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United Airlines is offering its pilots a contract with an incremental value in excess of $8b over four years, a figure that would make it the richest deal ever for a mainline US carrier. The company is negotiating weekly as it tries to reach a formal agreement with the union, CEO Scott Kirby said in a wide-ranging interview Monday with Bloomberg News. He didn’t detail the value of the pay, benefits and quality-of-life improvements included in the proposal other than to say that it would top the recent deals agreed to by its two biggest rivals. “We have a deal on our table that would be industry leading,” Kirby said. The labor talks have ratcheted up pressure on United even as it benefits from soaring demand for leisure travel and no signs of a slowdown in trips that mix personal time with work. Kirby reiterated that a “business recession” is keeping corporate travel as much as 25% below 2019 levels, but he said he expects a full recovery. Overall demand is strong enough to withstand even a moderate recession, he said, and nothing short of an “exogenous shock” to the economy will derail it. “It would require something pretty significant — beyond the scope of what anyone has in any other sort of base case scenario,” Kirby said. Carriers are grappling with higher costs, particularly on the labor front. American Airlines Group Inc. reached a preliminary agreement last month that would add $8b in additional costs. That came a couple months after Delta’s aviators approved a new contract with an incremental cost of more than $7b, also over four years. Kirby said United has incorporated expected labor expenses into its guidance despite not having an agreement.<br/>

United Airlines reopened the capital markets for airline debt on Monday when it raised more than $1b to finance 39 new Boeing aircraft in its fleet. The Chicago-based carrier priced the $1.32b single-tranche secured notes, known as enhanced equipment trust certificates (EETC), that mature in 2037 with a 5.8% coupon. Proceeds will finance 22 737-8s and 17 737-9s that United took delivery of between August 2022 and May 2023. The deal was not upsized, nor was the collateral pool expanded, between launch and pricing. United’s return to the debt capital markets signals a shift back towards normal aircraft financing after the disruption of the pandemic. That’s good news, both for airlines and investors, considering the thousands of new planes on order globally for delivery over the next few years. It comes as the airline industry braces for what could be a historic summer. Trade group Airlines for America (A4A) forecasts a nearly 1% increase in passenger numbers over the last peak in 2019. And, at the IATA annual meeting earlier in June, industry leaders repeatedly said travel demand was robust through at least the fall. “If we’re in the middle of a recession, this is the best recession the airline industry has ever seen,” United CCO Andrew Nocella said at the IATA event.<br/>

Air Canada pilots have kickstarted the bargaining process with their employer in a move that comes days after their fellow union members at WestJet ratified a new collective agreement. Representing about 4,500 employees, the Air Line Pilots Association’s Air Canada contingent said it has provided a bargaining notice to company management, the first step toward hashing out a new deal. The decision comes two weeks after the pilots’ group invoked a clause to end its 10-year collective agreement a year early and launch negotiations for a new one. Key issues include a widening wage gap between Canadian pilots and their US counterparts as well as job security and career progression, said Charlene Hudy, who heads the contingent. “The Air Canada pilots have not been in a meaningful negotiating position since 2014, and in these negotiations we are striving for a historic contract for our Air Canada pilots to address this growing disparity between the United States and Canada,” she said in a statement. The current deal will remain in force until Sept. 29 and its provisions will still apply after that date. “Such negotiations usually take months, and this is just the beginning,” said Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick in an email. “The current agreement, which has been in place for nearly a decade, is a testament to the productive relationship we have with our pilots. We expect the upcoming negotiations to be conducted in this same spirit.”<br/>

Singapore Airlines’ 32% rally in the past three months tops gains among global airline stocks after it posted record profit, driven by pent-up demand. The shares are trading at their highest level in five years, with the advance accelerating last month after the carrier reported its highest-ever annual net income as travel resumed following Covid. The stock is the top performer on the Bloomberg World Airlines Index for the period since March 13. It rose more than 2% on Tuesday, poised for a 10th-straight day of gains, its longest win streak since 2008. Analysts see further positives for the stock, which is still 45% below its all-time high set in 2000. “Passenger traffic is yet to fully reach pre-Covid levels, and seasonally higher summer travel for the Northern Hemisphere is just taking off,” said Thilan Wickramasinghe, an analyst at Maybank Securities Pte. “Plus, there are expectations of rising travel demand from China in the second half as the county’s reopening progresses.” While airlines globally have seen business gradually improve since the pandemic, some investors have grown cautious on the sector overall amid high fares, threats of recession and China’s uneven recovery. Singapore Airlines’ outperformance may be in part due to perceptions of advantages over other carriers.<br/>

Air India has off-rostered two pilots operating from Delhi to Leh for violating safety norms by allowing entry of a “woman friend” into the cockpit on June 3, an official close to the matter said on Tuesday. This comes a month after the airline grounded another pilot for inviting a woman friend into the cockpit of a Dubai-Delhi flight on February 27. The incident was first reported by HT in April. “The (latest) incident took place on AI 445 last week after the flight took off from Delhi. Both the pilots have been off-rostered since then,” an official close to the matter said. “The friend is a senior helicopter pilot who was travelling as a passenger,” the official added. A second official requesting anonymity said, “The matter was formally reported by a male crew upon landing in Delhi.” While officials said that the incident was reported to the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), there was no clarity if the DGCA had taken any action against them.<br/>