A tire fell off a United Airlines plane taking off from San Francisco International Airport Thursday morning and landed in a nearby parking lot, damaging several vehicles, officials said. The tire from United Flight 35, which later arrived safely in Los Angeles, landed in an employee parking lot, SFO spokesman Doug Yakel said. No injuries were reported. The runway was briefly closed to allow crews to clear debris, Yakel said. There was no further impact to airport operations. Flight 35 was headed for Osaka, Japan, before being diverted to Los Angeles International Airport, where it landed safely. The plane, a Boeing 777-200, has six tires on each of its two main landing gear struts, according to the airline. It is designed to land with missing or damaged tires. The plane was carrying a total of 249 people – 235 customers, 10 flight attendants and 4 pilots, according to the airline. United said customers boarded a new plane at LAX to Osaka. “We’re grateful to our pilots and flight attendants for their professionalism in managing this situation. We’re also grateful to our teams on the ground who were waiting with a tug to move the aircraft soon after it landed and to our teams in the airport who assisted customers upon their arrival,” United said in a statement. “We will work with customers as well as with the owners of the damaged vehicles in SFO to ensure their needs are addressed.”<br/>
star
Federal investigators said Thursday they confirmed pilots' account of a brief failure of rudder controls on a Boeing 737 Max after it landed at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey last month. United Airlines pilots said pedals that control rudder movement on the plane were stuck as they tried to keep the plane in the center of the runway during the Feb. 6 landing. The pilots were able to use a small nose-gear steering wheel to veer from the runway to a high-speed turnoff. The rudder pedals began working again as the pilots taxied to the gate with 155 passengers and six crew members on the flight from Nassau, Bahamas, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board. Boeing said this is the only rudder-response issue reported on a Max, although two similar incidents happened in 2019 with an earlier model of the 737 called NG or next generation, which has the same rudder-pedal system. The manufacturer said the issue was fixed by replacing three parts. The plane has made dozens of passenger-carrying flights since then, according to data from FlightAware. United said the parts were related to a landing feature that was designed for other airlines, and United has only nine planes with those parts. The airline said it will work with Boeing, the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration “on next steps for these aircraft.” The NTSB said preliminary information from the plane's flight data recorder, one of the so-called black boxes, confirmed the captain's description of the event. United was able to recreate the same problem on the 2-year-old plane during a test flight at the Newark airport three days later, and reported the problem to the NTSB.<br/>
United Airlines will pause pilot hiring this spring because of Boeing delivery delays, the latest effect of the plane maker’s problems on one of its biggest customers. New hire classes will be paused in May and June and will likely resume in July, Marc Champion, vice president of flight operations, and Kirk Limacher, vice president of flight ops planning and development, told staff Thursday in a memo, which was seen by CNBC. “We wanted to let you know that United will slow the pace of pilot hires this year due to continued new aircraft certification and manufacturing delays at Boeing,” they wrote. Boeing declined to comment. Boeing has been struggling with a host of production flaws like incorrectly drilled holes on the fuselage and the fallout from a door plug that blew out of a nearly new Boeing Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines on Jan. 5, which prompted a brief grounding of the aircraft type earlier this winter. Bolts appeared to be missing on the plane when it left Boeing’s factory, a preliminary investigation found. United was contracted to receive 43 Boeing 737 Max 8 and 34 Max 9 models this year, but expects to get 37 and 19 of them, respectively, according to a company filing. It also had contracted deliveries of 80 Max 10s in 2024, the largest model in the bestselling Max family, but expects none of them this year. The plane hasn’t yet been certified yet by the FAA and is years behind schedule. United’s CEO, Scott Kirby, in January said the carrier is making a fleet plan without the Max 10. “As you know, United has hundreds of new planes on order and while we remain on a path to be the fastest growing airline in the industry, we just won’t grow as fast as we thought we would in 2024 due to continued delays at Boeing,” Champion and Limacher said Thursday. “For example, we had contractual deliveries for 80 MAX 10s this year alone – but those aircraft aren’t even certified yet and it’s impossible to know when they will arrive.”<br/>
