Southwest Airlines and its pilots union are closing in on a new contract that would raise pay for the carrier’s more than 11,000 aviators and end months of contentious negotiations, weeks ahead of the crucial holiday travel season. The company and the union have agreed on pay, retirement and other items but are working on an implementation schedule, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said in a message to its members on Thursday. Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines have already finalized multibillion-dollar labor agreements with pilots this year as unions pushed for pay hikes, better scheduling and other improvements after the Covid pandemic derailed contract talks. If a preliminary agreement is approved by the Southwest pilots union board in the coming weeks, it would then go to the pilots for a ratification vote. The union and the airline declined to provide specifics of the deal. Southwest and the union “are working hard to close out the few remaining items,” an airline spokesman told CNBC. “Southwest remains committed to reaching an agreement that rewards our Pilots and places them competitively in the industry.” Southwest reached a preliminary agreement with its flight attendants union earlier this fall that includes 36% pay increases for cabin crew members. A labor deal between the company and its pilots would end a period of tense negotiations, which recently included laying groundwork for a potential strike, though strikes are extremely rare in the airline industry. It would also become the latest in a string of big labor deals this year, including agreements between Hollywood studios and actors, and the studios and writers, as well as between automakers and the United Auto Workers union, following strikes.<br/>
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Ryanair Holdings said it found unauthorized parts in two aircraft engines, becoming the latest major airline caught up in the distribution of components backed by falsified certification documents. The suspect parts were discovered during scheduled maintenance checks in Texas and Brazil over the past few months and have since been removed from the engines, CEO Michael O’Leary said in an interview in Dublin on Thursday. Aviation regulators have accused an obscure London company called AOG Technics Ltd. of supplying thousands of engine parts with faked certification documents for Airbus and Boeing models, including older-generation 737s in use at Ryanair. Delta, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are among the carriers that found suspect parts. O’Leary said he believed AOG supplied the parts which inadvertently ended up in Ryanair’s fleet. The Irish low-budget airline has never done business directly with AOG, receiving the component for two engines instead via third parties, and the carrier remains “largely unaffected” overall by the scandal, the CEO said. Ryanair operates a Boeing-only fleet and has about 1,500 engines, O’Leary said. The CFM56 engine affected by the scandal is the most popular in global aircraft fleets. The power plant is manufactured by a joint venture of Safran SA and General Electric Co. called CFM International Inc. The engine makers said in October that they’d found 126 engines with suspect parts sold by AOG, including some fitted in CFM’s own repair shops. <br/>
Planned new national carrier KM Malta Airlines is to set to open for bookings on 4 December after securing its air operator’s certificate. Malta’s Government in early October announced plans to establish a successor operator to struggling national carrier Air Malta next summer. The new operation, KM Malta Airlines, says it has been granted an AOC and air operator licence from the Maltese Civil Aviation Directorate, paving the way for it begin taking bookings from 4 December. The new carrier plans to launch flights from 31 March, using a fleet of eight Airbus A320neos operating 284 weekly flights across 17 routes. ”KM Malta Airlines will adopt a key European destination focus, linking Malta with the main capital cities in Western Europe, with the primary European airport hubs, and connecting with partner airlines,” the new airline says. The airline’s summer network includes 84 weekly flights connecting Malta with Italy, as well as 48, 44 and 40 connections linking the island with France, the UK and Germany respectively. Malta’s government opted to create a successor carrier after talks with the European Commission when it became a clear a required further capital increase for Air Malta would not be approved under state aid rules. It has been working with Knighthood Global, the UAE aviation consultancy headed by former Etihad Airways CE James Hogan, to develop the strategy for the new carrier. Air Malta will itself cease operations on 30 March.<br/>
Israir Group has acknowledged an approach from fellow Israeli leisure operator Arkia regarding a potential tie-up between the two airlines. It has not given details of any proposal, and points out that the contact is preliminary. Israir Group states that it examines applications for “various business opportunities” from companies and entities “from time to time”. It adds that, should any of these progress to the stage of advanced negotiations, it will provide further information. Israeli flag-carrier El Al had previously entered talks with Arkia two years ago regarding the possibility of taking over the holiday airline. El Al had considered acquiring Arkia to turn it into a subsidiary operator. But an exclusivity period for the discussions did not yield a formal proposal. Arkia is controlled by the Nakash brothers. Like Israir it operates Airbus single-aisle jets, and also has a small fleet of Embraer 195s. Three years ago Arkia had participated in an auction for Israir which, at the time, was being sold as part of a restructuring of its parent company. Arkia had sought to pursue Israir through a merger, stating that a tie-up offered an opportunity to consolidate the Israeli aviation sector which was under pressure from increasing foreign competition. Israir was ultimately acquired by Israeli firm BGI Investments, under which it has been exploring a takeover of Czech carrier Smartwings. El Al has also previously attempted an Israir merger, with a view to combining it will its Sun D’Or charter division, but the flag-carrier’s tie-up proposal was eventually rejected by Israeli competition regulators.<br/>
