Cabin crew at Portugal's state-owned airline TAP will strike for seven days at the end of January to demand higher wages and better working conditions, the SNPVAC union said on Monday. The move comes after a walkout on Dec. 8-9 forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights and affected thousands of passengers just before the holiday season. TAP usually flies 300 flights a day. During the December strike, the airline said the two-day action would cost it around E8m in revenue. "Tomorrow we will issue a pre-strike notice of seven days, from 25 to 31 of January," the union said. The flag carrier is under an EU-approved E3.2b bailout plan, which includes the downsizing of its fleet, the cutting of more than 2,900 jobs and the reduction of most workers' wages by up to 25%. But the cuts have come at a time when surging inflation has left workers struggling with higher costs.<br/>
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Turkish Airlines’ passenger traffic and capacity for last year both exceeded pre-crisis figures, but the recovery process has been geographically patchy. The airline transported 71.8m passengers – still 3% down on the 2019 full-year level – but nevertheless recorded a 6.2% rise in revenue passenger traffic, following a 7.5% hike in capacity. But traffic on Asia-Pacific routes suffered during the year, and was down by nearly a quarter on the pre-pandemic figure. Asia-Pacific services were the second-largest traffic generator for the carrier in 2019, just behind European flights. Turkish Airlines demonstrated strong traffic growth on North American and Latin American routes on which it had added substantial capacity. But domestic traffic and capacity last year were significantly down, by more than 10%, against pre-crisis levels. Turkish Airlines transported 25.5m domestic passengers, a reduction of 16%.<br/>
Croatia Airlines has managed to delay repayment of a E33.2m loan the government agreed to give it in September 2019 and which was provided in the pre-pandemic month of February 2020. The airline now has until January 2025 to make the repayment, the Croatian investigative outlet Telegram reported citing a recent State Audit Office report. The EC-approved loan, originally set at HRK250m (US$37m at the time; Croatia switched to the euro on January 1, 2023), had been intended to financially stabilise the carrier ahead of its intended privatisation, but the coronavirus outbreak put the airline under even greater pressure. It was supposed to have been repaid in full in January 2022 with a fixed interest rate of 2%, but the Ministry of Finance has agreed to extend this deadline by three years. In its report, the audit office urged transport minister Oleg Butković to more effectively monitor the spending of state funds handed to two large state-owned enterprises, the other being Croatian Highways (Hrvatske Autoceste). It came as the government approved on December 22 the minister’s request to recapitalise Croatia Airlines by a further HRK296m (E39.3m) by subscribing to new share capital. The government had previously promised to strictly monitor spending at the flag carrier as part of the 2019 loan agreement, but the auditor warned that this obligation had not been met. The airline was to submit a report on where the funds were being spent each 15th of the month, but according to the auditor only two reports have been submitted.<br/>
SAS Scandinavian Airlines will wet-lease three B737s from Jettime for the Summer 2023 season. The Danish leisure ACMI/charter specialist said that the trio would be based out of Denmark and Finland, and would be used to operate routes both to major European cities and summer leisure destinations in the Mediterranean. Vice-President Birthe Madsen told ch-aviation that the agreement does not cover specific B737-800s but rather just the capacity equivalent of three aircraft. The contract will start on March 26, 2023, and run through October 28. The ch-aviation fleets advanced module shows that Jettime operates a single B737-700 and eight B737-800s. It is planning to add a further two -800s to its fleet in the coming months. In turn, SAS's narrowbody fleet comprises four A319-100s, eleven A320-200s, fifty-six A320-200Ns (including twenty units operated by SAS Connect), five A321-200s, three A321-200NX (which are used for long-haul flights), six B737-700s, and four -800s.<br/>
The chairman of Air India-owner Tata Sons has spoken of his “personal anguish” over an incident where one of the airline’s passengers allegedly urinated on an elderly woman mid-flight. N Chandrasekaran said on Sunday that the airline’s response “should have been much swifter” and admitted that it “fell short of addressing this situation the way it should have been”. There has been a significant public outrage over the incident, which reportedly involved a drunk man on a flight from New York to Delhi in November last year urinating on a 70-year-old woman. The airline’s crew did not take any action against the man at the time, and the incident only came to light earlier this month when the woman wrote a letter to Mr Chandrasekaran. Police have arrested a suspect named Shankar Mishra over the incident, an employee of American financial services company Wells Fargo. Mishra was detained by police in Bengaluru on 6 January and brought to Delhi, where a court sent him to 14 days of judicial custody. Chandrasekaran’s statement comes after the country’s aviation regulator pulled up the Tata Group-owned airline for its poor handling of the incident. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation called the crew’s handling of the incident “unprofessional” and criticised the airline for “systemic failure” in dealing with the issue. The regulator ordered Air India’s top officials, the flight’s pilot and crew to provide an explanation of their conduct within two weeks. Wells Fargo has also issued a statement over the incident, dubbed “pee-gate” by Indian media outlets.<br/>