by JORDAN CHONG  

December 1st 2020

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JULY

As airlines racked up year-on-year declines in passenger numbers, with capacity and demand down in the 90% and above range, attention turned to month-on-month comparisons for signs of improvement. Read More »

Taiwan’s two largest carriers, China Airlines (CAL) and EVA Air, posted demand and passenger revenue growth in June compared with May, as the threat of the coronavirus subsided and restrictions on travel were relaxed.

Separately, Taiwan’s legislature approved a proposal to rename CAL to better reflect its Taiwanese origins.

The CAL and EVA figures, which represented a fraction of the traffic before the onset of COVID-19, aligned with recent IATA observations that some parts of the world were beginning to open up and that April would be known as the cruellest month for airlines.

These pieces of encouraging news were overshadowed by losses reported by Cathay Pacific, the pessimistic outlook of SIA and more redundancies across the sector.

In addition to the hefty HK$9.9 billion (US$1.3 billion) interim loss, SIA Group said it would defer aircraft deliveries to preserve cash, with A350-900s and A350-1000s due to arrive in 2020-2021 to join the fleet in 2020-2023 and A321neos scheduled for 2020-2023 deliveries delayed up to 2025.

SIA said the recovery trajectory would be “slower than initially projected”. The airline group was operating 6% of its originally scheduled capacity, with the figure forecast to creep to 7% in August.

Later in the month, SIA reported a quarterly net loss of S$1.123 billion (US$816 million) for the three months to June 30.

AirAsia Group said it was working on raising as much as one billion ringgit (US$235 million) in fresh capital after reporting a 953 million ringgit net loss for the three months to March 31, 2020, a reversal of more than a billion ringgit from the previous corresponding period.

In India, IndiGo CEO, Ronojoy Dutta, outlined plans to “bid a painful adieu” to 10% of the Indian carrier’s workforce due to the pandemic.

Jeju Air left fellow South Korean LCC, Eastar Jet, at the altar when it walked away from a proposed takeover. Violations of the purchase contract and the impact of COVID-19 were blamed for cancellation of a deal backed by the South Korean government. The state-run Korea Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of Korea were ready to offer loans to Jeju Air to support the transaction. In Bangkok, Chansin Treenuchagron was appointed acting president of THAI.