PT Garuda Indonesia needs to completely restructure its business, potentially reducing the number of planes it operates to less than half its main fleet as the airline seeks to survive the crisis wrought by the pandemic, its president told staff last week. “We have to go through a comprehensive restructuring, a total one,” President Director Irfan Setiaputra said in an address to staff on May 19, according to a recording heard by Bloomberg. “We have 142 aircraft and our preliminary calculation on how we see this recovery has been going, we will operate with a number of aircraft no more than 70.” The comments refer to the fleet of Garuda’s full-service airline, excluding its low-cost carrier Citilink. Garuda is already operating at a reduced capacity of just 41 aircraft, and is unable to fly its other planes because it hasn’t made payments to the lessors for months, Setiaputra said. Garuda’s shares slid as much as 7% -- the maximum allowed by the Indonesia Stock Exchange -- Monday morning, and were trading at their lowest since Feb. 1 at 10:03 a.m. local time. The Jakarta Composite Index rose 0.3%. In the remarks, Setiaputra also said that Garuda has around 70t rupiah ($4.9b) of debt which increases by more than 1 trillion rupiah each month as it continues to delay payments to suppliers.<br/>
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Italy is nearing a deal with the EU to set up a new national carrier from failed airline Alitalia SpA and may get an informal go-ahead by next week, newspaper Il Messaggero reported on Sunday. Talks with the EC to green-light Alitalia’s planned restart have been mired in a standstill after several rounds of meetings. EU officials are demanding a clear separation between the assets and personnel of the bankrupt airline and its replacement, to be know as Italia Trasporto Aereo SpA, or ITA. The new carrier may initially employ between 4,500 and 5,000 staff and have about 55 to 60 aircraft, according to the newspaper. The EU is requesting that the airline doesn’t hold a majority stake in the handling or maintenance activities of ITA. The carrier is in talks with Lufthansa and Delta about commercial partnerships, according to Messaggero. Corriere della Sera also reported on the negotiations, citing Delta and United as possible candidates for partnerships in the key US market. <br/>
The state-owned Italian airline that will replace bankrupt Alitalia will only start flying in September - missing the peak summer holiday season, daily Corriere della Sera reported on Saturday, citing government sources. ITA was initially expected to launch flights in April, but its chief executive said last month that services would begin in July because talks with the EC over state aid had reached a stalemate. CEO Fabio Lazzerini said he wanted flights to start in time for the busy summer season. But Saturday's Corriere della Sera said the planned start date had now been pushed forward to September because of a lack of progress in the talks between Rome and Brussels. ITA could, however, reach a deal with Alitalia that would allow it to start selling tickets for the old carrier while it waits for the EU go-ahead to buy the rest of the Alitalia's assets, the newspaper said.<br/>
Delta named on Friday longtime General Electric executive Dan Janki as its new CFO. The announcement comes as the carrier seeks to stem losses after the coronavirus pandemic decimated travel demand. The airline’s former CFO, Paul Jacobson, left the Atlanta-based airline last year and was named CFO of General Motors in October. Gary Chase and Bill Carroll served as interim co-CFOs at Delta. Janki, 53, had joined General Electric in 1992 and was most recently a senior vice president and CEO of GE’s power unit. He is set to start at Delta on July 12 and receive an annual base pay of $650,000 along with a cash signing bonus of $1.5m, Delta said in a filing.<br/>