On March 16, Canadian flag carrier Air Canada issued its 2023 annual report, demonstrating its numerous achievements throughout the past calendar year. While one might expect the report to include traditional financial performance statistics, this document went far beyond that with a complete analysis of the carrier's progress toward achieving several strategic initiatives. Throughout 2023, Air Canada safely carried over 45m passengers, which helped the airline, alongside its regional, low-cost, cargo, and charter subsidiaries, record full-year operating incomes of $2.3b, which came alongside a record operating revenue of $21.8b. With these numbers in mind, it is safe to say that the carrier is performing well financially and continues to provide solid returns for investors. The carrier has also continued to grow throughout the last year, with fourteen new routes launched, bringing the airline's total number of destinations served to 188. In this article, we will take a deeper look at Air Canada's 2023 annual report and where the airline stands a quarter of the way through 2024.<br/>
star
SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup) has announced it has resumed its regular flight schedule after it temporarily grounded eighteen A320-200Ns at the weekend for a routine inspection of pressure regulator transmitters, a component responsible for monitoring and adjusting cabin pressure in mid-flight. In a service announcement on Sunday, March 24, the airline confirmed it had resumed its regular schedules after it inspected the components on some of its aircraft, causing traffic disruptions on parts of its network on March 23. It said affected passengers were notified via email or SMS. The airline was not immediately available to comment further. A spokesperson told the Danish broadcaster DR on March 23 that the situation emanated from a routine maintenance check and that "the need to inspect a pressure regulator transmitter component on some of our aircraft unfortunately means that operations are paused with these aircraft, which in turn causes traffic disruptions in parts of our network," adding that passengers were not exposed to any risk. The grounding reportedly affected about 7% of the airline's schedule on Saturday, including flights across Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and destinations such as Malaga, Tenerife Sur, Gran Canaria, London Heathrow, Zurich, Stavanger, Tromsø and Kristiansand.<br/>
Airlink has confirmed it has applied for an urgent interdict and order from the South African High Court in Johannesburg to prevent South African Airways (SA, Johannesburg O.R. Tambo) and its personnel from using or disclosing confidential commercial information allegedly obtained unlawfully by a former executive manager before she departed Airlink to join SAA. In the same application, Airlink is seeking a court order declaring the confidential information as Airlink's property and instructing all SAA personnel who possess the information to return it to Airlink and delete and, or destroy all electronic copies or derivatives of the stolen files, a spokesman informed ch-aviation. "Airlink anticipates instituting additional proceedings against some of its former employees on several related matters," he disclosed. The Citizen newspaper first reported that the sensitive information pertains to Airlink's commercial information on its contracts with travel agencies and travel management consortiums, along with the financial values of these relationships. At the centre of the allegations is Airlink's former executive manager of sales and marketing, Carla da Silva, who resigned abruptly from the airline to join SAA in November last year. An email dated October 29, 2023, obtained by The Citizen, revealed that while Airlink still employed Da Silva, she allegedly shared detailed information with ten colleagues who followed her to SAA. The email instructed including year-on-year flown revenues from Airlink's anchor client spreadsheet into a new database.<br/>
Air New Zealand, Jetstar and Qantas are gearing up for a heavy weekend of air travel as Kiwis and Aussies celebrate Easter. In Aotearoa, Air NZ said 227,000 customers are travelling on their services over the Easter weekend, the busiest day of which will be Thursday when 54,000 passengers fly with the airline. Data released by Booking.com and Webjet earlier this month suggested Auckland was the number one most popular location Kiwis were travelling to over Easter, but Air NZ said Queenstown, Wānaka & Central Otago, Nelson-Tasman and Hawke's Bay were emerging as its top destinations for a long weekend getaway. The majority of Air NZ's Easter customers (147,000) have domestic trips booked rather than international. Australian airlines Qantas and Jetstar said they're expecting to fly across more than 670,000 passengers over the Easter long weekend with their most popular destinations being Auckland, Singapore, Bali, Tokyo, Gold Coast, Hobart and Cairns. Air NZ and Qantas will be serving hot cross buns and Easter eggs to customers in their lounges over the weekend. Meanwhile, Qantas and Jetstar have both launched Easter sales this week.<br/>