United and American Look to Add Regional Pilots
The regional affiliates of both American and United are getting desperate to add pilots amidst a growing shortage of qualified workers willing to fly long hours to small airports for little pay.
United was forced to eliminate service to nine small cities earlier this month, and a lack of pilots to fly the routes was a significant contributor to the decision. American is offering crews up to $187,500 in bonus pay for accepting jobs at its three wholly-owned subsidiaries – Envoy, Piedmont, and PSA. The bonuses are divided between signing bonuses, a bonus for being upgraded to captain, and a third bonus for eventually being promoted to mainline AA. A fourth bonus was to be offered to pilots who didn’t crash, but that idea was nixed at the last minute.
United regional carrier CommutAir is offering $50,000 signing bonuses while GoJet is offering up to $40,000 for signing on and a guarantee to not have to operate flights to Newark for your first year of employment.
Cathay Pacific Fires Three Pilots over Quarantine Breach
Cathay Pacific fired three cargo pilots who caught COVID-19 earlier this month during a layover near Frankfurt’s airport.
The three pilots, all of whom were not from Hong Kong, were fired for “a serious break of requirements for crew during overseas layovers.” Due to their actions, hundreds of other Cathay Pacific crew have been forced to quarantine for 21 days after being deemed close contacts with the three sacked pilots. (Those pilots really got around.)
Since the incident, Cathay Pacific has started putting security guards in hotel hallways of its international layover hotels to make sure its employees don’t leave their hotel rooms. The security guards are all given a complimentary copy of the book 1984 to read while on shift.
Eastar Jet Plans February Return
Korean carrier – and noted longtime rival of WestJet – Eastar Jet is currently hoping to return to the air in February after over a year of being grounded.
The airline’s AOC has been inactive since May of 2020, but that’s supposed to change in January. The Bankruptcy Court of Seoul gave permission to Korean developer Sung Jung to acquire 80% of the airline for about $100 million. Eastar has been unable to find an investor since Jeju Air dropped its purchase of the struggling airline during the pandemic. Jeju had originally agreed to purchase 51% of Eastar in December of 2019.
Jeju Air lost $70 million in Q3 of this year, putting it out of the running to purchase its struggling competitor. But with a new owner, Eastar now expects to have things back to normal, feuding with WestJet like the good ole’ days early next year.
- Aegean Airlines secured a lease on three ATR72-600s.
- Atlas Air completed the transition to bring Southern Air’s operating certificate in with its own to form a single operating carrier.
- Cargojet placed an order for two B777-200LR freighters with an option to purchase four more — two B777-200LR and two B777-300ER.
- Condor plans to return to Vienna early in the second quarter of next year.
- Emirates will add a premium economy cabin to 105 aircraft in its fleet. The retrofit is expected to begin at the end of next year and take about 18 months to complete.
- FedEx is closing its Hong Kong crew base due to the island’s current quarantine regulations.
- Finnair will begin flight between Helsinki and both Bergen and Tromsø beginning on December 14. Bergen flights will operate 3x-weekly until April when they’ll become daily. Tromsø will be 3x-weekly service.
- Green Airlines has a green light to resume operations in Q2 next year.
- Hi Fly is flying high due to its new partnership with flypop.
- HiSky Europe will launch a new base at Târgu Mureș Transylvania Airport (TGM).
- Korean Air will spend $283 million to open a new engine maintenance plant.
- Malaysia and Singapore will resume their codeshare agreement beginning November 29.
- NovAir plans to launch operations early next year.
- PLAY isn’t playing around anymore as it signed an agreement to lease two new A320neo aircraft.
- Transavia was fined $452,000 by the Dutch Data Protection Authority for poor security that allowed a hacker to break into the airline’s files and potentially access customer information.
- WestJet will begin nonstop service between Calgary and London/Heathrow next spring.
I bought some new shoes from a drug dealer because he gave me a great price.
I don’t know what he laced them with, but I’ve been tripping all day.