Singapore Airlines (SIA) group CEO, Goh Choon Phong, told Singapore’s Sunday Times newspaper over the weekend management's immediate response to the coronavirus pandemic was managing costs and developing transformation initiatives rather than making staff redundant.Read More » Goh said cutting staff was "not our focus at the moment, but it's something that obviously we will have to review". The SIA CEO said the airline group had implemented pay cuts and introduced both voluntary and compulsory leave without pay in efforts to manage staff costs.
In a regulatory filing to the Singapore stock exchange, the airline group has announced it had completed an S$10 billion (US$7.2 billion) capital rising of an S$8.8 billion rights issue, S$900 million in long-term loans secured against aircraft and S$500 million in short-term loans and lines of credit. It announced the planned fundraising process in March. "This puts SIA on a steady footing as it tackles the challenges posed by the global COVID-19 outbreak," the airline said.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) has dropped plans to ban all Chinese carriers from operating scheduled passenger flights to the country. Instead, the DoT order, dated June 5, said it would permit Chinese airlines "to operate, in the aggregate, a total of two weekly round-trip scheduled passenger flights to and from the United States". The revised DoT order followed China easing some restrictions on international routes late last week.
Air New Zealand (Air NZ) CEO, Greg Foran, has told staff the company planned to "survive, then revive and finally thrive" in the next two years with the aim of restoring healthy profits for the carrier by August 2022. The letter to staff, which AirNZ disclosed in a regulatory filing to the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges today, said the company may be 70% of its size by August 2022, compared with the pre-coronavirus pandemic, and would operate fewer wide-body aircraft. Foran foreshadowed more job losses in addition to the 4,000 staff that already had been cut from its payroll to save NZ$150 million (US$98 million) in wages.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said today all restrictions on domestic movement would be lifted at midnight tonight. She said it would make the country "if not the most open, one of the most open economies in the world". While the move to Alert Level 1 would mean travel across the country was "fully opened", Ardern said New Zealand would keep its international border closed for the period ahead as work continued on a proposed trans-Tasman safe travel zone, or bubble, with Australia.
The Australian government said yesterday it would continue to subsidise a minimum domestic network of air services operated by Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia until September 30. A separate scheme that covered the "operating shortfalls" of a number of regional services would be extended until December 31, it said.
Indonesia's government-owned airports operator, Angkasa Pura I, has launched an air freight service linking nine cities across the archipelago, as well as an international freight flight to Singapore. The managing director of Angkasa Pura subsidiary Angkasa Pura Logistics (APL), Danny Thaharsyah, said in a statement the service would focus on marine and perishable goods.
Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) figures showed Chinese airlines carried 1.04 million passengers on June 5, representing a significant milestone in aviation’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, FlightGlobal reported. CAAC figures showed Chinese airlines operated 11,000 flights on June 5, the highest number of daily services since February this year, it said.
