fairs, we presented our summer 2023 timetable, with which we are looking to strongly contribute to Croatia’s position on the global tourism map. During the coming summer season, we’re planning to connect Croatia with 22 international destinations by operating flights on 47 international routes. Specifically, we are planning to operate 17.000 flights, and offer over 1.820.000 seats”, Croatia Airlines’ CEO, Jasmin Bajić, said.<br/>
2022 has been a revolutionary year for Air India. After decades under government rule that saw it deteriorate, the carrier has been privatized and is now part of the Tata Group. While fleet changes will take a while, Air India has already started adding new planes and has exciting plans for next year. On paper, Air India only added new aircraft in 2022. These are two leased 777-200ERs, which previously operated for Delta Air Lines and were retired due to the pandemic. VT-AEF and -AEG were both freshly reconfigured with Delta One business class suites in December 2019 and now will become Air India's flagship product (a huge step up from its current offering). The 777s include 28 seats in business, 48 in premium economy (another first for Air India), and 220 in economy. In total, five of these aircraft will be inducted through mid-2023, along with another six 777-300ERs. While fewer details about the 77W's are currently known, we do know they will be in a four-class configuration. The first 777-200ERs (VT-EAF) is currently flying on the lengthy Mumbai-San Francisco route, giving added comfort for passengers used to the older product. Expect to see most North American route switch to leased aircraft in 2023 as more are inducted soon. Story has more.<br/>
Ground workers for EVA Air, employed by the Eva Air affiliate, Evergreen Airline Services Corporation, are currently on strike. The strike has been ongoing today and yesterday. One of the primary issues of contention is against low year-end bonuses despite record profits by Evergreen, which owns EVA Air, this year. Nevertheless, workers are also demonstrating against the burden on airline ground workers during COVID-19, salary increases being lower than expected, and being made to work overtime. In particular, Evergreen posted record profits in some sectors of the company this year. The Evergreen Marine Corporation reported 304.35b NT in profits for the first three quarters of last year, which is up 92% for year-on-year profit. As a result, the Evergreen Marine Corporation gave some employees up to 52 months in wages as a year-end bonus, which was up from 40 months last year. However, one notes that most employees received between 10 and 45 months’ bonuses, and awarding some specific employees up to 52 months’ bonus serves as publicity for the company. Year-end bonuses in Taiwan, in fact, can sometimes serve as a means for companies to pay workers less fixed salary while maintaining a variable amount as a bonus. <br/>