unaligned

The CEO of Southwest Airlines pushed back Tuesday against the view that his airline’s December breakdown was caused by a failure to invest enough money in crew-scheduling technology, instead blaming extremely cold weather that forced it to stop flying at some airports. Southwest said it is buying more deicing trucks and lining up additional deicing pads at key airports and buying more engine covers and heaters to avoid a repeat. The airline also said it will increase staffing during extremely cold weather, and it will improve phone systems for customers and employees. A severe winter storm just before Christmas affected all airlines, but Southwest struggled far more than the others to recover. It wound up canceling nearly 17,000 flights in 10 days before resuming a normal schedule. Unions for pilots and flight attendants said technology used to reassign crews to planes bogged down, and workers spent hours on hold when they called headquarters for instructions. Robert Jordan said the entire debacle could be traced to Southwest’s inability to keep flying in extremely cold weather at key airports including Denver and Chicago Midway. “I do not think we have a chronic underinvestment in technology,” he said at a JPMorgan investor conference. He repeated a previous estimate that the Dallas company will spend more than $1.3b on information technology this year. Jordan also defended the airline’s business model against critics who say its point-to-point route map makes it more vulnerable to flight disruptions that start in one part of the country — caused by bad weather, for example — and then ripple across the network. The frozen conditions in Denver and Chicago started the mess, he said, “and it would have caused the issue no matter what the network structure was.”<br/>

JetBlue’s CE called a decision by the DOT to get involved in the carrier’s proposed acquisition of discount carrier Spirit Airlines “unprecedented”. “It is not something we have seen before,” Robin Hayes said during JPMorgan’s Industrials Conference on 14 March. “For the most part, it has been settled now for a number of decades that the [US Department of Justice] takes the lead on this.” Speaking during the same conference, Spirit CEO Ted Christie suggested that the airlines may explore legally challenging the DOT’s authority to interfere with their acquisition deal. ”It sort of depends on the the nature of their objection as to how we would tackle it,” Christie says. “That would be an unprecedented move… I know I’ve heard our merger partners discuss the fact that they would intend to challenge that – I think we would have a good case there.” The DOT said on 7 March that it would work to prevent New York-based JetBlue from swallowing Spirit, after the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit to block the $3.8b deal. In the USA, the DOJ is responsible for enforcing antitrust laws and evaluating proposed mergers for regulatory compliance. “The Department of Transportation typically has not gotten involved in these merger cases, but that’s changing today,” US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said during a 7 March television interview. ”It is so important to make sure passengers have choices, that they have access to low fares, that they have access to competition.” Buttigieg added the DOT plans to deny JetBlue and Spirit a transfer application, which requests the two carriers be allowed to combine and operate international routes under a single certificate. “The department will continue to separately investigate the transfer as part of its statutory public interest mandate and under its authority to enforce against unfair and deceptive practices and unfair methods of competition,” the DOT says. Hayes says Tuesday JetBlue has not had any discussions with the DOT regarding the agency’s plans to hinder the Spirit deal, but notes, “there is ambiguity around the DOT’s current position.” <br/>

The CEO of Flair Airlines has suggested four planes were seized from his airline because the lessor was in talks with another airline. Stephen Jones, CEO of the Edmonton-based discount airline, held a press conference Tuesday morning, three days after four of its leased planes were seized. The planes were seized from airports in Toronto, Edmonton and Waterloo by New York hedge fund company Airborne Capital. Jones confirmed Flair owed the company $1m on the leases, but called the seizure a calculated and unusual action. "A million dollars, while it’s a lot of money, is less than half one-day sales for us, so it's not that we were desperately short. We were in communication with them, I was talking to the head of Airborne on Friday, saying, 'You’ll be paid on Monday,' and then this happened in the middle of the night on Friday night," he told reporters. Jones said it's not unusual for airlines to make lease payments a few days late, but added in his two decades in the industry, he's never seen a leasing company seize planes. "We think that the seizure of these aircrafts was connected to conversations with another airline," he said, but refused to say which airline. "As a lessor the last thing you want to do is take back aircrafts unexpectedly and be stuck with them, so it’s pretty clear they had somewhere else to put these aircrafts." Airborne Capital released a written statement regarding Jones' allegations on Tuesday. “Airborne Capital strongly rejects the allegations that have been made by Flair Airlines in recent days in relation to four Airborne-managed aircraft," the statement says, adding the leases were terminated after Flair was regularly late on its leasing payments for a five-month period.<br/>

SunExpress, a joint venture between Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa, said on Tuesday that summer bookings to Turkey spiked as of this month after a brief drop following February's devastating earthquakes. The airline expects to carry more than 12m passengers this year, CE Max Kownatzki told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference in Istanbul. Within days after the massive earthquakes that killed more than 48,000 people and left millions homeless in Turkey, bookings fell by 50%, Kownatzki said. "Within the first week right after the earthquake we have seen significant demand drops, roughly 50-52% in international demand. But in week two, we had an uptick in demand...We saw the hit for roughly 10 days and after those 10 days demand has absolutely recovered," Kownatzki said. "According to beginning of March numbers, we had 60% higher advanced bookings than last year." Antalya-based SunExpress carried 10.7m passengers mainly between Turkey and European countries last year with an 85% load factor, exceeding the pre-pandemic levels, according to information provided at the news conference.<br/>

