Airlines & Lessors

At the moment, few airlines can look beyond a two-month planning window as COVID-19 has rendered traditional forecasting tools useless.

A focus on providing same-day return flights on European business routes will form a key part of Spanish flag-carrier Iberia’s winter schedule.

Southwest Airlines reported softening bookings trends for November and December, reflecting a surge in COVID-19 cases across the U.S.

Air France-KLM Group CEO Ben Smith is reportedly predicting leisure and business demand will rebound as soon as a COVID-19 treatment/vaccine becomes available or rapid tests are put in place.

Thai Airways’ auditor has refused to sign off on the airline’s 2020 third-quarter (Q3) financial report.

The brand of Ryanair’s Austrian carrier Laudamotion will finally disappear from the market once and for all in the coming weeks, Laudamotion CEO Andreas Gruber said.

Singapore Airlines has raised S$850 million ($630 million) in a convertible bond issue exercise reserved for a “variety of institutional investors.”

Vietjet Air has announced a partnership with freight carrier UPS, allowing both airlines to leverage air cargo capacity on each others’ aircraft between the U.S. and Asia, and especially within Vietnam and Thailand.

Avianca CEO Anko van der Werff tells ATW correspondent Kurt Hofmann about a year like no other and explains the airline’s future plans as it looks to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

North American passenger carriers were able to avoid the high-profile airline failures seen in other regions, but there is no clear indication when daily losses will cease.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caught the entire industry off guard. While air transport has faced numerous previous crises, the fact that subsequent recoveries occurred at different rates had led to complacency and ill-preparedness for an event of such magnitude.

Airlines for America (A4A) forecast a modest pick-up in air travel demand over the Thanksgiving holiday, but warned that the outlook for carriers remains “dire” amid a third wave of COVID-19 in the U.S.

In the roller coaster that is the COVID-19 pandemic, bigger is not always better.

Tougher travel restrictions imposed across parts of Europe to help curb a second wave of COVID-19 cases have forced KLM to cut its planned seat capacity and flight frequencies.

Eurowings expects that demand from leisure and visiting-friends-and-relatives (VFR) travelers will drive the recovery and so plans to expand its offering to these customers.

Australian carrier Regional Express Holdings (Rex) has revealed new details of its ambitions to rapidly ramp up its proposed new jet services on domestic trunk routes.

Virgin Atlantic would be willing to partner with Flybe should the UK regional airline’s planned resurrection come to fruition.

Emirates expects a “steep rebound” in air travel to take place once a COVID-19 vaccine is available, according to its chairman and CEO Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum.

As it continues to work through a Chapter 11 restructuring, Avianca Holdings is planning to emerge from the process as a much leaner airline.

Groundings and layoffs shift attention to pilots’ well-being as well as competency.

British Airways (BA) is reportedly halting all its services from London Gatwick once more and placing more staff on furlough as a result of the current month-long COVID-19 lockdown that began in England Nov. 5.

A new survey of passenger attitudes about air travel poses potential long-term problems for airlines seeking to restore traffic in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

LCC Air Arabia believes it is in a strong position to weather the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and that the air transport industry’s fundamentals remain strong.

A common European COVID health pass must be implemented to “open the world and restore mobility,” the chief commercial officer of Copenhagen Airport (CPH) has said.

Aeroflot CEO Vitaly Saveliev has been appointed the new Russian transport minister, succeeding Yevgeny Dietrich, who headed the ministry from May 2018.