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Avianca reported a profit for Q3 2023, as passenger demand remains strong following the demise of two domestic airlines, pushing the company’s results beyond expectations. The Bogota-based airline turned an $82.1m profit during the three months ending on 30 September, compared to its $8.1m loss in the same period last year. Avianca’s Q3 revenue rose to $1.28b from $1.12b in the same period a year ago. “We are very proud of the quarter,” says CE Adrian Neuhauser. “These results are based on our new business model, on a cost-driven strategy [and] higher load factors, and not… based on a yield push, and that’s pretty extraordinary for the region.” The airline’s capacity as measured in available seat kilometres rose 31.5% from the same quarter last year, while its hours flown increased 19.2% year on year. Its load factor rose to 85.5% from 82.4% one year earlier – higher than Avianca estimated in a business plan – and its average daily aircraft utilisation during Q3 was “significantly improved”, at 11h 12min, the carrier says. The airline acquired 17 aircraft last quarter, bringing its fleet to 159 aircraft, of which it owns six and leases 153. Avianca has increased its capacity further in Q4 to fill a hole left by Viva Air and Ultra Air – two domestic carriers that folded earlier this year. “One of the effects of the restructuring of the market in Colombia, with two airlines failing around us, [is that] there is excess demand that needs to be served by incremental aircraft,” Neuhauser says. Bogota’s El Dorado International airport can now operate at 74 slots hourly, the highest level possible – an increase which has offered Avianca further opportunity. “To address the missing capacity in the market and to protect those slots from being available to third parties in the future, we had to grow our operations by nearly one quarter into the fourth quarter,” he adds. “By the end of the year we will have 750 flights per day,” up from about 600 in pre-pandemic 2019. Avianca’s additional flights per month will exceed 4,800, adds deputy CE Frederico Pedreira. The airline added those flights to its schedule starting in November, meaning it spent much of Q3 preparing. Story has more.<br/>

Dubai has long lived by the adage that more is more, and this year’s edition of the biennial air show stands to fulfill that principle. Emirates, already the world’s largest international airline, is poised to kick off the first day of the event with a major aircraft order to renew its widebody fleet. President Tim Clark has publicly declared that he’s in the market for more than 100 planes, possibly buying from both Airbus and Boeing. Now Turkish Airlines is muscling into the event, planning to one-up the local champion with a giant order for about 350 aircraft, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury stopped over in Istanbul ahead of the show, with a photo published in state-run media of him in a celebratory mood, shaking hands with Turkish Air Chairman Ahmet Bolat. Airbus declined to comment on any agreements with customers ahead of the event. With Turkish and Emirates charging into Monday with potentially massive deals, the Dubai show stands to set a record last seen a decade ago, when airlines rang in more than $100b in commitments on a single day. While such lofty numbers may be out of reach this time, the frenzy will nevertheless signal that the aviation industry is back from the pandemic, and that airlines wishing to participate in the surge must act fast or risk being relegated to the bottom of an increasingly long wait list for planes. Airbus is largely sold out on its bestselling single-aisle A320 family, and slots are becoming scarce, too, for the large widebody jets. The company is raising output on its A350 model to 10 a month in 2026. But even that increase won’t do much to cut back the backlog. Even without any orders from Turkish and Emirates, Airbus is approaching a record order haul last booked in the middle of last decade. Boeing is also trying to rush more aircraft out of its factories, but both companies are still contending with bottlenecks mainly on the supplier side. <br/>

Aegean Airlines has announced that the Greek government notified it of its intention to exercise the rights granted by all of the warrants it holds for the company’s shares, which it received in 2021 as part of the flag carrier’s Covid bailout. Aegean said in a statement released on Monday, November 6 that Athens had told it of its intention on November 3. As ch-aviation reported at the time, the EC approved in December 2020 a Greek state grant of E120m to the privately owned airline, aimed at compensating part of the losses caused by the pandemic that year. Two prerequisites for the disbursement were later added - that the private shareholders must participate in a share capital increase to raise at least E60m, which was duly completed in June 2021, and the obligation for the company to issue without consideration warrants to the state, giving the right to buy the company’s shares at a price equal to that of the capital raise. The shareholders approved these conditions in March 2021. The share capital increase took place at a price of E3.20 per share, giving the exercise price of the warrants the same price, with the exercise period beginning on July 2, 2023, and ending on July 3, 2026. Each of the 10,369,217 warrants gives the right to buy one new common registered share. If the exercise is completed, the Greek state will acquire new shares representing 10.3% of the company’s share capital through the payment of E33.2m, diluting the stakes of the existing private shareholders.<br/>

For the first time, the leaders of the 14 airlines that form the Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines (AAPA), including Singapore Airlines, have pledged to strive towards a target of 5% sustainable aviation fuel use by 2030. This is a collective, “aspirational” target, said AAPA director-general Subhas Menon on Friday at a meeting of the association’s senior airline executives, held at the Mandarin Oriental, Singapore. This means that some airlines in the association may end up using a higher mix of sustainable jet fuel than others. Cathay Pacific, an AAPA member, has set its own target for sustainable jet fuel to make up 10% of its fuel consumption by 2030. SIA CE Goh Choon Phong was coy about the flag carrier’s plans for using greener fuel. The carrier and its budget arm Scoot recently conducted a 20-month trial, which they said has shown that Singapore is operationally ready to make the switch. “In order to meet whatever percentage of (sustainable fuel) the association has committed to, you will need the supply to be there,” Goh said. “We would like to see how supply can be encouraged, but we are not making any decision on how we are going to facilitate that. I think it’s premature.” Currently, the supply of sustainable aviation fuel globally is less than 1% of prevailing demand. Menon said the reason the AAPA is setting this 5% target is to “wake the oil majors from their slumber”. “They are telling us that if they do not have an indication of demand, (they) can’t start producing sustainable aviation fuel. So... we are putting it out there,” he added. The AAPA’s target is similar to what others have set. Europe, for instance, has set a target for fuel suppliers to ensure that 6% of jet fuel made available at European airports is sustainable, with this rising gradually to 70% by 2050. Japan aims to have airlines replace 10% of the fuel they use at Japanese airports with eco-friendly alternatives by 2030.<br/>

Singapore Airlines is flying nearly full first- and business-class cabins even without the return of corporate travel, as more leisure-driven tourists take up its most expensive seats. CEO Goh Choon Phong said the lag in corporate traffic - a key staple of earnings - was "not much of an immediate concern,” as planes are still packed and keeping post-Covid profitability near record levels. "We are seeing some of that travel that didn’t used to necessary travel premium classes move to premium classes, and they’re all full,” Goh said ahead of the annual Association of Asia Pacific Airlines meeting in Singapore, which the flag carrier is hosting. Ranked the world’s best airline by Skytrax in 2023, Singapore Airlines is operating at around 85% of pre-Covid levels, and expects to return to full capacity in the 2024-25 fiscal year, which starts on April 1. The carrier on Tuesday posted its second-biggest quarterly profit on record, with strong demand for flights helping to keep airfares elevated. Singapore was among the first countries in Asia to reopen its borders during Covid, helping its main airline recover faster than the likes of Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., which didn’t also have a domestic market to fall back on during the pandemic. Separately, Goh said Singapore Air is working on generative artificial intelligence developments that could boost revenue. The airline has found 90 uses for AI across the business, and a trial effort to respond to customers faster yielded time savings of 75%, down to two days from eight.<br/>