unaligned

Southwest says computer problems delayed or cancelled flights in and out of airports in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, but they've been resolved. A Southwest spokesman says Friday afternoon's problems at LAX lasted about 3 ½ hours. He says gate systems and lobby check-in systems were affected. The cause is under investigation. A separate problem affected flights at Austin's airport. The problems sparked angry tweets from passengers whose flights were delayed or canceled. The Dallas-based airline had more delayed flights Friday — nearly 500 by early evening — than any other US carrier, according to tracking service FlightAware. However, it's unclear how many of those delays were due to the technical problems.<br/>

Airbus has received “hundreds of millions of dollars” in pre-delivery payments from carriers under the Hainan Airlines umbrella and is sufficiently protected from any financial risks involving the customer, said John Leahy, the planemaker’s chief of sales. “We build airplanes so you’d have an industrial risk if they were to get into some serious financial difficulty,” he said Friday. “We have airplanes coming down the assembly line for airlines in the Hainan group, but we also have pre-delivery payments -- significant, hundreds of millions of dollars in pre-delivery payments to cover our industrial exposure. So we wouldn’t be that directly impacted” by any crisis tied to the Chinese company. Leahy’s comments were in response to a query of whether strained finances at HNA Group, the parent of Hainan Airlines, would weigh on the orders the carriers have placed with Toulouse, France-based Airbus. The Chinese conglomerate has been battling scrutiny of regulators about its ownership and has faced mounting difficulties in its ability to repay debt following a $40b acquisition spree that inflated interest costs. With uncertainties lingering around the conglomerate, some subsidiaries missed payments to several Chinese banks in recent weeks, people with knowledge of the matter said this month. <br/>

A $16b deal with Emirates airline for A380 superjumbos will give Airbus "at least 10 years of visibility", the European manufacturer's CEO Tom Enders said Sunday. Emirates announced the deal on Thursday to buy 36 Airbus A380s - just days after the group said it would have to halt production without new orders. The deal is "excellent news" and "a sign of confidence on the part of a company that has built its strategy on growth around the plane", Enders told France's Journal du Dimanche newspaper. It "gives us at least 10 years of visibility." Emirates said it had placed firm orders for 20 of the double-decker aircraft with options for a further 16. Deliveries are scheduled to start in 2020. The airline is already the world's biggest customer for the A380 with 101 in its fleet and 41 more firm orders previously placed. Airbus hopes that by continuing the programme for the next 10 years or even beyond, potential customers of the A380 will decide to order the aircraft, especially in China. The group's decision in 2007 to pursue the A380, capable of packing in 853 seats, was diametrically opposed to rival Boeing's bet on the Dreamliner, marketed as a more efficient plane that could be used for both medium and long-distance flights. But the economics of the four-engine A380 have proved daunting, with airlines having to operate every flight at full capacity in order to make a profit. Airbus sales director John Leahy had said on Monday that the company would have to halt the A380 programme unless Emirates placed another order.<br/>

Alaska Airlines unveiled new uniforms for more than 19,000 of its employees Thursday. The first look at the Luly Yang-designed pieces came Thursday at a fashion show-styled unveiling among a crowd of employees in Seattle. Alaska Airlines employees showed off the new uniforms for their colleagues in the audience. Alaska Airlines says the design process for the uniforms began more than two years ago. Now that they’ve been unveiled, the first employees will begin wearing them next week. A team of 130 “wear testers” will give the uniforms a 60-day trial. The broad rollout of the new threads will then start in “late 2019.” The uniform update comes as Alaska Airlines is working to integrate the operations and crews of Virgin America, which it acquired 2016. The new designs will be worn by uniformed workers – from flight attendants and pilots to lounge workers and maintenance crews – at Alaska Airlines, Virgin America and regional unit Horizon Air. The Virgin America name and brand ultimately will be discontinued. <br/>

Ryanair shares surged after the carrier took another step toward de-escalating labour tension, saying pilots at all 15 of its bases in the UK have now voted to accept a pay deal. The shares rose the most in a month after the airline said Thursday that pay increases of as much as 20% would take effect next week. Pilots at Ryanair’s biggest base, London Stansted, signed on after previously rejecting its offer. The UK pay agreements remove one potential trigger for added labor strife at Ryanair, which agreed last month to recognize pilots’ unions across its European network after refusing to do so for years. Ryanair was forced to cancel thousands of flights because of scheduling errors last year that stoked tension with its pilots and gave unions support to press for recognition. While the company has been engaged with unions including in the UK, Ireland, Spain and Italy since December, no formal recognition agreements have been reached. Negotiations with the British Airline Pilots’ Association are ongoing, the airline said, adding that the majority of flight deck crews in Ireland have already agreed to the pay increases, with the exception of its home base in Dublin. Talks with the Irish union, Forsa, are progressing “slowly,” the company said. Most pilots at its Dublin base who have recently joined or are employed as contractors have accepted the pay offer, which Ryanair says lifts salaries ahead of low-cost competitors that operate similar Boeing 737 fleets. <br/>

Ryanair said it had filed a complaint to European competition authorities over a Polish airport company’s alleged refusal to expand Warsaw’s Modlin airport which Ryanair uses as its Polish base. Ryanair is currently a market leader in Poland with around 30% share. Its biggest rivals include Polish state carrier LOT operating from Warsaw’s main Chopin airport. “Ryanair has confirmed that over the next five years it will double the number of passengers on its flights to Warsaw from 3 to 6m annually,” the company said Friday. “To service such a level of traffic, the infrastructure of the Warsaw Modlin airport needs to be expanded, which for nearly two years has been unlawfully blocked by the Warsaw Chopin airport,” Ryanair said. The Polish state-owned airport company PPL has a 30.4% share in Modlin, which is about 40 km from Warsaw. PPL is also the sole owner of the Chopin airport, which is located within the city borders. Plans to expand Modlin -- a small airport which gets very crowded -- have slowed down after the government’s recommendation to build a large new airport in central Poland, about 100 km from Warsaw. Experts have said that opening a new hub airport would likely lead to the closure of several existing airports in central Poland. State carrier LOT has backed the plans for a new airport, which it sees as the pillar of its ambitious international expansion strategy. <br/>

Tianjin Airlines plans to connect Los Angeles with two Chinese secondary cities beginning in December. With this move, the HNA Group carrier will have three long-haul routes at Zhengzhou, a city of 9.7m people 660 km southwest of Beijing. Sichuan Airlines proposed in March 2017 to open the route between Zhengzhou and Los Angeles in October, but failed to follow through. The other city that Tianjin Airlines proposes to link with Los Angeles is Xian, which has 9.5m people and is 470 km west of Zhengzhou. For each of the two Chinese cities, Tianjin Airlines has applied to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) to fly to Los Angeles 3X-weekly with Airbus A330s or A350s. The A330-200 in its current build standard has a still-air range with full payload of 13,450 km. Zhengzhou and Xian are 10,700km and 11,000km from Los Angeles, respectively. Although Tianjin Airlines nominated December as the start date for both routes, the timing could easily slip. <br/>