Category Archives: Airline industry

Ryanair passenger numbers pass 20m a month amid 5% fall in fares

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Shares rise despite a drop in carrier’s revenues, which Michael O’Leary says will last until spring 2025

Ryanair said it has reaped strong traffic growth after a summer when the airline’s fares were down 5% and passenger numbers passed 20 million a month.

Shares in Europe’s biggest carrier rose on Tuesday, after the group chief executive, Michael O’Leary, revised previous gloomier predictions of a double-digit drop in peak-season fare income, although he said the dent in revenues would probably last until spring 2025.

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Australia urged to show ‘true climate leadership’ as Pacific Islands Forum begins – as it happened

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Investigations under way after alleged theft of non-fuctional guns from museum

An investigation is under way after a museum in Lithgow, in the NSW Central Tablelands, was allegedly broken into overnight.

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New Australian aviation ombudsman could force airlines to pay cash compensation for delayed flights

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Carriers and airports will have to adhere to customer rights charter setting out ‘reasonable and fair’ conduct – or be penalised

An ombudsman will police how airlines treat customers and enforce a passenger rights charter to ensure timely refunds and possibly cash compensation for delayed and cancelled flights under landmark Australian aviation reforms.

The Albanese government will release its much-anticipated aviation white paper on Monday which will also boost protections for passengers with disabilities who have historically been mistreated by airlines. Carriers will have to adhere to new standards and accommodate a broader range of wheelchairs.

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Big polluters targeting esports industry with advertising deals, report reveals

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Oil firms, petrostates, airlines and carmakers ‘doubling down’ on sector that is popular with young people

Oil companies, petrostates, airlines and carmakers are among the big polluters bombarding the esports industry with adverts, a study has found.

Esports, short for electronic sports, are competitive video games watched by spectators, with multiplayer games such as League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 attracting peak viewer figures in the millions.

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London City airport expansion given green light by ministers

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Climate campaigners criticise decision to allow capacity to increase from 6.5m to 9m passengers a year

Ministers have approved London City airport’s application to expand, in a decision that has disappointed climate campaigners.

The airport submitted a proposal to increase capacity from 6.5 million to 9 million passengers a year by putting on more weekend and early morning flights. Local campaigners and Newham council opposed the move, arguing the air and noise pollution would affect people living nearby and that it could potentially increase carbon emissions.

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German climate activists stop air traffic after breaking into four airport sites

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Police arrest Letzte Generation protesters who cut holes in fences and glued themselves to asphalt

Climate activists have broken into four German airport sites, briefly bringing air traffic to a halt at two of those before police made arrests.

Protesters from Letzte Generation – Germany’s equivalent to Just Stop Oil – gained access on Thursday to airfields in areas near the takeoff and landing strips of Cologne-Bonn, Nuremberg, Berlin Brandenburg and Stuttgart airports at dawn. Air traffic was suspended for a short time at Nuremberg and Cologne-Bonn due to police operations.

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Heathrow says it lost 90,000 transfer passengers after new £10 fee

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Airport says ETA scheme introduced by Conservatives is ‘devastating’ for competitiveness

Heathrow airport has said it experienced a 90,000 decline in passenger numbers on routes included in a £10 a person government scheme.

It described the electronic travel authorisation (ETA) system as “devastating for our hub competitiveness”.

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Australia news live: Coalition claims Labor education reforms a ‘school funding war’; NZ bushwalker’s body recovered from Tasmania hiking trail

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Murray Watt says advice needed from administrators to determine government support amid administration

Murray Watt, the newly-appointed minister for workplace relations, also weighed in on the Rex Airlines administration on ABC RN just earlier.

In terms of equity stakes or other financial government support, we’ll make those decisions once the situation becomes clearer through the administrator.

This would only be activated if the company is unable to repay entitlements to any workers who are retrenched, and let’s hope it may not get to that.

But also, our department would be providing employment support to workers who do lose their job to ensure that they can get back into work as quickly as possible.

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As many as 360 workers sacked at Rex with hundreds more jobs to go

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Employees reportedly told the airline will no longer operate flights between capital cities

As many as 360 staff at Rex Airlines have been sacked already and hundreds more are on the chopping block after administrators were called in to run the embattled carrier, with remaining staff told they may not get paid until a new buyer is found.

It comes amid speculation that Asia-based private equity firm PAG, which funded Rex’s $150m expansion to jet operations, was considering becoming the airline’s new owner out of administration.

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Rex has entered voluntary administration. What happens next to the embattled regional airline?

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Virgin Australia has offered to rebook Rex passengers due to travel on now-grounded capital city flights on an equivalent Virgin service free of charge

There is uncertainty about the future of Rex – Australia’s third-largest airline – after it entered voluntary administration and grounded all of its flights between capital cities.

The Albanese government held crisis talks with Rex on Tuesday and appeared willing to step in to save parts of the airline’s operations.

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Rex airlines enters voluntary administration with all flights between capital cities grounded

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Federal government says Rex ‘will have a future’ with minister suggesting Labor will step in to save troubled company

All Rex flights between capital cities have been grounded and the airline has entered voluntary administration just hours after the Albanese government suggested it would intervene to ensure the nation’s third-largest carrier didn’t collapse.