Ryanair Holdings will have 99 Boeing 737 Max aircraft by the end of March as the US manufacturer works its way through a backlog of orders. Ryanair CEO Eddie Wilson said the Irish carrier was in a better position than expected, with greater clarity surrounding the delivery of the aircraft. “We don’t expect any disruption to schedules because of their deliveries,” Wilson said Tuesday. The airline had previously described Boeing Co.’s delay in fulfilling orders as “the only dark cloud” on the horizon and said a failure to deliver 51 jets by the end of June 2023 would force a reduction in capacity growth. Ryanair announced its Dublin summer schedule today, which will see 33 aircraft based out of the Irish capital. Wilson told reporters that the delivery of the aircraft from Boeing had “improved dramatically.” <br/>

Boeing said on Tuesday that it had secured orders for dozens of 787 Dreamliner jets with a pair of Saudi Arabian airlines, providing a boost to the airplane, which has faced lengthy delivery delays since late 2020. Riyadh Air, a new airline owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and Saudia Airlines, also owned by the government, will each buy 39 jets, Boeing said. Together, the orders are worth tens of billions of dollars at list prices, though large orders are typically heavily discounted. The deals are part of an effort by Saudi Arabia to become a global aviation hub, copying a business model used by other Middle Eastern countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. “The new airline reflects the ambitious vision of Saudi Arabia to be at the core of shaping the future of global air travel,” said Tony Douglas, the CE of Riyadh Air and a former top executive at Etihad Airways. Princess Reema bint Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, described the deal as a demonstration of the “enduring strategic partnership” between the two countries. Saudi Arabia’s longstanding relationship with the United States has been strained over the past five years as the kingdom expanded its alliances with other global powers, including China, India and Russia. On the campaign trail, President Biden pledged to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” over its human rights record, and the two governments traded harsh words in October after Saudi Arabia supported an oil production cut by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies despite pleas from American officials to wait. Still, U.S.-Saudi business and investment ties remain deep. The vast majority of Saudi Arabia’s weaponry and defensive systems are manufactured by American companies. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, praised the deals, saying in a statement that they would support 140,000 jobs across the country, many of which do not require a college degree. The Saudi airlines will also use General Electric engines on their new planes.<br/>

Kuwait-based Jazeera Airways along with Saudi partners has announced its intention to establish a low-cost airline in the Kingdom, to be based at the King Fahad International Airport in Dammam. The announcement is in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to expand the tourism and aviation sector. Coordination is underway with the regulatory authorities in the Kingdom to complete procedures to obtain the necessary licenses in accordance with the applicable laws, a Jazeera Airways statement said. Jazeera Airways operates commercial and cargo flights out of its Jazeera Terminal T5 at Kuwait International Airport. The airline flies to 59 popular destinations across the Middle East, Central and South Asia, Africa and Europe comprising high-demand business, leisure, religious and weekend destinations. – TradeArabia News Service<br/>

Sharjah-based budget carrier Air Arabia has announced that it has won approval from its shareholders at the company’s Annual General Meeting for the distribution of 15% cash dividend for the financial year ending December 31, 2022. The dividend, which is equivalent to 15 fils per share, reflects another year of record financial performance for the award-winning low-cost carrier. The board of directors’ recommendation follows the airline’s robust financial performance in the year ending December 31, 2022, where Air Arabia reported a record net profit of AED1.2b ($327m), up 70% over the year before.<br/>

South Korean low-cost operator Jin Air posted its first quarterly operating profit in more than three years, helped by a rebound in travel demand that has also helped boost the earnings of compatriots Jeju Air and T’way Air. For the three months ended 31 December 2022, Jin Air reported an operating profit of W11.6b ($8.9m), reversing the W31.6b loss posted in the year-ago period. The sister carrier of Korean Air saw revenue more than double year on year, to W225b, with more than half of it coming from international operations. Revenue from flights to Japan made up 27% of the quarterly revenue, a significant jump against the previous quarter when Japan’s borders still remained closed to most international travellers. Costs rose 92% year on year to W213b, in line with an increase in flying activity. T’way, meanwhile, posted its first quarterly net profit since the pandemic, though it remained in the red at the operating level. The carrier reported an operating loss of W36b, significantly narrowing the W295b loss in the year-ago period. It rebounded to a net profit of W232b, compared to the W296b loss in 2021. Quarterly revenue tripled year on year to W2.1t, with takings from Southeast Asian and Japanese flights increasing the most against the year-ago period. T’way notes that the number of international flights in the fourth-quarter has recovered to about 43% of the same period in pre-pandemic 2019, while passenger numbers are more than 53% that of 2019 levels. For the full-year, the three carriers were still loss-making, but were optimistic in their recovery outlook, especially with Mainland China reopening its borders at the start of 2023. <br/>