United Airlines is planning to launch flights to Marrakesh, Morocco, and Medellin, Colombia, and ramp up its service to Asia, in the carrier’s latest bet that consumers will continue to shell out for trips abroad. The flights from United’s Newark, New Jersey, hub to Marrakesh are scheduled to begin Oct. 24 using a Boeing 767-300ER. The carrier’s Houston-to-Medellin flight is slated to start Oct. 27, on Boeing 737s, it said Thursday. The airline is also starting year-round service to Cebu, Philippines, from Tokyo’s Narita Airport. “Our play here with these three cities is premium leisure,” Patrick Quayle, United’s senior vice president of network planning and alliances, told CNBC. “We see strong business [class] demand, and there’s a strong correlation with people buying in biz class and Premium Select with the length of haul.” US airlines have increased their international service coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, and revenue growth from trips abroad has outpaced domestic sales. United’s international revenue grew 18% in the last four months of 2023, while sales from domestic tickets grew less than 7%. United also said it will offer four weekly flights between Shanghai and Los Angeles starting Aug. 29. It’s also adding a second daily flight between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, and starting Oct. 25, will have second daily flights between San Francisco and Seoul, South Korea, and between Newark and Porto, Portugal.<br/>
Deutsche Lufthansa AG said earnings won’t advance in 2024, and expects that Q1 losses will widen as the company grapples with disruptions from labor strikes and the cargo boom that took hold during the pandemic ebbs. Europe’s largest airline group estimates that the strikes in January and February cost it at least E100m, with hundreds of thousands of passenger journeys disrupted. While CFO Remco Steenbergen said the carrier will maintain its 8% operating margin target for 2024, the walkouts in Q1 could have an impact on full-year results. The German airline group has seen operations disrupted by waves of strikes, including a two-day walkout this week that disrupted journeys for almost half a million passengers, Lufthansa said. The renewed flare-up of labor disputes is reminiscent of lengthy battles that Lufthansa waged for years with groups like pilots before the pandemic, as employees once again demand a greater slice of profits derived from resurgent demand. Lufthansa reported adjusted earnings before interest and tax of E2.68b for last year, compared with E1.52b a year earlier, giving the company an operating margin of 7.6% — close to its target margin of 8%. The carrier group will pay a dividend of 30 cents a share, saying it wants to pay out 20%-40% of profit to shareholders. “The desire to travel is as strong as ever,” Carsten Spohr, Lufthansa’s CEO, said on Thursday during a press conference. “This desire that we feel is offset by various bottlenecks” which limit supply such as delayed aircraft, unscheduled engine maintenance and staff shortages. Lufthansa is still trying to complete the purchase of a stake in ITA Airways, the Italian successor to Alitalia, an endeavor that’s been held up by competition reviews in Brussels. The Italian airline would add to the group’s holding of national airlines, which include carriers in Austria, Switzerland and Belgium. The company said on Thursday that it’s still expecting approval of the deal “over the course of this year” and that it’s working closely with European Commission to conclude the transaction.<br/>
Lufthansa Group chief executive Carsten Spohr insists the carrier will make a rational decision over the cost of any concessions required for approval of its planned acquisition ITA Airways, but is encouraged by the approach to global competition of the incoming European Commission. The European airline group agreed a deal in May last year to take an initial 41% stake in the Italian carrier, together with an option to acquire full control, and had initially hoped to secure Commission clearance for the deal by the end of 2023. However despite submitting some initial remedies to address potential competition concerns, the Commission in January said these were “insufficient, in terms of both scope and effectiveness” and launched an in-depth probe of the deal. “We are also making progress with the takeover of ITA Airways, even though slower than planned,” said Spohr, speaking during a full-year results conference call on 7 March. ”We are continuing our intensive dialogue with the European Commission to obtain approval for the transaction as soon as possible. “We don’t do ITA like we go to an Italian restaurant, this is a business case for us,” adds Spohr. ”We have very well analysed how much value this can create for our shareholders over the next years and potential remedies – which of course will have costs attached. Like buying an airplane, or closing down a plant at [Lufthansa] Technik or opening one up because of a business case, we will take a decision. ”We will look at this in a very rational way,” he adds, noting the group has experience of previous acqusitions such as Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Swiss International Air Lines. And then we see if we have a deal. Brussels knows that. Rome knows that. I think more and more people in Brussels understand that our European industry wants to maintain its global competitiveness.”<br/>
