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Travellers hoping to catch a flight from Saint John to Toronto are going to have fewer choices after the Labour Day weekend. Air Canada is cutting two of its three daily direct flights to Toronto and one of two flights to Montreal. Alexander Ross, Saint John Airport president and CEO, said it's an "unwelcome development." He said Air Canada told the airport it hopes to restore the flights in November and December, but in the airport business, it's not easy to tell if these are just regular seasonal cuts. "The last couple years what's been happening through COVID, it's kind of hard to say what normal is anymore," Ross said. Saint John travellers will no longer be able to fly to Toronto and back in one day for business. Ross acknowledges people may now have to look to other airports in the region for their flights, including the Greater Moncton Romeo LeBlanc International Airport, which is not seeing any cuts to flights this fall. "I think it represents an unfair inconvenience to the Saint John traveller," Ross said. An Air Canada spokesperson provided an email statement to CBC News, calling the cuts "seasonal adjustments" that commonly happen throughout the year. The statement went on to cite high demand for pilots and lingering supply chain issues as reasons for the cuts.<br/>

Turkish Airlines reported an 18% increase in net income in dollar terms during the first half of 2023 from a year ago, with passenger revenues offsetting a decline in the cargo unit. The national carrier’s total revenue rose 25% during the same period to $9.5b while profits stood at $868m, driven by a 50% surge in passenger income, according to earnings data published on Wednesday. That compensated for a decline of about 42% in cargo to $1.2b. The company’s presentation for the first half results show it posted a 27% increase in international passengers, as Turkish carriers focus on overseas markets due to a domestic airfare price cap and runaway inflation at home. Turkish Airlines plans to almost double its fleet of aircraft to 800 over the next decade. The carrier, 49.1%-owned by the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, has set a target of 171m travelers by 2033. The company’s shares rose 86% in Istanbul trading this year, compared with a 35% increase in the benchmark index. Seventeen analysts have a buy rating on the company while three recommend holding the shares.<br/>

Copa Airlines posted a second-quarter profit of $17.5m as demand remained strong and costs fell, driven by fuel prices, which declined by about one-third. Revenue at the Panama City-based carrier during the three-month period rose 16.7% to $809m, compared with $693m during the same period a year ago, the company said on 9 August. “Copa Holdings’ second-quarter results continued to benefit from a healthy demand environment, which resulted in solid unit revenues for the quarter,” the airline says. “Moreover, lower effective jet fuel prices and the company’s consistent execution strategy on its ex-fuel costs impacted positively its unit costs base.” Expenses dropped 5.6% to $614m from $651m during the same three months in 2022. Primarily responsible for that was the 27.7% decline in jet fuel costs during the quarter. While the price of fuel fell by 35.9%, that decline was offset by an 11.8% increase in gallons used. Capacity as measured in available seat miles (ASMs) rose 13.6%, leading to a 1.3 percentage point increase in load factor to 86.1%, as compared to the second quarter of 2022. For the full year 2023, Copa says it will increase ASMs by 12-13% over 2022. Copa added two Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft to its all-737 fleet during the second quarter, ending the period with 101 aircraft to end the three-month period with a total of 101 aircraft in its fleet. With the addition of another destination – Barquisimeto, Venezuela – in October 2023, the airline will fly to 81 destinations across the hemisphere. The airline will hold an analyst call on 10 August to give more details about Q2 results.<br/>

Egyptair has its eyes firmly set on India as it increases its presence in the country and hopes to lure more passengers (both point-to-point and transit). The airline, which flies daily between Mumbai and Cairo, recently also started operating from New Delhi. Given the number of passengers from India flying to the West, the flag carrier sees plenty of opportunities for gaining transit traffic and potential codeshare partnerships. Egyptair has added one more connection from India by recently launching a service from New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. The airline operates four weekly flights between Delhi and Cairo using one of its Airbus A320neo aircraft in a two-class configuration. The airline operates daily out of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, where it uses a different equipment – a Boeing 737. According to Cirium, Egyptair has 62 return flights between Cairo and Mumbai, offering 9,548 seats in August. Between Delhi and Cairo, it is offering 33 return flights with a total of 4,686 seats. According to the data provided by India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Egypair flew almost 22,000 passengers between Mumbai and Cairo in the quarter ending March 2023. After covering India’s two biggest airports, Egyptair is keen to explore codeshare partnerships with airlines. Capt. Mohamed Moussa, Egyptair’s Chairman and CEO, spoke with Mint about the possibility of connecting Indian passengers to other destinations via Egypt, such as those in mid-Africa and West Africa. He said that the next step will be codeshare partnership with Indian airlines. The report also quotes the airline’s country manager, Amr Ali, as saying, “After recovery from covid, many people are now keen and have huge need to travel. As Egypt Air has a very good connectivity network with hub in Cairo, we see here in India a very big potential to catch traffic from India to Cairo and beyond Cairo to our network destinations in Africa, North America and Europe.”<br/>

There is growing skepticism over the success of Korean Air's efforts over the last three years to acquire Asiana Airlines, according to industry officials, Wednesday. Such concerns have emerged as antitrust regulators of the US and the European Union kept delaying their approvals for the deal and asked Korean Air to come up with more effective measures to prevent a monopoly after the merger. Although both buyer and seller have denied a plan B at this moment, speculation has increased that Asiana could be sold to a different company. Earlier this week, a local newspaper reported that Korea Development Bank (KDB), the main creditor of Asiana, tasked Samil PwC with reviewing the feasibility of selling the cash-strapped air carrier to a third party. KDB immediately denied the report, emphasizing that Asiana asked the accounting firm to assess its financial situation, so as to brace for changes in the aviation industry during the post-pandemic era. "The request was irrelevant to selling Asiana to a third party," the state-run lender said. KDB Chairman Kang Seog-hoon also told reporters in June that antitrust authorities of the U.S., EU and Japan are expected to draw conclusions within the third quarter of this year. However, he did not rule out the possibility of further delays in their decision-making. In June, Korean Air asked the European Commission to extend the deadline for its decision once again to October, as the company needed more time to come up with measures to dispel the regulator's concerns. The US DoJ even reviewed options to file a lawsuit to prevent the merger deal from harming competition in passenger and cargo transportation between the US and Korea. The two antitrust regulators are especially concerned about limited competition in cargo transportation, but Korean Air and KDB have remained cautious about selling Asiana's cargo transportation division to a third party. "We will do our best to win the final approvals after finishing negotiations with the antitrust authorities," a Korean Air official said.<br/>

A live shotgun cartridge found in an overhead locker on an Air New Zealand plane has highlighted the thousands of passengers illegally attempting to carry ammunition aboard aircraft. On July 10 aircrew checking baggage lockers found a single shot gun cartridge on an Airbus A320 in Auckland at the end of a flight from Christchurch where passengers had been through security screening. The Aviation Security Service (Avsec) was called in to search the aircraft with an explosives' detector dog, but found nothing further. In the past 12 months there have been 3678 instances of Avsec removing live ammunition from bags, despite it being banned from carry-on luggage, and passengers wanting to pack it in checked-in bags must first seek permission from the airline, and hold a gun licence. An Avsec investigation has not determined how the cartridge got onto the aircraft , how long it had been there, or whether it had passed through security screening. Avsec operations group manager Karen Urwin said the most likely scenario was that it was in a hunter’s jacket pocket, and fell out in the overhead locker. “It is possible for a single cartridge to be missed at security screening because of its small size. It is highly unlikely that the single cartridge fell out of a bag with multiple cartridges.” Urwin said passengers on the flight to Auckland would have gone through screening which used X-ray imaging to check carry-on baggage.<br/>