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Shareholders filed a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N) on Thursday, accusing the carrier of fraudulently concealing problems that led last month to an operational meltdown and more than 15,000 flight cancellations. According to the proposed class action filed in federal court in Houston, Southwest publicly downplayed or failed to disclose serious shortcomings in its flight scheduling software technology. The lawsuit said Southwest also did not discuss how its "point-to-point" route structure, which differs from the "hub-and-spoke" structure at other large U.S. airlines, could leave it vulnerable to unexpected bad weather. Shareholders led by Arthur Teroganesian said the inadequate disclosures made Southwest's statements about its operations in regulatory filings and in a media appearance by former CE Gary Kelly "materially false and misleading." Teroganesian said that as the truth came out, Southwest's share price fell about 10% between Dec. 23, 2022, and Jan. 3, 2023, wiping out more than $2b of shareholder value. Southwest did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Kelly, his successor Bob Jordan and CFO Tammy Romo are all named as defendants, in addition to the airline.<br/>

Southwest Airlines is looking at all options to ensure the operational meltdown it suffered last month is not repeated, CE Bob Jordan said on Thursday. The Dallas-based carrier has been dealing with customer outrage and regulatory scrutiny after a systems meltdown last month left thousands of passengers stranded. Southwest has hired consultancy Oliver Wyman to investigate the disruption, Jordan told Reuters in an interview. "I have put everything on the table here because it just can't happen again," he said. A severe winter storm right before Christmas, coupled with Southwest's dated technology, led to the cancellation of more than 16,000 flights. The airline had long cultivated a reputation for reliable customer service, humorous flight crews and low-cost flights. Southwest's board has set up a new Operations Review Committee to oversee management following last month's systems collapse, Jordan said.<br/>

The US aviation warning system that crashed for more than an hour Wednesday traces back its origins to ocean-faring ships and has been under continuous reforms for years, experts say. At least one aviation industry group has called for it to be replaced altogether. The FAA grounded all flights blaming an unspecified failure in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system. NOTAM issues a near-constant stream of acronyms and abbreviations to alert pilots to a host of potential dangers, everything from parachuters and bad weather to legal airspace restrictions and flocks of birds. By Wednesday evening, the agency had pinpointed the problem to a damaged database file, and there is no evidence of a cyberattack, it said. The White House also said it saw no signs that the NOTAM system was taken down as a result of a cyberattack. The Department of Transportation was conducting a “full investigation” into its root cause. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the outage lasted approximately an hour and a half, but the FAA’s website that lists NOTAMs was only intermittently accessible through Wednesday afternoon. Regardless of the cause of the failure, the NOTAM system has long been a source of frustration for pilots and others in the aviation industry who say it overloads them with information that’s irrelevant to their flight and makes it difficult to identify actually useful information. NOTAM notices rely on a complex string of codes and abbreviations that share information like dates and locations of potential issues for a pilot to read before a flight. One industry collective of around 8,000 flight professionals, the OPS Group, has made streamlining the NOTAM system a key priority. The group runs a website called Death To NOTAMS. NOTAMs are modeled after a similar warning system for ships, which the US Navy began publishing in print in 1869. Aviation authorities began issuing NOTAM warnings via telecommunications channels in 1947.<br/>

US low-cost carrier JetBlue Airways Corp said Thursday it will launch more routes this year under a partnership with American Airlines, even as the tie-up faces a legal challenge by antitrust regulators. JetBlue said it will add more routes from New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Across New York's three major airports, the "Northeast Alliance" will fly more than 500 daily departures in 2023, as well as nearly 200 daily departures in Boston, the airline added. The U.S. Justice Department, six states and the District of Columbia have called the NEA a "de facto merger" of the companies' Boston and New York operations and have sued to block the partnership.<br/>

Sunwing Airlines has received 7,000 complaints so far from customers unhappy with the airline's performance during a turbulent holiday travel season that saw many customers stranded abroad. Sunwing executives told MPs on the House of Commons standing committee on transport, infrastructure and communities Thursday that the airline cancelled 67 flights between December 15 and 31, in part because of staff shortages. Sunwing president Len Corrado said the airline struggled after the federal government declined its request to hire 63 pilots as temporary foreign workers. Members of Parliament are questioning airline executives and airport authorities on Thursday about the travel chaos that erupted during the holidays. Hundreds of air passengers were stranded over the holiday season after airlines cancelled or delayed flights, largely due to a major storm that hit much of Canada around Christmas. Even though the House of Commons isn't sitting right now, MPs on the transport committee met Monday and unanimously supported calling witnesses to discuss the travel debacle. Executives from WestJet and Air Canada also testified. Sunwing, a smaller airline that offers flights to warm southern destinations, faced the brunt of MPs' questions Thursday.<br/>

