Orient Aviation's COVID-19 briefs: Cathay Pacific Group defers A350 and A321neo deliveries and is in “ongoing” negotiations with Boeing to delay the arrival of ordered 777-9Xs in its fleet
Cathay PacificGroup has reached agreement with Airbus to defer delivery of A350-900s and A350-1000s, due to arrive in 2020 and 2021, to 2020- 2023. Ordered A321neos, also scheduled to join the Cathay Pacific Group fleet from 2020 to 2023, will be pushed back to 2020-2025. Read More »
The company said advanced negotiations with Boeing for the deferral of 777-9X deliveries were "ongoing". The airline group said in a prospectus for its upcoming rights issue, lodged with the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong today, the aircraft deferrals were "expected to produce cash savings to the Cathay Pacific Group in the short to medium term".
Elsewhere in the prospectus, which is aimed to raise HK$11.7 billion (US$1.5 billion), Cathay said it had reduced cash losses at the operating level from an initial HK$2.5 billion – HK$3 billion a month to about HK$1.5 billion a month. The company said it expected to remain at this level while minimal passenger services were in place. The airline group is operating about 7% of its normal capacity this month and plans to increase it to 10% of normal capacity in August.
Qantas today farewelled its final 747-400, with the last remaining Queen of the Skies in the fleet, VH-OEJ, departing Sydney at about 1530 local time for Los Angeles and then onwards to storage in the Mojave Desert after a hangar event with staff. The Australian carrier has operated 747s since September 1971, with of 65 747 aircraft – across six different variants – in service in the last five decades.
Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce, said the 747 put international travel within the reach of the average Australian and that it was hard to overstate the impact the type had on a country as far away as Australia. "This aircraft was well ahead of its time and extremely capable. Engineers and cabin crew loved working on it and pilots loved flying it. So did passengers. They have carved out a very special place in aviation history. I know they will be greatly missed by a lot of people, including me," Joyce said in a statement.
HNA Group said its 11 airline businesses would lift capacity in the northern summer months to about 80% of the network they were flying a year ago. In a statement yesterday, the group said it would be an increase of 10 percentage points from capacity levels in June. HNA Group said the capacity increase would result from adding more flights to popular tourist destinations, launching routes and introducing wide-body aircraft to cities such as Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Vietnam deputy prime minister, Trinh Dinh Dung, agreed in principle with a ministry of transport proposal to put on hold licences for new Vietnamese airlines until 2022, local media has reported. The temporary pause would allow Vietnam's five operating carriers – Bamboo Airways, Jetstar Pacific (soon to be rebranded as Pacific Airlines), Vasco, Vietjet Air and Vietnam Airlines – to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Vietnam's airlines will carry 32.6 million passengers in 2020, down 40.7% from a year ago, the ministry of transport estimated. There were two proposed airlines in development in Vietnam – Vietravel Airlines and Kite Air.
