Delta to Resume Bulk of Flying to Asia & Europe Next Year
1 Delta Air Lines will be resuming much of its pre-pandemic service trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific flying from its U.S. gateways in the coming months. It plans to add over 50 transoceanic flights next summer, compared to the record-low summer 2020 schedule.
Over the Pacific, Delta plans to serve Tokyo/Haneda from seven destinations including 4x weekly service from Honolulu beginning this December, with Seoul/Incheon seeing service return to Minneapolis in April. Delta plans to continue its 3x weekly flight to Sydney from Los Angeles, which will become daily in 2021.
Across the Atlantic, Delta will ramp its operation back up as quickly as September which is — checks calendar — next week. Service will resume from Atlanta to Lagos, Boston to Heathrow and JFK to Accra, Barcelona, Madrid and Rome.
Delta also expects to resume service next summer to many of its secondary international gateways including Paris/CDG to Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Raleigh-Durham and Salt Lake City; and Amsterdam to Portland.
Just to be clear, yes, this is an airline announcing that they are adding service right now. This is most of the good news today.
Hawaiian Braces for More Layoffs
2 Hawaiian Airlines sent official notice today that they are preparing for more layoffs. This notice will affect 35 employees at both HNL and OGG airports plus the airline’s corporate headquarters. This notice comes in addition to one sent earlier this month, announcing the airline will lay off about 2,000 workers, including more than 600 flight attendants.
Hawai’i has a mandatory 14-day quarantine for visitors that has decimated tourism to the state and caused Hawaiian to see a 90% reduction in loads from a year ago.
ExpressJet to End Operation on September 30
3 ExpressJet had little to look forward to after last month’s announcement that it lost the competition to be the lone E145 operator for United Express. Today, the airline announced it will close up shop at the end of next month.
With September 30 being the final day that the airline will receive CARES Act funding, it will lay off the bulk of its workforce the next day and cease flight operations. The airline will keep a handful of employees around to wind down the business side of the operation and turn the lights out — but its final flight will be on September 30.
ExpressJet had received $110 million in funds from the CARES Act, which, like all other airlines was conditional on not implementing any involuntary layoffs or furloughs prior to October 1.
Virgin Atlantic Introduces COVID Insurance
4 In an attempt to convince people to buy tickets on a bankrupt carrier, Virgin Atlantic is adding comprehensive COVID insurance for all passengers flying on the airline beginning today, August 24. The policy, according to Virgin Atlantic, is the most comprehensive of all insurance policies currently offered in the industry. It will be offered at no cost for flights through the end of March 2021.
Coverage will be applied automatically to all existing and new bookings but only applies if a customer falls ill with the virus while on a trip they flew on with Virgin Atlantic. It’s important to note that the insurance only covers COVID-related illnesses and does not replace traditional travel insurance.
The policy includes coverage for the whole trip, regardless of the length of the trip, age or passenger or cabin class of the flight. The airline originally planned to only offer insurance to those in Upper Class, because it didn’t deem anyone flying coach worth the hassle. There was concern, though, about the optics of reminding the public it even had a coach cabin.
Ryanair, Employees Come to Agreement to Save Jobs
5 Ryanair and its employees have come to an agreement to cut salaries in exchange for saving jobs and preventing some of the airline’s planned layoffs. This comes a long way from the rumo(u)red original offer from Ryanair that the employees pay the airline.
The airline originally planned up to 3,000 more layoffs, but has now revised its estimate of job losses after 97% of pilots and more than 90% of cabin crew signed up to pay cuts and work practice changes. The BBC is reporting that some of those changes include a 50% price increase in all vending machines at corporate HQ, charging pilots a €20 ignition fee to turn the aircraft on at the beginning of each day and charging flight attendants a 10% commission for all on-board sales.
In the meantime, Ryanair says number of redundancies will depend winter sales levels and how much the industry recovers in early 2021. To continue its quest to drive revenue, the airline is reportedly considering placing its website behind a paywall, charging would-be customers to search for flights and accessing their reservations.
Airline Potpourri
- Air Serbia announced that it is now the leading carrier on flights between Switzerland and Serbia, which is less impressive than if it were the leading carrier on flights between Switzerland and say…Malaysia.
- Emirates is in discussions to swap some of its 777s currently on order for 787s instead. When asked why it was considering the swap and airline spokesperson said “because the 787s are 10 better than the 777.”
- Lufthansa says they have paid out over 90% of its refund requests that have come in this year — totaling €2.3 billion. Color us skeptical.
- KLM plans to resume service to Hangzhou, China (HGH) later this week with once-weekly service from Amsterdam, via Seoul.
- Nepal Airlines will resume international operations on September 1.
Andrew’s Moment of Levity
I starting losing my hair years ago. I started going bald in college. Now, 20 years later, I won’t throw my old comb away. I just can’t part with it.