Ryanair is expecting a very strong summer season with a reasonable prospect of average European short-haul air fares rising by a high single digit percentage, CE Michael O'Leary said Thursday. Ryanair hiked its profit forecast for the year to end-March earlier in January after a strong Christmas season, meaning it is set to easily top the E1b annual profit it made before two years of COVID-19 losses. "The outlook for the summer at the moment is very strong, strong booking, strong pricing," the CEO of Europe's largest airline by passenger numbers said in an interview after announcing new routes from Italy. O'Leary said bookings over the first weeks of 2023 were strong as well as for the February mid-term and Easter holidays, although pricing for the first three months of the year will be a "little bit softer" than pre-COVID levels before picking up. "I think there is a reasonable prospect that this summer again we will see high-single digit price increases, certainly for short-haul European air travel," he said, despite risks from new variants of the coronavirus and adverse developments in Ukraine. Ryanair's summer plans will also be boosted by hopes that by the end of May it will receive 40 to 45 of 51 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft due for delivery, O'Leary said.<br/>

Ghana’s new national airline will commence operations in the third quarter of this year, 13 years after the country’s second state-owned carrier stopped flights. Ghana Airlines, operated by Accra-based Ashanti Airlines Ltd. in partnership with the government and London-based Zotus Group Inc. as financial and operational partners, has obtained its air carrier license and is in the final stages of obtaining the air operator certificate, the companies said. The new airline will start with domestic flights and later add regional and international routes, including London and New York, it said. Ghana International Airlines, which was 70% state-owned, ceased operations of its one leased aircraft in May 2010. The carrier was set up to replace Ghana Airways Ltd., which was established a year after the country’s independence from Britain in 1957 and ran domestic and international flights. It was liquidated in 2005 amid rising debt and failed attempts to find international investors.<br/>

Israeli leisure operator Israir Group is expecting to learn more about the status of its bid for Czech carrier Smartwings in the second half of January. Israir Group submitted a formal proposal to acquire Smartwings last year. It has yet to confirm whether its offer – which included a takeover sum, plus settlement of loans – has been successful. Israir Group says Smartwings operated around 33 aircraft last year and carried some 6m passengers. It adds that acquisition of the airline would add “great value” to its activities, but estimates its chances of a successful bid at 50%. The company provided the brief remarks on the process as part of a financial update after a 19.9% shareholding in Israir Group – held by trustees associated with former holding firm IDB – became the subject of a potential sale. Israir Group’s update includes estimates of its 2022 full-year performance including $14-17m in net profit on revenues of $345-350m.<br/>

Hong Kong Airlines expects to return to pre-pandemic capacity by mid-2024, as it restarts hiring following what it calls a “rapid recovery” in air travel demand. The airline, which in mid-December won court approval for debt restructuring, will ramp up operations this month, reaching about 30% pre-pandemic capacity and flying to 15 points in its network. By the end of the year, the carrier, which is linked to China’s troubled HNA Group, expects to operate at 75% pre-Covid-19 capacity. Airline chairman Hou Wei says China’s border reopening – after more than two years of pursuing a zero-infection strategy – is an area of opportunity, with the airline doubling frequencies into the Chinese mainland in January.“We have leveraged every travel recovery opportunity over the past few months amidst unprecedented pent-up demand, and we continue to see positive business growth, particularly from the Japanese markets. Following the reopening of Chinese borders, Mainland China will definitely be the next market to contribute significantly to our travel recovery efforts,” Hou adds. HKA is also looking to hire 1,000 more staff – including pilots and cabin crew – by the end of the year, to “meet operation needs and future growth”, bringing its total workforce up to about 70% of pre-pandemic levels. The airline states it will be increasing the salaries of its flight crew and ground staff, a move it says is “a recognition of everyone’s dedication who have supported the company’s journey of riding out the storm”. HKA’s latest announcement is the first positive development to come from the struggling carrier in over three years. It suffered from weakened travel demand around 2019 during Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Then came the coronavirus pandemic, which shut Hong Kong off from the world, forcing HKA to operate a skeletal fleet of aircraft on cargo-only routes. The latest announcement also comes as it embarks on a HK$49b ($6.3b) debt restructuring. The restructuring plan, which was approved by Hong Kong and UK courts in December, will see the airline’s fleet cut from 53 aircraft to 20.<br/>