Accession to the SkyTeam alliance will provide Scandinavian operator SAS with greater network reach in various ways, CE Anko van der Werff believes. Speaking during a Q1 briefing, he said SAS had enjoyed a good relationship with Star Alliance, of which it was a founder member. “We equally have to be honest,” he says. “With Star, we’ve never been able to negotiate our way into what is, de facto, the new form [of alliances] where you can drive value as airlines – and that is in joint ventures.” He says alliances have evolved from being “broad” tie-ups between carriers, to become “far more integrated” with “deeper relationships”, either through joint ventures, or joint ventures with equity involvement. Switching from Star to SkyTeam, as a result of Air France-KLM’s participation in the recapitalisation of SAS, will provide the network reach previously absent, van der Werff argues. “That will unlock, hopefully in multiple jurisdictions worldwide, something that SAS – and also SAS customers – have never been really used to,” he says. “Alliances are great to connect. But you cannot have schedule alignment, capacity alignment, with your partners. So we’ll have, for instance, throughout the day, multiple frequencies at various times.” He says corporate contracts will be included, and the SAS loyalty scheme EuroBonus will be “far more closely aligned with a future set-up”. “So that’s really big,” he adds. While regulatory approval for joint-venture involvement is likely to take time, van der Werff says SAS is already negotiating an expanded codeshare agreement which could emerge this summer.<br/>
High costs such as jet fuel remain a headwind for Scandinavian airline SAS even as it sees leisure travel staying buoyant in 2024, its CEO told Reuters on Thursday, echoing the mixed picture painted by others in the sector. Anko van der Werff made the comments after SAS, which is grappling to exit bankruptcy protection, posted a narrower pretax loss for its fiscal Q1. "We still see a rebound in long-haul travel, and corporate is still down versus 2019, but what remains strong is leisure," van der Werff said in an interview. A post-COVID travel boom is the big hope for SAS, which entered bankruptcy protection in 2022 after years of struggling with high costs were compounded by the pandemic plunge in demand. It plans to emerge from the process in the coming months with new owners that include Air France-KLM. However, airport fees, fuel jet prices and maintenance costs still pose challenges. Rival Lufthansa on Thursday also flagged the impact of high costs. Jet fuel prices, which have put a strain on the sector's finances for several quarters, were down in SAS's November-January Q1, but van der Werff saw little cause for cheer. "It's still at about $83 right now, if you convert that with the low kronor then you are almost talking about an all-time high for us in fuel prices, so it's a challenge," he said. In January, SAS said it expected adjusted earnings before tax of between zero and 1.0b Swedish crowns ($97m) for its 2024 financial year, with revenue exceeding 48b crowns.<br/>
One of the final steps before Air India’s pending merger with Vistara has been completed, with Singapore’s competition authority giving its conditional approval for the deal. The 5 March ruling follows recent remarks by Air India CE Campbell Wilson that Singapore was the only remaining competition authority from whom approval remained outstanding. However, the ruling from the Competition & Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS), lists four routes between the city-state and India that are of concern: Bombay, Chennai, Delhi, and Tiruchirappalli. “Even though a number of competing airlines provide air passenger transport services on these routes, the parties have sustained substantial market share in recent years,” says CCCS. “CCCS also found that the price and capacity coordination between the parties arising from the confluence of the transactions would significantly restrict competition on the affected routes.” Of particular concern are Singapore Airlines’s codeshare arrangements with Vistara, in which the Singapore carrier owns a 49% stake – the remaining 51% is held by Tata Group, the owner of Air India. Following the merger, SIA will own 25.1% of Air India, with the balance held by Tata Group. Both carriers are members of the Star Alliance. To address the concerns, the carriers have agreed to maintain capacity on the four routes at 2019, or pre-pandemic, levels. In addition, they will hire an independent auditor to ensure compliance, produce a written report annually, as well as meet other reporting obligations. The merger still requires legal approval in India. <br/>