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Oneworld alliance carrier Royal Air Maroc is entering a strategic partnership with Air Senegal, which will include a codeshare arrangement. Royal Air Maroc says the memorandum of understanding, signed on 27 September in Casablanca, will “consolidate co-operation” between the two airlines. The codeshare will enable passengers to purchase tickets from the sales networks of either carrier. “Other areas of co-operation will also be made possible in terms of aircraft maintenance, chartering and handling,” adds Royal Air Maroc. The two sides will explore synergies in human resources as well as technical and managerial training, and combine their digitalisation activities. Royal Air Maroc chief Hamid Addou says the carrier wants to build a “lasting partnership” with Air Senegal. “This collaboration will benefit both companies but, above all, their passengers through the increase in connection possibilities and the diversification of choices in terms of timetables and days of service,” adds the airline.<br/>

A British Airways pilot has been sacked after he told a colleague he had taken cocaine off a woman’s bare breasts before attempting to embark on a long-haul flight. Mike Beaton, of Devon, is said to have told a flight attendant about an alcohol and drug-fuelled night out in Johannesburg before his return to London. The flight attendant reported him, and BA delayed the flight until an alternative pilot could be found. Beaton was suspended and flown home as a passenger the following day before undergoing a drug test at Heathrow. Class A drugs were found in his system and he was sacked. He was scheduled to co-pilot the 12-hour flight back to the UK after a period of rest in South Africa four weeks ago. However, after revealing intimate details of his escapades over text message to a fellow BA employee, he was stopped from flying the plane. The pilot described partying with two local men, a female Welsh holidaymaker and a young Spanish woman in the messages. British Airways said no risk was posed to passengers as a consequence of the pilot’s actions. A spokesperson told The Telegraph: “Safety is always our top priority. The matter was referred to the CAA [Civil Aviation Authority] and this individual no longer works for us.”<br/>

A senior Qatar Airways executive told an Australian Senate inquiry on Wednesday there would be no repeat of an incident at Doha’s international airport in 2020 in which female passengers were subjected to invasive gynecological examinations. Australian Transport Minister Catherine King said three weeks ago that the examinations of 13 Australian women who had boarded a Qatar Airways plane to Sydney were a factor in her decision in July to refuse the Qatar government-owned airline additional flights to Australia. Qatar Airways Senior Vice President Matt Raos described the incident, which occurred when authorities were looking for the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in a Hamad International Airport trash can, as “a one-off incident, a very extreme incident.” “We’ve had nothing like it previously in our history and we’re completely committed to ensuring nothing like this ever happens again,” Raos told the committee. Raos was responding to government Sen. Tony Sheldon, who had asked for a guarantee on behalf of female passengers who feared they would be subjected to such treatment. The Doha-based executive declined to detail the incident because five women are suing the airline in Australian Federal Court. “The outcome of that Federal Court case is something that we will honor and abide,” Raos said. The five Australian women, whose names are suppressed by a court gag order, say they were taken off the flight to Sydney at Doha at gunpoint by guards and were searched without consent. Qatar Airways provided no response to their complaints and offered no apology, the women said. They wrote to Catherine King through their lawyer in June urging that Qatar Airways not be allowed to double its number of Australian services from the current 28 flights per week. “It is our strong belief that Qatar Airways is not fit to carry passengers around the globe let alone to major Australian airports,” they wrote.<br/>

Australian bureaucrats will schedule a meeting with Qatari officials to discuss the Albanese government’s controversial decision to reject Qatar Airways’ request to almost double its flight operations to Australia. Senate inquiry hearings this week revealed that the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) – which lodged the request for an additional 28 weekly flights to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth – had requested consultations with the Australian Department of Infrastructure and Transport. The QCAA said that on 16 August it “officially requested consultations … to better understand the reasons for their decision and to work together with the Department [of Infrastructure and Transport] to build a road map for future enhancements of traffic rights”. “We sincerely hope that the department will agree to schedule consultations as a matter of urgency and priority,” the QCAA said in a submission. The Qatari regulator had claimed that “no other carrier in the [Gulf Cooperation Council] region is subject to such strict conditions and requirements regarding fair competition in Australia”. On Wednesday, at a hearing of the Senate select committee on bilateral air service agreements – set up to examine the rejection of the Qatari request – executives from Qatar Airways said the QCAA was still waiting for the department to schedule such consultations. A Department of Infrastructure and Transport spokesperson told Guardian Australia it had received the QCAA’s request, and that “consultations are provided for under our current air services arrangements”. “The department has notified Qatar that it is considering the request and will contact the Qatar CAA seeking to arrange a meeting at a mutually convenient time,” the department said. It is expected the department will contact the QCAA before 25 October to arrange the meeting, in line with provisions under the current air services agreement.<br/>

Embattled Qantas chairman Richard Goyder has dismissed calls to step down, as the airline’s CEO Vanessa Hudson claimed it was “an important part of democracy” that its plea to the government to block extra air rights for Qatar Airways be kept private. Appearing before a Senate inquiry on Wednesday, Hudson also reiterated former Qantas boss Alan Joyce’s claims that Qatar Airways’ proposed expansion would have distorted the aviation market when it was requested in October 2022. After repeating a public apology, Hudson declined to answer questions on whether Qantas’ position had changed given the considerable recovery the aviation market has since made. She also said Qantas’ opposition was not about its own financial benefit. “(In October 2022) the international market had not yet recovered from Covid and our submission pointed to that. We felt that it was it was important that the market returned to 100% before we structurally changed,” Hudson told the inquiry. Hudson and Qantas’ general counsel Andrew Finch gave permission for the submission which the airline prepared in October 2022 to be provided to the committee in redacted form, provided it was not made publicly available. Finch said this was due to a “desire to ensure that corporates and individuals feel comfortable when they make submissions to the government … and particularly when they’re invited to do so that their submissions are kept confidential”. Asked by the Liberal senator Simon Birmingham if it would make a version of the submission public, Hudson backed Finch’s reasoning for not wanting the submission made public, saying “we think that that’s an important part of democracy”.<br/>