A Spirit Airlines flight was diverted and landed safely in Jacksonville, Florida, on Wednesday after the crew reported a battery in an overhead bin was on fire. The FAA is now investigating the incident, which involved an Airbus A320 that departed from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and was headed to Orlando International Airport. “Spirit Airlines Flight 259 landed safely at Jacksonville International Airport around 2 p.m. on Wednesday, March 1 after the crew reported a battery on fire in an overhead bin,” an FAA spokesperson told CNN. The battery fire was believed to have been caused by a guest item in an overhead bin, according to a statement issued by a Spirit Airlines spokesperson. The fire was extinguished inflight. “The plane landed at JAX and taxied to the terminal without incident,” said the statement. “We thank our crew and Guests for their quick actions to ensure the safety of everyone onboard, and we thank first responders for meeting the aircraft.”<br/>
unaligned
Arajet, a new low-cost start-up carrier based in the Dominican Republic, has applied to the US government to launch routes between the Caribbean country and the United States. The airline, based in Santo Domingo, on 1 March filed a request with the US DoT to fly between the Dominican Republic and San Juan (Puerto Rico), Miami, and New York. In the filing, it says it aims to begin the flights in “Fall 2023”. “At the present US carriers operate extensive services to the Dominican Republic (more than 52,000 flights in 2022),” Arajet writes. “Authorising service by Arajet will introduce a degree of balance to the market and provide the travelling public with additional attractive low-fare travel options.” According to Cirium networks data, currently American Airlines, United Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Delta Air Lines, Sun Country Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines all fly between cities in the USA and the Dominican Republic. Arajet launched operations in September 2022, and currently serves 17 destinations in 11 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean with a fleet of five leased Boeing 737 Max aircraft. More than 50% of its routes are new non-stop services, the company adds. Arajet is looking to add more leased jets to its fleet this year and has 20 Max jets on order with Boeing, the first of which it expects to arrive in 2024. “Arajet hopes to grow its network in both breadth (destinations) and depth (frequencies) to improve connectivity in the region,” the company writes in the filing. “This includes several destinations in the United States, where there is significant leisure travel demand to the Dominican Republic, as well as a large Dominican diaspora.” <br/>
Budget carrier FlyDubai announced record profits on Wednesday, benefitting from a surge in air travel following the lifting of pandemic restrictions. The state-owned carrier, based in the business and tourism hub of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, reported $327m in profit in 2022, up 43% from the previous year. Annual revenue for 2022 was up 72%, to $2.5b, it said. “We realized early on the great opportunities that Dubai provides and remained focused and ready to scale up our operations once the demand for travel returned,” Ghaith Al Ghaith, the company’s CEO, said in a statement. Traffic more than doubled last year at Dubai’s airport, the busiest in the world for international travel, but still lags a record set in 2019 before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. FlyDubai said it carried 10.6m passengers in 2022, up 89% from the previous year. The sister airline to long-haul carrier Emirates has also ramped up capacity, with the delivery of 17 new aircraft and the hiring of some 1,300 employees over the past year, it said. In 2020, FlyDubai had reported losses of $194m.<br/>
Spring Airlines, China’s largest budget carrier, says international air travel remains weak and is stunting its recovery from Covid, even as peers globally struggle to keep up with demand. “We’re waiting for stronger demand to come,” Spring Airlines’ Vice-President Zhang Wu’an said at the Aviation Festival Asia in Singapore. For Spring, which operates an all-Airbus SE 117-strong fleet across China, international capacity is at just 20% of pre-Covid levels, compared to 80% for domestic. Zhang said Chinese airlines still face many restrictions that airlines in other countries aren’t subject to now that Covid has all but receded. China was one of the last places on Earth to finally relax pandemic measures and move away from a strict Covid zero policy, only opening its international borders earlier this year. Labor shortages, as well as volatility in oil prices from the war in Ukraine, may also impact China’s aviation recovery, Zhang said, adding that he thinks international outbound travel could take as long as a year or more to make a full comeback. Spring’s cautious sentiment echoes others’ views on China, like Cebu Air CEO Mike Szucs, who said the Philippine carrier wasn’t seeing massive demand from Chinese tourists due mainly to administrative challenges like expired passports. Separately, Zhang said Shanghai-based Spring is planning on adding around 10 new planes annually into its fleet. The carrier currently has 30 remaining Airbus orders unfulfilled. For 2023, however, it only expects to add five or six planes, again because of labor constraints. Longer term, Spring has much bolder ambitions. China’s aviation market, while slower to recover from Covid, is still the world’s second biggest after the US. <br/>