December 1st 2024

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NOVEMBER

Efforts to revive the grounded India airline, Jet Airways, ended this month when the country’s Supreme Court ordered the company be liquidated. Read More »

The airline collapsed into bankruptcy in 2019 and was taken over by an investment consortium in 2020. The court ruled the consortium failed to meet financial commitments as proposed in its turnaround plan.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) announced it will include a first class cabin in its fleet of seven A350-900ULRs (ultra long haul) as part of a S$1.1 billion (US$836 million) retrofit program of 41 A350-900s.The introduction of a third cabin to the A350-900ULRs will eliminate 29 seats in the current two-class business and premium economy cabin layout. The retrofit program will include a new business class seat and refreshed premium economy and economy cabins in all of its A350s, the airline said.

SIA group reported net profit declined 48.5% in the six months to September 30 although demand was robust. The operating landscape continued to be challenged by geopolitical tensions, strong competition, macroeconomic uncertainty and inflationary cost pressures, it said.

In mid-November, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) gathered in Bandar Seri Begawan for its annual Assembly of Presidents, where delegates heard the region was leading the world in the pace of recovery from the pandemic.

AAPA announced a new member of the association, Lion Air Indonesia, its 16th and first LCC member.

Qantas Group was back in the news for all the wrong reasons after the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said the airline operated an A380, registration VH-OQI, with a 1.25m nylon tool left in one of its engines for 34 flight cycles - or 294 hours of flying time - before it was discovered.

The ATSB final report said Qantas maintenance engineers did not commence the lost tool procedure when the tool had been identified as missing and the certifying engineer released the aircraft for service without accounting for the tool.

A new era for Air India took off this month when its merger with Vistara was finalised.

From now, the two airlines will be run as one entity. One of the earliest signs of this strategy was Air India’s announcement that Vistara’s three-class A320s had been deployed on five domestic routes linking major metropolitan cities with high premium demand.

The 33,000 Boeing employees represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) agreed to end their seven-week work stoppage after accepting a new contract which included a 43% pay rise over four years and a US$12,000 ratification bonus. The industrial action is estimated to have cost Boeing up to US$100 million a day.

Garuda Indonesia this month named Wamildan Tsani Panjaitan to succeed Irfan Setiaputra as CEO of the airline. Wamildan is a former Lion Air Group CEO.