Aviation

Bloomberg Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. tumbled after its billionaire Chairman Chamath Palihapitiya offloaded shares worth about $213 million in the space-tourism company founded by Richard Branson. Palihapitiya, who has helped drive the frenzied growth of blank-check companies, disposed of 6.2 million shares at an average price of $34.32 this week, based on a filing with the US Securities and Exchange ...

Bloomberg Discussion on the future of cash-strapped Alitalia entered a crucial phase, as talks with European authorities resumed, an early test of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s relationship with Brussels. The Italian government and the European Commission agreed to “work constructively together to find workable solutions on the Alitalia file,” a Commission spokesman said after Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager ...

Bloomberg Airbus SE suffered a surge in order cancellations last month as Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA scrapped narrow-body jet purchases and a wave of coronavirus lockdowns pushed back expectations for a revival in air travel. The European planemaker lost 92 commitments in February, it said in a statement, 88 of them from the Scandinavian discounter, which is seeking to restructure ...

Bloomberg Mauritius has stopped inbound commercial flights, until further notice, after six local Covid-19 cases were detected over two days, Health Minister Kailesh Jagutpal said. The objective of the move is to free up space for people to be placed in quarantine following a contact-tracing process, Jagutpal told reporters in the capital, Port Louis. The suspension of flights would provide ...

Bloomberg The European Union (EU) and the US agreed to suspend tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s products, easing a 17-year transatlantic dispute over illegal aid to the world’s biggest aircraft makers. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed to the move on a call, the commission said in a statement. “This suspension ...

Bloomberg Malaysian budget airline AirAsia Group Bhd. said it is seeking to launch a flying-taxi business as soon as next year. “We are working on that right now,” Tony Fernandes, the company’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said. “I think we are about a year and a half away from launching.” Fernandes was speaking in an online discussion as part ...

Bloomberg Airline executives and directors sold $49.9 million of stock in February, the most in three years, as industry shares posted a record rally fuelled by a widening vaccination effort. The top individual sellers were at Allegiant Travel Co. and Southwest Airlines Co., two leisure-focused carriers that are among analyst picks to benefit from a rebound in vacation travel as ...

Bloomberg British Airways, United Airlines Holdings Inc. and Singapore Airlines Ltd. were among carriers affected by a cyberattack that hit the Star and Oneworld alliances, exposing some loyalty-program member information. Sita Passenger Service System Inc.’s processing services were hit by a “highly sophisticated but limited” breach that targeted personal data stored on servers at its data center in Atlanta, the ...

Bloomberg Boeing Co. Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun got total compensation of $21 million last year, but his take-home pay was a small fraction of that as the planemaker slogged through a deep crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. When Covid-19 sent the aviation industry into the sharpest decline on record last March, Calhoun waived his salary for the rest ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s finance ministry, the largest shareholder of Thai Airways International Pcl, signalled its support for a restructuring plan that includes raising fresh capital, a temporary freeze on repayment of borrowings and slashing its workforce by half to return the debt-ridden airline to profit. The key elements of the debt rehabilitation plan are “quite acceptable,” Pantip Sripimol, director general of ...