Latvian flag carrier AirBaltic Corp AS plans to raise as much as E300m as part of a planned initial public offering later this year. The new capital “would allow us to reach our business goals by 2030,” including improving the airline’s credit rating to access cheaper debt, as well as operating without additional state financial support, Klavs Vasks, the chairman of AirBaltic’s supervisory board, said at a press conference in Riga on Tuesday. Latvia plans to retain a 25% stake in the airline, and is currently in talks with a “strategic investor” that may buy a stake in the company ahead of any IPO. The government currently owns 98% of the company. CEO Martin Gauss declined to identify the potential strategic investor. AirBaltic has been planning an IPO for at least a decade, and decided to proceed with a share sale in March after recording its first annual profit since 2018. As part of its preparation for a share sale, the airline has consolidated four classes of shares. AirBaltic, which operates an all Airbus SE A220 fleet, is “in a very successful phase of preparing for an IPO,” Gauss said. The region that the airline operates in will grow faster in the future than the rest of Europe, he said.<br/>
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Ryanair and Wizz Air have announced they set new records for passenger numbers last month. Dublin-based Ryanair said it carried 20.5m passengers in August. That was 8% more than the 18.9m during the same month last year. Hungarian carrier Wizz Air said it carried 6.2m passengers last month, a 1.0% increase from 6.1m in August 2023. Ryanair said its load factor – the percentage of seats sold on flights – was 96% in August, which was the same figure as a year earlier. Wizz Air announced its load factor was 95.4% last month, up from 94.1% in August 2023.<br/>
UK carrier Virgin Atlantic is launch its first flights to Saudi Arabia next summer by beginning services to Riyadh, while also serving Accra in Ghana for the first time in over a decade. Virgin will serve London Heathrow-Riyadh daily from 30 March using Airbus A330-900s, a service that will connect with its SkyTeam partner Saudia. Virgin Atlantic CCO Juha Jarvinan says: ”We’re delighted to build on our codeshare with SkyTeam partner Saudia, further strengthening connectivity in the region.” The airline will then in May 2025 begin daily flights from Heathrow to Accra using Boeing 787s. Virgin previously served the Ghanaian capital between 2010 and 2013. The airline notes the UK is home to the third largest Ghanaian diaspora in the world while also expecting around 10% of passengers to connect through London onto Virgin Atlantic’s New York JFK service. Virgin has previously disclosed plans to return to Canada after more than a decade next summer with a new Toronto route, while also ending its long-standing Shanghai service this winter amid continuing operational challenges from not being able to overfly Russia.<br/>
Norwegian investigators are advising airlines to carry fireproof gloves in the passenger cabin as part of the kit for dealing with lithium-battery fires from personal devices. The advisory follows an incident in which a mobile phone ignited in the forward cabin of a Wizz Air Airbus A320 during top-of-descent before its approach to Bergen. Norwegian investigation authority SHK credits the crew with handling the situation “quickly and in a very good way”. The cabin crew equipped themselves with water, hand-held halon extinguishers, fireproof gloves and breathing equipment. They also informed the pilots about the situation, and a ‘Mayday’ call was transmitted. Water was used to cool the phone, causing the fire and smoke to stop, before it was secured in a metal container and placed in an aft lavatory compartment. The container was filled with water and monitored for the remainder of the flight. SHK says the phone’s owner suffered minor burns while trying to remove the battery during the 11 June 2022 event involving aircraft HA-LWZ. It points out that protective gloves enabled the crew to handle the device without delay, but says these are not necessarily specified in the requirements for standard cabin emergency kits. Wizz Air includes heat-resistant gloves in its battery-fire kit, as well as special extinguishers and a fire-resistant containment bag, plus an extra pair of fireproof gloves in the cabin.<br/>