El Al reported a Q4 net profit and forecast that annual revenue will jump 75% by 2028 as travel is rebounding strongly from the pandemic and the carrier plans to expand routes to Asia. CE Dina Ben-Tal Ganancia said El Al was looking to resume flights to India and add flights to Australia, and possibly the Philippines, Singapore and Maldives at some point, and plans to expand its Boeing 787 fleet to 22 by 2028 from 16 currently. Helped by a $9m capital gain, Israel's flag carrier said it earned $8.5m between October and December, compared with a $110m loss in the same period a year earlier and a $31m loss in Q4 2019, before the pandemic hit travel. It was the first time since 2015 that El Al has posted a Q4 profit. Revenue jumped to $561m in the final three months of 2022 from $265m in the same period a year earlier - when Israel still had strict travel restrictions in place due to COVID-19 - and topping the $518m in Q4 of 2019. "You see what we call revenge tourism and there is more demand than supply," Ben-Tal Ganancia told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference. She noted that the pandemic allowed El Al - which changed ownership in 2020, received government bailouts and slashed its workforce to 4,400 from 6,300 - to become more efficient.<br/>
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Ryanair flew 10.6m passengers last month, a record high for February, but its rate of growth from pre-pandemic peaks slowed, company data showed on Thursday. Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers last month flew 1% more passengers than in February 2020, when it set the previous record for the month. The carrier ahad achieved 9% growth in passengers between January 2020 and January 2023. An average of 8% of Ryanair seats were empty in Feburary, down from 9% in January, the data showed. <br/>
Singapore Airlines Ltd.’s low-cost carrier Scoot is bullish on air travel from China bouncing back as it reintroduces flights to the mainland, despite industry worries about weak demand in world’s second-largest aviation market. “China is an important market for Scoot,” the airline’s Chief Executive Officer Leslie Thng told Bloomberg Television in an interview Thursday. “China will further help Scoot to go back up to pre-Covid capacity and beyond pre-Covid capacity.” Thng’s comments come even as some other airlines and industry groups complain about weak demand in China off the bat of an abrupt, chaotic reopening that caught airlines and airports off guard, mandatory Covid testing requirements for passengers traveling to China and a slow visa process. Spring Airlines, China’s largest budget carrier, said this week that international air travel remains weak and it’s operating at just 20% of pre-Covid levels, while Malaysia’s AirAsia X Bhd. said it has only been able to sell enough tickets from China to fill just half of an aircraft’s seats. China will take at least a year to get back to air travel levels seen in pre-pandemic days, according to Subhas Menon, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. Philippine airline Cebu Air Inc. has also said the budget carrier wasn’t seeing a massive demand rebound from China compared to other international markets, primarily due to administrative challenges, terming it what “seems to be two markets” given the difference between domestic and international demand. Scoot is now operating about 25-30% of its pre-Covid capacity to China, Thng said, increasing to about 60% by June and and as high as 90% by October.<br/>
Malaysian low-cost carrier Firefly will launch direct flights from Penang International Airport to Singapore Changi Airport on March 26. Currently, travellers on Firefly flights have to depart from Seletar Airport. They will arrive in Subang Airport in Selangor, before taking another flight to Penang. When Firefly starts operating out of Changi Airport Terminal 2 on March 26, passengers can fly directly to Penang in the airline’s Boeing 737-800 aircraft. Tickets for this direct flight are on sale starting Friday, the airline said. Firefly will operate between the two cities twice daily, departing from Penang at 10am and 6.35pm. The flight from Singapore will be at 12.40pm and 9.15pm. The flight will be operated by the airline’s newly retrofitted aircraft equipped with 189 seats, the airline said.<br/>
Australia's competition regulator on Friday granted interim authorisation to Qantas Airways and its budget arm Jetstar for a continued coordination of two Jetstar Asian-based joint ventures - Jetstar Asia and Jetstar Japan. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said the interim authorisation would also allow coordination in certain circumstances between Jetstar Japan and Japan Airlines, and comes after the regulator previously authorised this coordination in 2013 and 2018. The continued coordination of the Jetstar-branded airlines allows them to operate as a single fully integrated organisation "on matters such as flight scheduling, sales and marketing, and pricing," the regulator said. ACCC, however, said the proposed re-authorisation does not allow coordination between Qantas and Japan Airlines. The regulator said it issued a draft determination proposing to grant final authorisation to the arrangements for a period of five years rather than 10 and is inviting submissions. "The ACCC considers that the coordination is likely to result in public benefits by providing consumers with a wider choice of products, enhanced services, and more convenient flight times," said ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey. "This conduct is likely to result in little, if any, lessening of competition," Brakey said.<br/>