Garuda Indonesia carried 222,979 passengers on its domestic network in September, up 18.7% from 187,831 in August, the airline group's monthly traffic report showed.Read More »Despite the month-on-month improvement, the figure was down 82.3% from 1.3 million in September 2019. Domestic passenger load factor increased to 29.5% for the month from 29.2% in August. International traffic was down 96.8% year-on-year for the reported 30 days.
Passengers flying the carrier’s LCC, Citilink, rose 18.7%, to 303,792, in September, from 373,588 in August. The year-on-year decline in September was 68.6%, from 967,190 in September 2019. Citilink’s passenger load factor of 39.3% in September compared with 42.8% in August and 72% a year earlier. "Citilink showed significant improvement in September," Garuda said.
Singapore's Changi Airport Group (CAG) welcomed a new cargo route on Monday, when China's YTO Cargo Airlines began a three times week service between Hangzhou and the city state. CAG said Alibaba's logistics arm, Cainiao, would use YTO to transport e-commerce shipments on the route. “In these challenging times, the additional capacity provided by YTO Cargo Airlines will support global supply chains and facilitate the transfer of essential goods between countries," CAG managing director of air hub development, Lim Ching Kiat, said in a statement. CAG has added four freighter links to China in the last seven months.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) and subsidiary, SilkAir, plan to achieve a combined capacity level at the end of January 2021 of 16% of pre-COVID-19 levels. While schedules posted on the SIA website showed no new routes were listed for the introduction in January, frequency routes were planned on a number of existing routes. SIA has said it hoped to reach 15% of its capacity pre-COVID-19 by December 2020.
Wet lease operator, Hi Fly, said overnight it planned to phase out its A380 when the aircraft's lease expired later this year. "The decision to not extend the initial agreed lease period came as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic that drastically reduced demand for very large aircraft," Hi Fly said in a statement. The company said the A380 9H-MIP, which it has flown for three years and featured the distinctive "Save the Coral Reefs" livery, would be replaced by more A330 family aircraft, which it described as a "smaller and more adequate aircraft for current market conditions".
Aviation services provider, GA Telesis, said overnight it had been awarded an exclusive mandate to remarket four China Airlines 747-400s. The company said the aircraft – MSN 33734, 33735, 33736 and 33737 – had General Electric CF6-80C2B1F engines and were available for immediate sale, with deliveries expected in the first quarter of calendar 2021. GA Telesis said it was the third major marketing project it had undertaken on behalf of the Taiwanese carrier.
New Zealand citizens and permanent residents returning home must have a confirmed place in the country's managed isolation allocation system (MIAS) to be permitted to land in the country. The scheme was announced a month ago in efforts to control the number of people in hotel quarantine for COVID-19. It came into force overnight. Passengers must obtain a voucher from the country's managed isolation and quarantine website to board flights. As of this afternoon, there were no available places in hotel quarantine until December 20, according to government figures.