An Aeroflot plane flying from Moscow was forced to make an emergency landing on Friday, the latest in a string of such incidents to hit Russia’s sanctions-stricken aviation industry in recent weeks. The Ministry of Emergency Situations for the Sakhalin Region said the Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 4 crew members and 408 passengers had a warning about a drop in pressure in one of the landing gear wheels during the flight. The plane made an emergency landing at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk airport. Pictures posted to social media showed damage to the aircraft’s landing gear. Several similar incidents have been reported in recent months – in August, passengers on a Red Wings flight were stuck in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg for 24 hours due to simultaneous “technical malfunctions” on the only two available aircraft. The same month a Russian Pegas Fly plane was delayed in Thailand due to faults with its weather monitoring system. At the start of October, the state airline Aeroflot suffered three technical failures to its planes in a single day. The latest incident comes just a few days after hack of Kremlin records revealed Russia’s airline industry is “on the verge of collapse” due to inadequate spare parts, uncertified repair services, and other systemic maintenance problems caused by sanctions.<br/>
An air route linking east China's Shanghai with Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, was launched on Saturday, marking the start of a direct flight between the two destinations. The round-trip service, operated by an Airbus A320 aircraft, is currently scheduled for every Saturday. The air service will be expanded to operate twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, starting from Dec. 20, according to Shanghai Airport Authority. The opening of the direct flight route will build a new bridge for the "air Silk Road" in South Asia, which will better promote the economic and trade exchanges, cultural exchanges and tourism development between China and Nepal, the airport authority said. (Story does not name carrier.)<br/>
PIA - Pakistan International Airlines will return under-utilised office space to its owner, the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA), as part of its efforts to reduce expenses and prepare the carrier for partial privatisation. A PIA spokesperson confirmed to ch-aviation that it will hand back excess PCAA-owned office space at the airline's Karachi head office complex. "With the PIA privatisation process in full flow, it is imperative that un/under-utilised spaces are returned back to the PCAA in order to save on costs," the spokesperson said, adding that the surplus space came about because PIA had shifted many of its offices to a building in Islamabad owned by the airline. The representative said that in response to discussions with the PCAA, that entity wrote to PIA about the return of office space and gave it the go-ahead. However, the letter was leaked to some Pakistani media outlets, leading to what the spokesperson termed "misconstrued out of context" reporting. Pakistan's caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, recently said that he expects progress regarding PIA's partial privatisation by January 2024. The government wants to establish a public-private partnership with a foreign airline, with that airline taking a 40% stake in PIA in exchange for adding a significant amount of equity and taking day-to-day control of it. Recently, as ch-aviation reported, the government appointed a consortium led by multinational business consultancy firm Ernst & Young to assist with the process.<br/>
Vietnam's VietJet Aviation and UAE-based Novus Aviation Capital have entered into a memorandum of understanding to jointly establish an aircraft financing and leasing firm in Vietnam, the budget airline said on Saturday. The firm will initially provide financing and acquisition of 15 new aircraft ordered by VietJet from Boeing and Airbus, with deliveries scheduled from 2024, it said in a statement.<br/>
Vietnamese operator Vietravel Airlines has entered into discussions with Boeing for the construction of an airframe MRO facility in central Vietnam. Executives from the airline and Boeing Vietnam met with officials from the Thua Thien Hue province on 28 November to discuss the building of the MRO facility. The 24ha facility will be located at Hue’s Phu Bai airport, and will feature three to five “medium-range aircraft” bays when it begins operations. In the longer term, Vietravel envisages the facility to handle up to seven aircraft. Boeing Vietnam director Michael Vu Nguyen says the airframer will provide support in technology transfer and training support. The airline says the construction of the MRO facility will “serve the current operations of Vietravel Airlines and…external needs in the future”. “In addition, professional training [and] improving high-tech labour skills in the aviation industry…[will] serve the development of the aviation industry in Vietnam,” the carrier adds. It did not provide any details on construction timeline or the financial costs. The airline is an Airbus operator, with an in-service fleet of three A321s. FlightGlobal has reached out to Boeing for further comment. Vietravel is the latest Vietnamese carrier eager to tap into the growing MRO market. In September, compatriot Vietjet hinted at constructing its own airframer maintenance hangar in the country, which it hopes will be operational by 2026.<br/>