unaligned

Porter Airlines has perhaps the loftiest goals in Canadian skies: compete with the sector’s established players, not solely by trying to beat them on cost, but by winning the hearts of its passengers. “It's a completely different way to travel in economy and it's allowed us to grow very quickly over the last 18 months,” Porter CEO Michael Deluce told Global News in an exclusive interview this week. The Toronto-based airline has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic with ambitious growth plans, adding dozens of jets and destinations to its arsenal in a bid to rapidly scale up. But with other promising Canadian airlines routinely coming up short in their bids to add competition to the tightly concentrated field, some experts say Porter could have a narrow runway to success. “The key here is, can they do it profitably and can they make it work? Because everybody's watching right now,” says Robert Kokonis, president of consultancy AirTrav Inc. Porter’s differentiators, in Deluce’s own words, are the passenger experience within the airline’s jets. Porter planes fly without a middle seat, have free on-board Wi-Fi access and offer complimentary alcoholic beverages. Lesley Keyter runs the Travel Lady agency in Calgary, catering largely to an older clientele. She tells Global News that her customers are fond of Porter because the lack of a middle seat is a boon for those with mobility concerns, and serving drinks in real glassware adds a touch of class to the experience, harkening back to the early days of flying. “Everyone is talking about it because the service is completely different than any other airline product in Canada and North America,” Deluce says.<br/>

Regional carrier CityJet has shown off the first of its MHIRJ CRJ900s to feature the most recent livery of Scandinavian operator SAS. It has put the aircraft into service from SAS’s Copenhagen base. CityJet is also investing in the modernisation of the type’s interiors which will be carried out early next year. It says the cabins will be refreshed with new leather seats and updated décor. Five more CRJ900s are scheduled to be repainted in the colour scheme – which SAS introduced five years ago – by the end of this year. Irish-based CityJet says additional aircraft will be painted in 2025. It adds that the measures follow an extension of its long-term agreement with SAS under which it operates wet-leased aircraft on behalf of the carrier from Copenhagen and Stockholm. SAS recently emerged from extensive restructuring under US Chapter 11 protection, part of which involved its joining the SkyTeam alliance.<br/>

Allen Onyema, the CEO and founder of Nigeria's Air Peace airline, has been charged with obstruction of justice in the US, adding to previous charges of bank fraud and money laundering. A press release from the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia says that Onyema, 61, was charged with "submitting false documents to the government in an effort to end an investigation of him" that led to those earlier charges, which were brought in 2019. Ejiroghene Eghagha, 42, Air Peace's chief of administration and finance, was also charged with obstruction, the press release says. The pair were indicted in 2019 over allegations that they had moved more than $20m from Nigeria through US bank accounts by using false documents based on the purchase of five Boeing 737 planes. The indictment, seen by Business Insider, says they submitted export letters of credit to fund the purchases, along with supporting purchase agreements, bills of sale, and appraisals. But prosecutors argue that these documents were fake and that the company supposedly selling the planes, the Georgia-registered firm Springfield Aviation, was owned by Onyema and managed by someone with no connection to the aviation industry. "The aircraft that was referenced in each of the export letters of credit was never owned or sold by Springfield Aviation," the indictment says. Once the money was in the US, prosecutors say Onyema laundered over $16m by moving it to other accounts.<br/>

Etihad Airways is hoping to take advantage of congestion at Dubai airport to win new business for its Abu Dhabi home base, in the fiercely competitive market for long-haul flights routed through the Gulf. The airline wants to more than triple passenger numbers to 30mn by 2030, up from 13mn last year, by attracting more people to break their long-haul flights with a stopover in Abu Dhabi. Etihad, which is owned by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, mainly competes on long-haul flights with Emirates, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines. All four are expanding, though Etihad remains the smallest. Saudi Arabia is also planning to launch an airline next year. Etihad’s CE Antonoaldo Neves told the Financial Times that there was plenty of room and demand for Abu Dhabi to expand its aviation industry. “From an airline perspective, Dubai is really congested right now. There is not a lot of capacity left in Dubai, and . . . the UAE now has Abu Dhabi to grow,” he said. Dubai International airport, which is an hour’s drive from Abu Dhabi, handled 87mn passengers in 2023. Executives at its biggest airline Emirates have said it could soon run out of space there. A new airport capable of handling up to 230mn people a year is being built but will not be open for years. Since he was appointed in 2022, Neves has steered away from direct competition with Emirates and Qatar Airways on “ultra-long-haul” flights that link cities like New York and Sydney via one stop in the Gulf. “That’s not my fight . . . other airlines like Emirates do it very well,” he said. Instead, Etihad has focused on opening up new markets, putting on multiple flights a day to destinations such as Mumbai, Oman and Riyadh that are between one to three hours from Abu Dhabi. Neves said he was confident that a global shortage of aircraft and spare parts means there is little danger of overexpansion. “Impossible, there are no planes,” he said. “The market is so artificially constrained . . . I was at a conference today and a guy said: can you sell me a plane?”<br/>

Oman Air is cutting unprofitable routes, simplifying its fleet, reducing costs and resizing its workforce as part of a turnaround plan to "fix foundations" before returning to growth, its CE has said. The state-owned airline, which announced its first new route in five years with the launch of flights to Rome in December, aims to expand in 2025 through better aircraft utilisation and increasing flight frequencies, Con Korfiatis said during the Routes World conference in Bahrain. The airline also aims to break even by 2027 as part of its restructuring plan that began at the end of last year, he said. "If you're putting up a two-storey house, you build the foundations for a two-storey house, but over the years we became a five-storey house on the same foundation. So it's time to fix those foundations and then you can go back to growth," Korfiatis said in an interview on the sidelines of the event. Korfiatis, who has 30 years of experience in the aviation industry, was appointed CE of the airline in May with the remit of steering the airline's transformation to turn its finances around. A strong flag carrier is needed to help implement Oman's Vision 2040 plan to diversify its economy and reduce its reliance on oil revenue. Under that, the sultanate aims to increase the tourism sector’s contribution to 10% of GDP and attract 11.7m tourists by 2040. The World Tourism and Travel Council (WTTC) forecasts that Oman's travel and tourism sector's contribution to the GDP in 2024 will exceed 3.3b Oman rials ($8.6b), or 7.6% of the economy, up from 2.8b rials in 2023. The sector is projected to employ more than 206,000 people this year, up from 191,500 last year.<br/>

An Air India Express plane bound for Sharjah was forced to make an emergency landing after a hydraulic failure was reported following take-off. The flight, from Trichy in Tamil Nadu state to the Emirates, had 141 people on board. It returned safely to its airport of departure at 8.15pm local time (6.45pm UAE) after a 'full emergency" was declared about two hours earlier. Ram Kinjarapu, India's Minister of Civil Aviation, praised the emergency response to the situation. "We are relieved that the aircraft has landed safely at Trichy Airport. The crew followed all safety protocols, ensuring the well-being of every passenger during the emergency," the minister said on social media platform X. He said the country's Directorate General of Civil Aviation had been instructed to carry out a "thorough examination of the aircraft" to determine the cause of the fault. "In the meantime, Air India Express has been advised to provide all necessary assistance to the passengers, including alternate arrangements for their onward journey," Kinjarapu said. Air India Express is run by a fully owned division of Air India, which conglomerate Tata Group purchased from the government in 2022. It operates more than 2,500 flights weekly across 31 domestic and 14 international airports.<br/>