As Turkey suffers its deepest tourism decline on record, its flagship carrier is building a business less dependent on demand for holidays to its home market. Turkish head Temel Kotil downplayed concerns of losses from a spate of terrorist attacks and political disputes that have kept Europeans away. "The number of passengers is solid," Kotil said, unfazed by a net loss of US$432m in the first 3 months of the year, his worst quarter since taking the helm in 2005. "Local visits have dropped down, but we’ve been able to substitute transit passengers." Passers-through now comprise about 60% of the carrier’s revenue, "so that means we’ve been able to find passengers from the global networks," Kotil said. “Our global market share depends on transit.” <br/>
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Egyptian officials said Thursday they would send the “black boxes” from EgyptAir Flight 804 to France for repair, further slowing efforts to determine why the plane plunged into the Mediterranean Sea last month. Search teams a week ago retrieved the Airbus A320’s cockpit voice recorder and a day later recovered the flight-data recorder. Those were handed to the Egyptian-led team investigating the crash, which began tests on the devices Sunday. The Egyptian-led crash probe Thursday said the devices had sustained too much damage to be fixed and analysed in Egypt. They would be sent to France next week for repair before being returned to Egypt for analysis. Egyptian officials last week said the data analysis could “take several weeks.” <br/>
A standoff between Air Canada and the Manitoba govt over the airline’s right to move maintenance jobs out of Winnipeg ended Wednesday with the signing of Bill C-10 into law. The contentious bill to amend the Air Canada Public Participation Act and lift a long-standing requirement that the airline keep its maintenance operations in Winnipeg, Montreal and Mississauga boiled over Tuesday with a senior executive at the airline issuing an ultimatum to the Federal govt. “If this bill does not go forward, we will not create the centre of excellence in Manitoba, and we will not create a centre of excellence in Quebec,” Kevin Howlett, the senior vice-president for govt affairs and regional markets for Air Canada told the Senate. <br/>
In the month of May, Brussels Airlines recorded a light passenger growth of 4.2% compared to May 2015. The Seat Load Factor increased slightly. In May, 697,941 passengers flew with Brussels Airlines to a European, African or North American destination. That’s 28,091 more than the same period last year (+4.2%). The European network generated a passenger growth of 3.4%. On its flights to and from Africa, the airline carried 3.8% more passengers. The number of customers that chose a trans-Atlantic flight grew by 25.4%. This remarkable growth is mainly due to the newly introduced service to Toronto, which creates more capacity, and logically, higher passenger numbers. After the passenger decrease in March and April as a result of the attacks, Brussels Airlines now registers a light customer growth. <br/>