star

Almost all employees at United Airlines have complied with the company's vaccine mandate -- and they do not want to fly with unvaccinated co-workers, according to the airline. United is facing a federal lawsuit brought by six of its employees who have applied for a medical or religious exemption to the vaccine mandate. The airline has said that employees with valid requests for exemptions will be placed on either medical or unpaid leave. The employees bringing the suit are challenging the airline's decision to place them on leave. US Court Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth, Texas, has ordered United to keep employees who have requested an accommodation on the payroll while the case is heard. But United said in a court filing last week that it's not practical to allow them to keep working, because some vaccinated pilots won't fly with unvaccinated staff. In a separate filing, United said flight attendants have stated they would hold similar objections to flying with unvaccinated coworkers. The company asked for permission to put unvaccinated workers on leave. "United cannot return the unvaccinated pilots to the cockpit because — aside from the various practical problems with testing and masking — we would face serious and widespread objections from the vaccinated pilots," said Kirk Limacher, vice president of HR at United, in a court filing. "In fact the objections among our vaccinated pilots are so strongly held that many of them would simply refuse to fly with the accommodated pilots. The distractions and dissension this would cause in the workforce represent an unacceptable safety risk."<br/>

Avianca Holdings asked a judge for permission to exit bankruptcy under a plan that the airline says will eliminate about $3b in debt and preserve over 10,000 jobs. Latin America’s second-largest airline before the pandemic presented its restructuring plan at a hearing in New York Tuesday. If approved, the 102-year-old company is eyeing an exit from bankruptcy this year. US Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn appeared to side with the company when a handful of objectors claimed the proposal wrongly favored some creditors over others. Glenn asked the objecting creditors to file court papers by Thursday evening listing facts related to their complaints. He did not say when he would decide whether to approve the plan. The company said it plans to exit bankruptcy soon after winning final court approval. “We remain focused on moving forward with this process as efficiently as possible,” Avianca said in an emailed statement. Under the plan, Avianca will roll over roughly $1.6b of loans it raised during the bankruptcy process and raise $200m of new equity, according to a regulatory filing. Certain lenders and noteholders including United Airlines, Kingsland Holdings, which is controlled by Salvadoran mogul Roberto Jose Kriete Avila, and Citadel, the hedge fund founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, will get 72% of the airline’s equity in exchange for canceling more than $900m of debt, according to court papers. <br/>

Polish national airline PLL LOT has filed a lawsuit against Boeing in a court in Seattle due to design flaws in 737 MAX aircraft that led to their grounding, state news agency PAP reported on Tuesday citing unnamed sources. LOT is demanding compensation of no less than 1 billion zlotys ($252.76m). The lawsuit was preceded by months of settlement negotiations that did not lead to an agreement, PAP reported. LOT spokesperson Krzysztof Moczulski confirmed to Reuters that a lawsuit has been filed but did not provide any additional information. 737 MAX aircraft was grounded worldwide in 2019 following two deadly crashes.<br/>

All Nippon Airways parent ANA Holdings is expected to book an operating loss of roughly 110b yen ($968m) for the April-September half, as Japan's aviation sector struggles to rebound amid the coronavirus pandemic. Though this figure represents an improvement from the 280.9b yen loss a year earlier, the air transport group has been slow to recover compared with its leading US rivals, which returned to profit in the July-September quarter. Revenue for ANA Holdings is believed to total around 430b yen for the April-September quarter. That figure is up roughly 50% on the year, but it remains about 40% of revenue for April-September 2019, before the coronavirus spread worldwide. Japan was under a coronavirus state of emergency for much of the April-September period due to the spread of new, more contagious variants, deterring many would-be travelers. ANA Holdings fell short of expected traffic during its peak season in July-September, with passenger numbers down 15% for domestic flights and 80% for international flights from the same quarter in 2019. In contrast, American Airlines, United and Delta all booked a net profit for July-September as the outsized US domestic travel sector recovers in step with the vaccine rollout. Greater use of vaccine passes also helped revive economic activity there. ANA Holdings' April-September results are due out Friday. Despite forecasting a 3.5b yen net profit for the fiscal year ending March 2022, the company is expected to continue facing headwinds. A full-fledged recovery depends not only on ANA's own efforts to spur demand, but also on potential policy shifts such as greater use of vaccine passes and an easing of quarantine rules that inhibit business trips.<br/>

Air New Zealand is cancelling domestic flights into early December citing alert level uncertainty but travellers say flights still in the system are much more expensive. One customer said the airline was "currently doing mass cancellations" of domestic flights in three weeks time, at a time when many university students are on the move. The airline said this afternoon it had made the call that travel in and out of Auckland was unlikely before December 6 so had cancelled flights to give customers more time to re-plan their travel at a future date when flying was more likely. At alert levels 3 and 4, flights out of Auckland are limited to a skeleton service for essential workers but there has been no announcement on when the restrictions will be lifted.<br/>