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United Airlines Holdings Inc technicians ratified a two-year contract with the carrier that includes 16% to 23% wage increases, their union said on Monday. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, representing around 8,200 United Airlines technicians said the two-year contract would provide for improved job security by adding five heavy maintenance lines in-house. The agreement, which will be in effect until December 2024, comes at a time when airlines are coming up with attractive pay offers to retain workforce and add staff after a faster-than-expected rebound in the US travel market. It includes a one-year early opener that allows for bargaining on a successor agreement to begin in December 2023. "We expect to hire 7,000 maintenance team members alone over the next few years," United CE Scott Kirby said in a LinkedIn post on Monday.<br/>

The first Airbus A380 reactivated by Lufthansa has arrived in the Philippines for maintenance work ahead of its return to service later this year. Lufthansa Technik Philippines will undertake the C-check on airframe D-AIMK, having welcomed the aircraft to Manila on 30 January following a flight from Frankfurt. The superjumbo flew to Frankfurt from Teruel in Spain in early December, after reactivation by storage and MRO specialist Tarmac Aerosave. Lufthansa said in June last year that it would re-introduce some A380s at its Munich base in June 2023 to counter aircraft delivery delays and address a sharp rise in passenger demand. Lufthansa CE Carsten Spohr then said in October that the operator planned to bring back more than the three it had already earmarked for operation. Amid the strong return of passenger demand, Spohr has repeatedly suggested that capacity constraints will be a feature of the commercial air travel sector in the coming years. Earlier in the pandemic, Lufthansa had said that none of its 14 A380s – which were all put into storage in 2020 as Covid-19 spread around the world – would return to service unless the post-pandemic demand recovery was stronger than expected. The German carrier has since sold six of its A380s, leaving eight in its fleet.<br/>

China’s three largest airlines are expected to continue their loss-making streak, an anticipate record losses for 2022. In separate stock exchange filings, the ‘Big Three’ – comprising state-owned carriers Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines – blamed “multiple shocks” for a steeper net loss, amid a collapse in passenger traffic, with capacity still below half of pre-pandemic levels. The three carriers also attributed their losses to the “impact” of the Covid-19 pandemic. They stopped short of blaming Beijing’s now-scuppered ‘Zero-Covid’ campaign, the signature policy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping that crushed domestic travel demand and all but entirely closed the country’s international borders. China Eastern says it was “confronted with arduous challenges” in the year, including high fuel prices, as well as the depreciation of the Chinese Yuan against the US Dollar. The airline, whose Shanghai hub was subjected to a long-drawn lockdown through mid-2022, is forecasting a net loss of between CNY36 and 39b ($5.3 to 5.8b), far steeper than 2021’s net loss of CNY13.5b. China Eastern says its passenger numbers for 2022 – at 250 million system-wide – represents only 38% of pre-pandemic volumes. Traffic, meanwhile, stood at 46% of 2019 levels. Air China was more sombre in its forecast, noting that its hubs across China “suffered repeated impacts of the pandemic”. “In particular, the capacity and total traffic in Beijing…have fallen to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic. Meanwhile, due to multiple adverse factors such as high oil prices and exchange rate fluctuations, it is more difficult for the company to improve its operation, and the invested enterprises related to the main business were also seriously affected,” it adds. The carrier expects a full-year net loss of between CNY37 and 39.5b – the worst performing among the ‘Big Three’. This compares to the CNY16.6b net loss incurred in 2021.<br/>

South Korea’s Asiana Airlines has entered an agreement with Shell to secure a supply of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) from 2026. Under a memorandum of understanding between the two companies, Asiana will “preferentially receive” SAF through Shell’s Asia-Pacific and Middle East networks for five years from 2026. Asiana adds that securing SAF supply will be necessary owing to the European Union’s requirement that SAF will be required from 2025. Asiana gave no details as to the volume of SAF it will obtain, or the pricing terms. Asiana is in the process of being taken over by Korean Air, which entered a similar SAF pact with Shell in September 2022. In a note to staff on 1 January, Korean CE Walter Cho said that Korean is in the “final stages” of acquiring Asiana, a deal first announced in 2020. Korean has steadily secured international regulatory approval for the deal, with Chinese regulators giving it the all clear in December 2022. It still awaits clearance from EU and USA.<br/>

Tata group-owned Air India on Monday said it will use a UK-headquartered Ideagen's enterprise cloud software application Coruson to help enhance the safety management system and facilitate real-time reporting of in-flight incidents. The announcement from airline comes against the backdrop of at least three incidents of unruly passenger behaviour on two international flights last year. It is because of these incidents that the aviation regulator DGCA had imposed penalties on the carrier. Coruson, the safety data software application, will be online with effect from May 1, 2023 and will facilitate real-time reporting of in-flight incidents, Air India said in a release. Air India said the application will weed out the requirement of paperwork to a large extent and ensure automated processes relay critical information to key personnel and authorities without delay. "This will also lead to timely action". The airline is also engaged in procuring iPads for pilots and crew members and when introduced, Coruson will also be available on these devices.<br/>

Air New Zealand has secured a NZ$5.4m New Zealand dollar tax refund payment from the Cook Islands Collector of Inland Revenue after winning a High Court tax case. Air New Zealand Limited vs the Collector of Inland Revenue was resolved in the airline's favour last year by the Cook Islands High Court but only now has the payment information emerged after that country's Ministry of Finance and Economic Management refused to do so last year, citing Air New Zealand's requested confidentiality clauses. As recently as last week, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown was declining to confirm the full amount of monies the small nation would have to refund the airline. In the 12 months to March 31, 2022, the total GDP of the Cook Islands (resident population; 15,400) was NZ$491.7m. A self-governing island country within the realm of New Zealand, the country often relies on New Zealand for much of its logistical, operational, and financial needs. The Cook Islands government subsidised Air New Zealand a reported NZ$100m over ten years to operate direct flights between Rarotonga and Sydney Kingsford Smith and Rarotonga and Los Angeles International. The onset of the pandemic ended those services. However, the attempt by the Collector of Inland Revenue to tax Air New Zealand on the subsidised flights backfired, with the court ordering not only a refund of taxes paid but payment of yet-to-be-disclosed legal fees and costs. Last week, Brown called it a tax refund. "We refunded the tax; it's a tax refund," he told the Cook Islands News. "You win some, you lose some."<br/>