unaligned

LATAM Airlines reported a first-quarter net profit of $121.8m, the company said on Wednesday, reversing a net loss of $380m in the year-ago period. The airline, created by the 2012 merger of Chile's LAN with Brazilian rival TAM, operates units in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Peru. Revenue for Santiago-based LATAM during the quarter rose about 43.2% to $2.8b from the year-ago period, boosted by an increase in passenger revenue. Last November, LATAM announced the completion of a years-long restructuring process after it declared bankruptcy in 2020. The company's operating result reached $263m in the quarter, according to the airline. Meanwhile, LATAM'S total operational costs for the quarter stood at $2.54b.<br/>

Sir Richard Branson has revealed that things got so bad for his businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic that he feared he would lose his entire empire of planes, trains, hotels, health clubs and spaceships. “There was a time when it really looked like we were going to lose everything,” the British billionaire told the BBC. “We had 50, 60 planes all on the ground, and the health clubs all closed, the hotels all closed, and the worst [case] would have been 60,000 people out on the streets. I was certainly a little depressed.” Branson said he personally lost about GBP1.5b during the pandemic. The entrepreneur said he found the media backlash “painful” when his Virgin Group asked the UK government for a GBP500m loan to help the airline Virgin Atlantic in April 2020. He said: “It’s complicated. It’s pretty difficult to explain to people when everybody is hurting. What we were concerned to do is try to get support from government, not gifts from government but underwriting loans so the cost to the airline … was not prohibitive.” Branson, who is one of the richest people in the UK, made the plea for a Treasury bailout from his private Necker island in the Caribbean, after the British airline easyJet secured a GBP600m loan from the government.<br/>

Faults with engines supplied by Pratt & Whitney to Go Airlines India forced the budget carrier to keep part of its fleet of brand-new Airbus SE jets on the ground for a total of 17,244 days over the past three years, according to a legal filing in a Delaware court. “There have been numerous, persistent, and continuing technical issues with the defective GTF Engines supplied by Pratt,” the carrier, which sought insolvency protection this week, said in a filing dated April 28. Pratt has failed to comply with an arbitration order in Singapore that mandated it to supply spare engines and parts to the airline, leading to “a significant risk that Go First will go out of business and be forced to declare bankruptcy,” according to the filing. The airline had to ground 30.5% of its Airbus A320neo fleet in 2020, 25.6% in 2021, and 33.9% in 2022, as Pratt failed to provide new engines and spares. That added up to a total equivalent of more than 47 years of potential flying time between January 2020 to February 2023 when aircraft were forced to be on the ground. A representative for Pratt & Whitney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Go Airlines was re-branded Go First ahead of a planned 36b rupee ($440m) initial share sale last year, which didn’t materialize. A local bankruptcy court is due to hear the carrier’s insolvency petition Thursday morning in India. Pratt & Whitney, which spent $10b to develop a new engine only to meet with delivery delays and multiple issues leading to mid-air shutdowns in the past, has disputed the claims. The unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp. said the Go Air matter is subjudice, and it continues to prioritize delivery schedules for all customers. <br/>

SpiceJet has tapped India's Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme to secure INR4b (US$49m), which will fund the return to service of 25 aircraft in the wake of competitor Go First suspending all flights SpiceJet chairman and managing director Ajay Singh said via a media statement that the airline was working "meticulously" on returning parked planes to service. "(The) majority of the ECLGS funding received by the airline would be utilized for the same," he said. The ECLGS provides financial assistance to Indian businesses impacted by Covid-19. Airlines can access ECLGS for loans totalling INR15b (US$183.7m). SpiceJet has parked two B737-700s, one B737-700(BDSF), two B737-8s, seven B737-800s, two B737-900(ER)s, and twenty DHC-8-Q400s. Singh did not say when the parked aircraft would start resuming revenue operations. Nor did he say the portion of the return to service expenses that would be funded by ECLGS, and what portion would be funded by accrued capital, although he did confirm that at least some of the expenses would be funded by internal cash reserves.<br/>

Philippine Airlines is looking to acquire additional A350 and B777 widebodies to drive the post-pandemic resumption of its long-haul flights, but it is struggling to find any, according to acting president and chief operating officer Stanley Ng. He also said that the privately-owned flag carrier is open to new investors. The airline maintains a positive outlook for the year, with local demand strong and China reopening, but supply-chain woes and jostling with global carriers for aircraft and spare parts are restraining growth, he said. “If we can get more planes we can expand immediately but we can’t,” Ng told the Inquirer newspaper on May 1. “There’s a plan to finalise [new orders] but it will take two years to deliver the aircraft.” Philippine Airlines emerged from a brief and voluntary bankruptcy process 16 months ago. It cut its fleet size during the pandemic and returned a number of aircraft to lessors - including four of its six A350-900s with the range to reach New York JFK, a destination it currently flies to 4x weekly from Manila. It also currently operates nine B777-300(ER)s, the ch-aviation fleets advanced module shows, and ten A330-300s round off its widebody fleet. Getting the A350s back has been difficult, Ng said, and the soonest new aircraft can be delivered is 2025. Buying used aircraft is also not an option given the time and cost needed to reconfigure their interiors to fit the carrier’s business model. Consequently, it will not launch new long-haul routes this year. Even broken tray tables and seat recliners cannot be fixed immediately due to supply-chain bottlenecks, he said.<br/>

Australia's competition regulator said on Friday it has declined to reauthorise an agreement between Virgin Australia and Alliance Aviation Services to jointly provide fly-in and fly-out (FIFO) services to their corporate clients. The alliance involves the second and the third largest FIFO charter operators jointly providing and coordinating their services to corporate clients, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said. The charter alliance has not delivered on the public benefits expected when it was authorised to conduct these services together in 2017, the regulator said. "The airlines have not demonstrated to us that there's sufficient public benefit to outweigh the likely detriment from their proposed coordination, so we have decided not to reauthorise the conduct," ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said. "We're concerned that continuing the charter alliance is likely to reduce the number of bidders in tender processes for charter services."While the alliance is likely to benefit public from more operational flexibility for the airlines and some cost savings, "on balance, the ACCC is not satisfied that the public benefits of the agreement outweigh the public detriments", the regulator added.<br/>