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Transat, the Montreal-based vacation operator that Air Canada gave up trying to buy earlier this month, obtained C$700m in emergency aid from the Canadian government to stay afloat during the pandemic. The company took loan facilities of C$390m for operations and another C$310m to finance customer refunds for flights canceled during the pandemic. Transat will also issue 13m warrants to the government to buy shares at C$4.50 each. The deal follows a C$5.9b rescue package for Air Canada two weeks ago, reflecting PM Justin Trudeau’s case-by-case approach in supporting the industry. It helps Transat, which announced the suspension of all regular flights on Jan. 29, buy some time in the hope that Covid-19 vaccinations can salvage the summer travel season. “With this support, we now look forward to resuming operations as soon as safe travel is possible and travel restrictions can be lifted,” CEO Jean-Marc Eustache said. “We will then be able to implement our plan to make Transat a solid and profitable company once again, one that will continue to symbolize leisure travel for its many customers in Quebec and elsewhere.”<br/>

Brazilian airline Gol expects sales to pick up as a second wave of coronavirus infections recedes, prompting customers to book more trips. Normalisation of demand is within reach despite a 50% year-on-year decline in sales during the first three months of the year, executives say during the Sao Paulo-headquartered company’s first-quarter earnings call on 29 April. The company reports Q1 revenue of R$1.6b ($299m), down from R$3.1b a year ago. Its quarterly loss was R$892m. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, the company has maintained the necessary agility to adjust its supply according to fluctuations in demand, and it remains to be a differentiator for us,” says Gol CE Paulo Kakinoff. As cases decline, “GOL has seen a corresponding resumption in ticket sales over the last few weeks”. A sharp reduction in demand was precipitated by a spike in Covid-19 cases. “Pressure on the hospital network… impacted the increase in the number of cancellations and no-shows”, the carrier says.<br/>

Budget airline Norwegian Air expects demand for European short-haul travel to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2023 or 2024, it said as it presented a Q1 pretax loss of 1.19b crowns ($145m) on Thursday. The carrier this month said it aims to raise 6b crowns in fresh capital, up from the 4.5b originally planned, as part of a scheme to emerge from court-ordered bankruptcy protection next month. “It is not expected that demand for short-haul travel in Europe will return to 2019 levels before 2023 or 2024 and so Norwegian will deploy capacity back into the market at a pace that matches this,” the airline said. Financed largely by debt, Norwegian Air grew rapidly as it served routes across Europe and to North and South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East before the COVID-19 pandemic plunged the airline into crisis. The carrier is currently operating nine aircraft, mainly on Norwegian domestic routes.<br/>

Icelandair Group has highlighted cargo activity as a strong performance area in the first quarter, a period in which the company generated a net loss of just over $30m. Revenues for the first three months of the year reached $57.3m, a decline of 73%, but the company points out that cargo revenues increased by 64%. Freight volumes, it adds, exceeded those from prior to the pandemic. But international route bookings for the second quarter are “still weak”, it says, although it remains confident that a “moderate” ramp-up will emerge over the period. It expects further capacity increases from the third quarter. “Given the current booking status, the outlook for the [fourth] is good,” it adds. Icelandair Group states that leasing and charter operations – derived from its Loftleidir division – provided “important” revenue streams during the first three months. It puts overall liquidity at just under $282m.<br/>

The High Court told Ryanair to compensate passengers for hundreds of flights cancelled due to pilot strikes in 2018 in the first court order against an airline led by the UK aviation regulator. Three years ago, Ryanair pilots and cabin crew took industrial action in an attempt to secure better pay and conditions across large parts of its network. On one of the worst days of the strikes, the airline had to cancel 400 flights, or 15% of its daily total, at the height of the summer holiday season. The payouts are likely to be E250 per passenger for most journeys, which are short-haul, and E400 for a smaller number of longer distance flights. That could result in costs running into the mid-single digits of millions as more than 15,000 customers are thought to have been affected. Ryanair declined to comment. Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier can appeal against the verdict. It had refused to pay compensation to passengers on the grounds that the delayed flights counted as “extraordinary circumstances”, therefore exempting them from compensation under European rules on air passengers’ rights. The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which took legal action against the airline at the end of 2018, disputed that, claiming passengers were protected by law to compensation.<br/>

Ryanair is to appeal an English High Court ruling that it must compensate customers hit by a 2018 pilot strike, the airline said on Thursday. The Irish airline in 2018 told customers disrupted by widespread pilot strikes that they were not eligible for compensation under EU law because the industrial action represented “extraordinary circumstances.” Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority took legal action to challenge the classification of the strikes as “extraordinary circumstances” and the High Court on Thursday agreed with that interpretation. Ryanair, whose position had been backed by a lower court last year, said it would appeal. “We have instructed our lawyers to appeal this decision and we are confident that it will be successfully overturned,” a spokeswoman for the airline said. <br/>

Ryanair plans to power 12.5% of its flights with sustainable aviation fuels by 2030, the airline said on Thursday days after the owner of rival BA committed to using the fuels to power 10% of its flights. Group CE Michael O’Leary, who has pointed to European Union environmental taxes targeting low-cost carriers as a major threat to the sector, had said earlier this month the proportion would likely be just 3-5% in the coming decade. “As Europe’s largest airline, we have a responsibility to minimise our impact on the environment,” the airline’s Director of Sustainability Thomas Fowler said in a statement that said the airline commits to the target. The budget carrier says the high number of passengers it squeezes into its jets, the limited number of empty seats and the low average age of its fleet gives it one of the lowest levels of carbon use per passenger in Europe. It says its order of 210 Boeing 737 MAX jets, which use around 16% less fuel than the current generation of 737s, will cement Ryanair’s leadership in the area.<br/>

EasyJet has urged the UK government to declare most of Europe “green” when it publishes its list of permitted destinations for the summer, citing research that suggests travel would have a very limited impact on the number of people admitted to hospital with Covid in the UK. The airline said analysis showed mass travel to popular destinations such as Spain, Portugal and Greece would not affect the UK’s Covid case rate, and would risk a small number of hospital admissions. The government is expected to confirm where and when leisure travel will be allowed in the coming weeks, with hopes that holidays could restart from 17 May. Under the indicative framework set out this month for a traffic light system to categorise all destinations, only countries with high vaccination rates, low case numbers and reliable data will be on the green list – allowing holidaymakers to avoid quarantine on return. EasyJet said research commissioned from epidemiologists at Yale University in the US showed unrestricted travel from much of Europe would increase hospital admissions by 4%, or six cases in the UK on the current daily average.<br/>

Troubled Hainan Airlines reported a record operating loss for the year ended 31 December, as heavy impairment costs and a steep decline in revenue punished its earnings. The carrier was CNY71.6b ($11b) in the red for the year, reversing the modest CNY798m operating profit it reported in 2019. Hainan, whose parent HNA Group is in the middle of a creditor-led bankruptcy reorganisation, saw its full-year revenue plunge nearly 60% year on year to CNY29.4b, due largely to a collapse in travel demand from the coronavirus pandemic. Costs, meanwhile, fell just 34% year on year to CNY50.7b. The carrier took on a hefty impairment charge — at nearly CNY30b — according to a Shanghai Stock Exchange disclosure dated 30 April. This was due to its dealings with its troubled parent and its sister companies. Hainan also reported a record net loss of CNY64b for the year, reversing the CNY519m net profit in 2019. <br/>