Southwest is Prepared for Spring Break ’22 – Probably
Incoming Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said on Thursday that the carrier is halfway to its goal of bringing on 5,000 new workers this year and has already cut its schedule for the remainder of 2021 to avoid service disruptions.
The carrier expects to meet demand for Spring Break travel next year, and hopes to have another 8,000 new staff added on by then. But Jordan made it clear that if staffing levels did not reach what was deemed necessary, the airline would reduce its schedule to a point where it could comfortably operate. Meltdowns this summer from American and Spirit provide a road map of what not to do, especially Spirit, which canceled nearly a week’s worth of flights stranding customers in the most undesirable places Spirit flies, like Atlantic City and Myrtle Beach.
Southwest raised its starting pay to $15 an hour and is offering retention bonuses, referral bonuses, and cost-of-living bonuses for employees in locations with higher cost of living like Amarillo or Albuquerque.
BA Takes Its LCC Ball and Goes Home
British Airways dramatically huffed and puffed, announcing that it’s no longer planning on launching a low-cost subsidiary based at London/Gatwick after BA’s pilot union walked away from the negotiating table earlier this week.
The union left negotiations because the carrier would not agree to offer the same benefits to pilots of the new subsidiary as it offers mainline BA pilots, which misses the whole point of having an LCC in the first place. To show that it can walk away from a negotiating table also, the carrier said it wasn’t interested in creating the LCC anymore, and in fact would eliminate most of its short-haul operations at the airport.
The decision by BA is likely a negotiating ploy to get BALPA back to the bargaining table, as it seems unlikely that years of work gathering Gatwick slots would be all for naught after one disagreement.
British Airways planned for the airline to start with up to 17 A320 aircraft based at LGW in summer 2022, with more added as needed. With its plans scrapped for now, BA will store those 17 planes at gates at Heathrow with no intention to operate them, forcing more flights to operate from bus gates just for the fun of it.
SAA Hopes Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
South African Airways resumed operating both domestic and regional service within Africa today, the first flights for the carrier in almost 18 months.
South African went into business rescue in December of 2019, before the pandemic, and its fiscal instability was exacerbated by the worldwide shutdown, forcing the airline to stop flying in April of 2020. The first flight back left Johannesburg this morning and landed shortly after in Cape Town. The most remarkable news is that the airplane was not impounded upon arrival and was free to operate another flight. The flight is one of three daily round trips between the two airports on SAA.
Other service launching today goes to five regional destinations around Africa: Accra (ACC), Kinshasa (FIH), Harare (HRE), Lusaka (LUN), and Maputo (MPM).
- Aeromexico had its exclusivity period to file a reorganization plan extended until October 8.
- Alitalia retired its lone B777-300ER. It thinks it might have had more at one point, but it misplaced them at the onset of the pandemic.
- Avelo is adding a second destination from Las Vegas — Arcata/Eureka. The carrier will operate the route with twice-weekly service on Thursday and Sunday.
- British Airways reopened Executive Club membership for Australia and New Zealand residents for the first time since 2003.
- Condor is launching 5x-weekly service from Frankfurt to New York/JFK beginning November 11.
- Fiji Link resumed scheduled flight operations on Wednesday. It’s operating twice-daily round trip service between Suva (SUV) and Nadi (NAN).
- flydubai is resuming operations to both Prague and Zagreb beginning September 23. It will operate to Prague 5x-weekly and Zagreb 2x-weekly.
- Lufthansa is bringing its final B747 out of storage and back into service.
- Northern Pacific Airlines, an airline that isn’t quite yet an airline, purchased six B757-200 aircraft to operate its new service to Asia and the contiguous United States from its Anchorage hub.
- United flight attendants will not be cleaning bathrooms outside of what’s in their union contract despite on-board announcements for passengers to let flight attendants know when restrooms have become soiled.
- Vistara will begin twice-weekly service from Delhi to Paris/CDG beginning November 7.
How does a penguin build a house? Igloos it together.