Fly91, a new Indian airline named after the country’s telephone code, is aiming to take advantage of India’s rising middle class by focusing its services on second and third-tier cities. The carrier is hoping to start operations around the last quarter of this year. Heralded by Manoj Chacko, the former executive vice-president of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines and the man who set up the India business for risk management group Fairfax group, Fly91 will be the first airline to be based in India’s southwestern coastal city of Goa. India-based investment firm Convergent Finance will anchor Fly91’s initial $25m investment. Harsha Raghavan, managing partner at Convergent Finance, will be Fly91’s Chairman while Chacko will be the CEO. Calling the announcement of a new airline a welcome move, Vishal Bhadola, an aviation consultant based in India, said, “The fact that the airline is being conceptualized by a mix of promoters from airline and finance industries, will help stakeholders understand and deal better with the capitalization challenge.” Bhadola added that India’s fast-growing cities of 350m strong middle class population and the government’s focus on improving airport infrastructure in Indian hinterlands and schemes such as the Regional Connectivity Scheme would certainly boost investor confidence. However, he warned that the regional airline model in India has been dotted with failures because of under capitalization, unoptimized business model, unsuitable aircraft selection and other pitfalls.<br/>

Capital A Bhd is optimistic about its growth potential this year following a strong rebound in travel demand post-Covid and expects to be out of the PN17 status by the end of the year, says CEO Tan Sri Tony Fernandes. He said the investment holding group that is involved in aviation, logistics, lifestyle, and financial services ventures, planned to submit its finalised regularisation plan to Bursa Malaysia next month. “We can be out of PN17 definitely this year, I hope much earlier (than that). All of the consultants are now going through all the work. “We hope to submit to Bursa between February and April. So once we get the approval, then we will go through,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the AirAsia Super App rider and driver appreciation event yesterday, Bernama reported. To recap, Capital A fell into the PN17 list of Bursa Malaysia – a categorisation for distressed entities, in January 2022. The group previously announced that there was no plan for a merger between its two airlines entities, AirAsia Bhd and AirAsia X Bhd, but a separate publicly-quoted aviation group would be formed under the proposed PN17 exit strategy. Commenting on travel demand especially from China following the reopening of its border, Fernandes said the group anticipated a very strong recovery for the market in view of the overwhelming demand it received from the Chinese tourists.<br/>

As China eases COVID-19 restrictions, Lao Airlines plans to operate more flights to welcome Chinese tourists to the Southeast Asia country. Additional flights are expected to come into operation in February or March, local transportation media AeroLaos on Thursday quoted Director of Lao Airlines' Commercial Department Noudeng Chanthaphasouk as saying. "We have sent a request to China saying that we would like to operate daily flights to Kunming, as well as to other destinations, and are waiting for a response," he said. Lao Airlines currently operates three flights a week from Lao capital Vientiane to Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan Province. In its request, Lao Airlines suggested additional flights from Lao capital Vientiane to Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu, Changzhou and Hangzhou. The airline also plans to increase the number of flights from northern Laos' Luang Prabang and southern Laos' Champasak to China, according to the report.<br/>

Australian low-cost startup airline Bonza said the country's civil aviation regulator granted permission for it to operate scheduled passenger flights, marking the entry of a new player into a duopoly market. Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority confirmed it had granted the low-cost carrier an Air Operator’s Certificate. Bonza will enter a domestic aviation market dominated heavily by Qantas and Virgin Australia. According to the country's competition regulator, Qantas and its unit Jetstar together flew over 60% of domestic passengers in October 2022, while Virgin Australia flew 33.6%. However, Bonza, backed by U.S. private investment firm 777 Partners, has its eyes on routes not served, or under-served by its larger rivals. The airline is now preparing to begin selling tickets for its initial 27 routes, from its base on the Sunshine Coast.<br/>