Short Takes
July 3rd 2020
This week marked 20 years since Indonesian low-cost carrier group, Lion Air, operated its first flight - on June 30, 2000. Since then, the privately held company has grown from a single LCC to an airline group with affiliates in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Read More » While no celebrations were held due to the coronavirus pandemic, Lion Air posted a short message on its Facebook page thanking everyone for their support in the past two decades and said it would continue to strive to be better in the years ahead.
Aircraft lessor, BOC Aviation, said in a regulatory filing this week it had cancelled an order for 30 737 MAXs and deferred delivery of other 737 MAXs. The statement to the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong said it had secured commitments with customers for all of its 737 MAXs on order that are scheduled for delivery before 2023.
The European Union Aviation Safety Authority (EASA) has banned Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) from operating into, out of or over the 27 EU member states for six months due to concerns about the validity of the Pakistani pilot licenses. The move followed reports this week that a government review found 262 of Pakistan's 860 active pilots held either fake licenses from the country's Civil Aviation Authority or had cheated on their exams.
The U. S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Wednesday that "during three days of testing this week, FAA pilots and engineers evaluated Boeing’s proposed changes in connection with the automated flight control system on the aircraft [of the 737 MAX]. While completion of the flights is an important milestone, a number of key tasks remain, including evaluating the data gathered during these flights," the FAA said in a statement.
Airbus announced this week it would cut about 15,000 jobs from its global workforce of 135,000 people over the next 12 months in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The proposed job losses are 5,100 positions in Germany, 5,000 positions in France, 1,700 positions in the United Kingdom, 900 positions in Spain and 1,300 positions at the aerospace giant's other sites worldwide, as well as a previously announced 900 positions being cut from a restructure of the Premium AEROTEC business in Germany. Airbus CEO, Guillaume Faury, said the company was facing the gravest crisis this industry had ever experienced. "We must ensure we can sustain our enterprise and emerge from the crisis as a healthy, global aerospace leader, adjusting to the overwhelming challenges of our customers," Faury said in a statement.
The Australian government said this week its International Freight Assistance Mechanism (IFAM), that provided cargo links to major trading markets, would operate until the end of calendar 2020. The IFAM, set up in April with 15 airlines and freight companies as an interim measure while air freight capacity was severely diminished by COVID-19, covered freight flights between nine points in Australia and 50 overseas destinations.
