Star Alliance Wins Out as ITA Chooses SkyTeam
ITA Airways, Italy’s newest carrier – if you put aside the fact that it’s not actually Italy’s newest carrier – gave a resounding win to the Star Alliance today when it chose the status quo to remain in SkyTeam.
ITA’s “predecessor,” Alitalia was a member of SkyTeam, and despite its best efforts, the alliance was unable to rid itself of its Italian cornerstone. The new carrier was “courted” by both SkyTeam, led by Delta, and the Star Alliance, led by Lufthansa, to get the new carrier to join their respective alliances. The effort made was compared to someone in a bar telling their friend to hold them back while acted as if they were looking to start a fight.
ITA says it will work closely with SkyTeam to add alliance-wide benefits such as lounge access, additional baggage allowances, and more. The response from several carriers in the alliance after hearing the news was to ask ITA to “Just focus on you. Operate the flights you say you’re going to operate, and we’ll let the rest work itself out.”
IAG Offers Concessions to Close Air Europa Sale
IAG’s $583 million purchase of Air Europa continues to receive scrutiny from the European Commission as it deals with antitrust issues stemming from the potential purchase. The EC had previously set a deadline to rule on the purchase by November 5, but extended it for a second time, this time to January 4 just because it seemed like a fun way to torture the two airlines.
IAG suggested divesting itself of several routes to ease antitrust concerns, choosing not to take American and JetBlue’s strategy of “look away, it’s not that big a deal.” The government is expected to seek more feedback from potential competitors and consumer groups, because there’s nothing governments enjoy more than commissioning a study.
The concern stems from the government’s belief that the two companies compete on several routes in Spain, including transatlantic routes from Madrid and short-haul, regional routes. The EC said that the sale could potentially reduce competition on as many of 70 city pairs to and from Spain, many of which have IAG and Air Europa as the only airlines operating.
ANA Expects to Cut Staff Amidst Operating Loss
ANA – Japan’s largest airline – expects to eliminate as many as 9,000 jobs within the next five years as it continues to struggle to return to profitability following the pandemic. The 9,000 jobs represent about 20% of the carrier’s workforce and come after a loss of $1 billion for the six months ending September 30.
ANA has reported losses for seven consecutive quarters but is hopeful of eking out a small profit for the final quarter of 2021. Despite its cautiously optimistic outlook for Q4 2021, it expects to post a loss of over $1 billion for the fiscal year than ends in March, after previously predicting it would be a profitable year for the airline. Oops.
The airline is hopeful that domestic passenger levels can recover to 85% of pre-pandemic figures by March but expects its international travel to only reach 30% of what it was in 2019. Japan is still under significant travel restrictions which prevent most non-resident foreigners from entering the country.
- Aeromexico will split its footprint in Mexico City between T1 and T2, beginning December 11, and if you’ve never switched between the two… it sucks.
- aha! finally realized the only thing holding it back from world domination was nonstop service to Spokane, Washington. The carrier is fixing that by adding 3x-weekly service from Reno to Spokane beginning December 15.
- Air France-KLM committed to doing some things better than it has been with regards to carbon emissions.
- Air Incheon retired its final B737-400(SF), leaving it with an all-B737NG fleet.
- Corendon Airlines plans to open a base in Denmark.
- Cubana will resume domestic flights later this year.
- FLYONE Armenia received its operating certificate.
- IndiGo is changing terminals for its flights in both Delhi and Mumbai.
- Qantas delayed its Melbourne-London flights to November 27, and Brisbane to LA and Singapore to February.
- UIA is resuming service to Tel Aviv on November 8.
- United ended its partnership with Hertz, with free status matches ending on Sunday. The deal came to an end after United officials flew to meet with Hertz to discuss renewal but Hertz was out of cars and the UA team couldn’t get to the meeting so they just went home instead.
- Wingo was awarded-o a foreign air carrier permit from the DOT.
Why wouldn’t the skeleton go in the haunted house? He had no guts.