Southwest Airlines has reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with union flight attendants, who have lagged behind pilots in winning pay raises from U.S. carriers. Details were not released Wednesday about the deal, covering about 20,000 attendants at the Dallas-based airline. The Southwest attendants rejected a previous deal in December that would have given them an immediate raise of 20% followed by four annual raises of 3%. The attendants are represented by Transport Workers Union Local 556, which will hold a ratification vote. The union’s executive board approved the deal. The union’s president, Lyn Montgomery, said the union will detail the agreement to members in meetings starting Monday and voting will begin in a few weeks. Southwest’s vice president of labor relations, Adam Carlisle, said the attendants play a role in safety and passenger service. “I am glad they will have the opportunity to vote on this new agreement,” he said.<br/>
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Ryanair group CE Michael O’Leary has hit out at the European Union’s reforms of its Single European Sky initiative, branding them as “useless”. Speaking during the Airlines for Europe (A4E) Aviation Summit in Brussels on 20 March, O’Leary said that from a Ryanair perspective, “SES 2 will be as useless as SES 1. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig.” O’Leary describes the first phase of SES as “totemic of European failure”, adding that the new SES phase “will deliver nothing”. Rather, O’Leary says, A4E – which counts Europe’s largest airline groups as its members – wants “urgent airspace reform, protection of overflights, delivery of more direct routings, and improved technology across European ANSPs”. Such actions would “deliver far more than SES 2, in my humble opinion”, O’Leary says. Speaking during the same press briefing, Lufthansa Group chief executive Carsten Spohr cited the “stupid way we have to fly our aircraft” thanks to Europe’s current airspace system, saying the negative impact was not restricted to emissions. “The impact of the missing Single European Sky, 10% roughly [in terms of emissions, according to some estimates], is not the only impact,” Spohr says. “It also has the impact in terms of creditability.<br/>
Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said on Wednesday he will meet with senior Boeing executives later in the day in Dublin to discuss prolonged delays in plane deliveries as a crisis at the US planemaker deepens. Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of an aviation conference, he said he will also discuss the certification of Boeing's 737 MAX 10 aircraft and ongoing issues with oversight following the Jan. 5 mid-air loss of a panel on a new Alaska Airlines MAX 9. The meeting will be with the "highest levels of management" at Boeing, he said, without identifying who. "We are working closely with Boeing. (...) Boeing are still producing great aircraft, but there's no doubt in our mind that on the shop floor, the systems and the quality control in Seattle need to be improved," he said, referring to Boeing's main manufacturing hub in Washington. He said the budget airline, Boeing's largest European customer, has regular meetings with its plane supplier and believes things will start to improve as regulators ramp up scrutiny of the company. "They're being (...) heavily regulated at the moment by the Congress, the FAA are crawling all over them. That doesn't help monthly production. But frankly, it's that kind of oversight it needs," he said. Last month, O'Leary warned the carrier may have to cut its summer schedule, the busiest time of the year, due to delays in receiving new aircraft. Boeing declined to comment on the meeting.<br/>
EasyJet is in talks with the European Commission about taking over slots at Milan's Linate airport that could be available as a result of Lufthansa teaming up with ITA Airways, the budget airline's CE said Wednesday. The German carrier is seeking a 41% stake in the state-owned Italian rival for E325m as part of a capital increase and expects a statement of objections from the Commission setting out concerns this month. Europe's competition enforcer warned earlier this year that the concessions initially offered by Lufthansa, which had said it was prepared to offer targeted remedies, were insufficient in scope and effectiveness to address competition concerns. "I've made no secret of the fact that we would love to increase our presence at Linate," EasyJet's CE Johan Lundgren told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Brussels. "And we think that would make absolute sense, so that is something that we are discussing with the Commission." Lufthansa is also in talks with EasyJet on remedies, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said. ITA Airways, the EC and Lufthansa declined to comment. The Commission had said affected short-haul routes would be those connecting Italy with countries in Central Europe while long-haul routes between Italy and the United States, Canada, Japan and India could also be affected.<br/>
India's Akasa Air is confident that deliveries of its ordered Boeing 737 MAX jets will be on time, its CEO said, despite concerns over the U.S. planemaker's production schedule for 737s amid intense scrutiny after a mid-air incident this year. India's newest airline in January announced an order for 150 Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab 737s, as it bets big on its international operations. The order announcement came days after a mid-air cabin panel blowout on an Alaska Air flight. Though Akasa's order does not include the 737 Max 9 version which has been in the spotlight after the incident, broader internal company scrutiny and external investigations in the U.S. have raised worries that delivery timeline of other variants of Boeing's 737 jetliner programme could be hit. "We're in very, very close touch with Boeing. Our delivery schedule is as per the expectations and agreements that we develop with them," Vinay Dube, founder and CEO of Akasa, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. Akasa's current fleet includes 24 Boeing aircraft of the total 226 it has on order which are expected to be delivered over 8 years. Dube declined to give a year-wise breakup. On March 28, Akasa will kick-off its first international flight to Doha from Mumbai which will be followed by other Middle Eastern destinations including Kuwait, Riyadh and Jeddah, and then some Southeast Asian countries. Although India is now the world's fastest-growing aviation market, with travel demand outstripping the supply of planes, the bulk of international traffic is captured by global carriers such as Emirates. While Dube did not share details of how much capacity the airline would deploy on foreign routes, he said the ambition is to grow international "very fast" because of comparatively lower costs and higher revenues versus domestic.<br/>