Late on Tuesday, EY – formerly known as Ernst & Young – announced it had been appointed as administrators of the company, and that the airline’s Boeing 737 operations between capital cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane had been grounded, with Virgin Australia stepping in to offer impacted passengers rebooking “free of charge”.

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Labor ignored Bonza’s plea for help, as questions linger over what transport officials knew and when

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Exclusive: Documents reveal what transport minister Catherine King was advised to say in public as budget Australian airline headed for collapse

The Albanese government turned down a plea from budget airline Bonza for financial assistance 10 days before it entered voluntary administration and ultimately collapsed, and new documents have questioned what transport department officials knew and when.

Documents obtained by Guardian Australia through freedom of information laws reveal the transport department prepared a brief on Bonza’s financial assistance request for the transport minister, Catherine King, on 20 April. Ten days later the airline’s planes were repossessed and thousands of passengers stranded across the country.

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Top pilots’ union sounds alarm as regulators consider smaller crew sizes

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Firms accused of putting profits over safety as EU group weighs cutting minimum number of pilots from two to one

Aerospace giants have been accused of putting profits ahead of safety as officials consider cutting the minimum number of pilots required on commercial flight decks from two to one.

The move, which is currently being evaluated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), would weaken standards to the “lowest common denominator”, the world’s largest union of airline pilots has warned.

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EasyJet forecasts record-breaking summer as profits jump

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Strong results follow drop in European airline stocks this week after Ryanair reported profit plunge

The budget airline easyJet is predicting a record-breaking summer of travel after profits jumped 16% in its most recent quarter of trading.

The bumper figures come only two days after the rival no-frills carrier Ryanair reported a plunge in earnings and a poor outlook for the holiday getaway season, pushing down many European airline stocks.

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Ryanair profits plunge by nearly half amid lower summer fares

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Europe’s largest airline says passengers are waiting until later in the season to book tickets

Ryanair has said its profits plunged by almost half between April and June and warned that fares this summer would be “materially lower” than last year.

Europe’s largest airline reported profits of €360m (£303m) in the spring quarter, 46% lower than the same period last year, despite passenger numbers rising 10% to 55.5 million.

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NHS England warns of disruption next week as global IT outage wreaks havoc

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Flights continue to be cancelled while GP surgeries and hospitals will be dealing with impact of backlogs

The aftershocks of the Microsoft IT outage continued to ripple across the UK on Saturday as holidaymakers and patients suffered the brunt of the computer systems failure.

Customers experienced flight cancellations, faulty train ticket machines and failures in GPs’ prescription and appointment systems after a flawed security update from CrowdStrike, a US cybersecurity firm, crashed 8.5 million devices across the world running the Windows operating system.

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Microsoft IT outage: Australian airlines, banks and supermarkets begin return to normal operations

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IT support staff need to implement the fix in person, one computer at a time, experts have said

Supermarkets, banks, airlines and industries across Australia are slowly recovering on Saturday morning from the massive global Windows outage caused by a CrowdStrike software update gone wrong, with experts warning it could take weeks to resolve.

On Friday morning, the CEO of the Texas-based cybersecurity company, George Kurtz, apologised for the outage, and said it was not a cyber-attack, but a software update issue on its cloud-based cybersecurity platform Falcon for Microsoft Windows. It had since been fixed.

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‘Bedlam’ in UK as air and rail travel hit by global IT outage

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More than 3,000 flights cancelled worldwide after problem affecting Microsoft Windows

Passengers have described “bedlam” at UK airport check-ins after a global IT outage on what was due to be the busiest day for flying since the start of the Covid pandemic, while train networks have also been disrupted.

More than 3,000 flights have been cancelled worldwide after Microsoft Windows operating systems used by airlines, airports and some air traffic systems were affected.

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Cabin crew had to scoop human waste from toilets after AFL team’s plane ran out of water, union says

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Transport Workers Union outraged at conditions on National Jet Express flight to Perth chartered by Fremantle Dockers

Cabin crew were forced to scoop human waste out of onboard toilets and other passengers were left to urinate directly into basins, a union says, after a charter flight carrying an AFL team ran out of water, making flushing impossible.

The National Jet Express (NJE) plane was chartered by the Fremantle Dockers to fly the team to Perth after their loss to Hawthorn in the Tasmanian city of Launceston on Saturday. It reportedly ran out of water just 30 minutes into the four-hour flight.

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Boeing will plead guilty to criminal fraud over 737 Max crashes, justice department says

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The deal, which still requires the approval of a federal judge, will see the company pay a fine of almost $250m and invest at least $455m in improving safety

Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge stemming from two deadly crashes of 737 Max jetliners, after the government determined the company violated an agreement that had protected it from prosecution for more than three years, the US the government said in court filing late on Sunday.

Federal prosecutors gave Boeing the choice this week of entering a guilty plea and paying a fine as part of its sentence, or facing a trial on the felony criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the US.

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