The head of Scandinavian airline SAS criticised the European Commission on Monday for taking a "cautious" approach to consolidation in the industry at a time when the EU is adding to the cost of flying. Anko van der Werff, whose long-struggling carrier is the largest in Scandinavia, listed the European Union's flagship scheme to help curb greenhouse gas emissions as among the reasons why the EU "clearly wants flying to be more expensive". He said the opening by EU antitrust regulators last week of in-depth investigations into Lufthansa's bid for a minority stake in ITA and IAG's bid to buy out Air Europa demonstrated its cautious approach. SAS is under bankruptcy protection and bringing in new owners as part of a rescue plan. It said last week that it expected to emerge from an amended Chapter 11 plan of reorganization by the end of the first half of 2024. "I am concerned because if you make flying more expensive, but you don't allow us to actually be a business, that is a problem," Van der Werff told the Airline Economics conference in Dublin. "I am afraid that the European Commission is not really able to make his own mind. They want flights be more expensive, but they seem to be cautious for consolidation, that's not a great recipe."<br/>
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Turkish Airlines has agreed to lease 10 Boeing 737 Max 8s, sourcing them from the Middle Eastern company Dubai Aerospace Enterprise. The aircraft are scheduled to be delivered to the carrier next year. DAE CE Firoz Tarapore says the deal will “deepen our already-strong and long-term relationship” with the airline. The lessor owns, manages or has commitments to 96 737 Max jets. Turkish Airlines is expecting to build a fleet of around 200 737s over the next decade, the carrier disclosed in a briefing in November last year. At the time it had 35 Max 8 and Max 9 jets in service, alongside 63 Airbus A320neo-family aircraft and almost 200 older-variant A320 and 737 models.<br/>
China’s two largest airlines reported losses for the full year in 2023 as tepid demand for international travel weighed on their businesses. China Southern Airlines said it expects a net loss of 3.5b yuan ($487.3m) to 4.7b yuan for the 12 months through Dec. 31 due to the slow recovery of international passenger flights, oversupply in the domestic market and high oil prices, the Guangzhou-based airline said in an exchange filing on Friday. Air China said its net loss in 2023 would probably be between 900m yuan and 1.3b yuan. The nation’s flag carrier also cited weak demand for overseas travel as well as fierce domestic competition and high oil prices for losses. Both carriers have been unprofitable since 2020, when Covid started. The duo’s unaudited preliminary results underscore a tough final quarter for 2023 after a more robust Q3, during which the nation’s three largest airlines, including China Eastern Airlines, returned to profitability following a strong domestic summer travel season. The trio are due to release 2023 earnings on March 28. A ramp up of international flights this year as Chinese citizens begin to venture abroad again could see Chinese airlines record a profit in 2024, according to a November HSBC research note. “A faster-than-expected restoration of China-US flights is a key catalyst for the recovery of international flights and will thus ease the overcapacity issue in domestic routes,” analyst including Parash Jain wrote. At the end of 2023, there were 63 direct flights between China and the US each week — down from 340 weekly flights before the pandemic, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.<br/>