Aviation

Bloomberg Spirit Airlines Inc misclassified as “volunteers” more than 1,000 people who were denied boarding against their will on oversold flights, the US Transportation Department said in announcing a fine against the carrier. The department said consumer complaints filed with its Office of Aviation Consumer Protection showed the budget carrier required that passengers bumped from flights sign waivers or documents ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s fleet of Airbus SE A380 jets will be mothballed for at least two years and may never return to service as demand for long-haul travel remains subdued in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. With Lufthansa already retiring about half of its 14 superjumbos, remaining jets will be relegated to its secondary hub in Munich. Flights ...

Bloomberg A group of banks led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc may launch a $5 billion debt offering for United Airlines Holdings Inc as soon as Monday, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Goldman Sachs has started discussions with investors to gauge their level of interest, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks ...

Bloomberg France is warning flag carrier Air France-KLM against making forced job cuts, with Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire saying such a move would constitute a “red line” the carrier shouldn’t cross after receiving a state bailout. “We spent money to save Air France,” he said on Thursday in a radio interview. “I am asking that there not be any ...

Bloomberg Qantas Airways Ltd cancelled most international flights until late October after the government said Australia’s borders are likely to remain closed until next year. The extended cancellation increases financial pressure on the airline, which is slowly adding back domestic services but has grounded dozens of aircraft and furloughed most of its employees. International flights were previously on hold until ...

Bloomberg The pilot of a helicopter carrying retired basketball star Kobe Bryant may have become disoriented in clouds as the craft abruptly turned and dove to the ground near Los Angeles earlier this year, killing all aboard, investigators said. A preliminary analysis of the final moments of the flight released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found the veteran ...

Bloomberg A Senate committee chairman sharply criticised the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for what he alleged were repeated failures to respond to a committee’s investigations, including into two crashes of Boeing Co’s 737 Max. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican head of the Senate Commerce Committee, accused the FAA of delaying interviews with its employees and failing to turn ...

Bloomberg South African Airways’ (SAA) administrators proposed the government put up at least $1.5 billion to rescue the carrier after years of losses and the grounding of commercial passenger flights to contain the spread of coronavirus. The state-owned airline was placed in a local form of bankruptcy protection in December, and the rescue team led by Siviwe Dongwana and Les ...

Bloomberg Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA jumped after an easing of travel restrictions allowed it to reopen dozens of European routes. Norwegian rose as much as 18% in early trading, the most in three weeks, after saying it would restart 76 routes from July 1. The low-cost carrier’s plans, which follow moves from other airlines to boost capacity for the summer ...

Bloomberg Asia’s biggest budget airline AirAsia Group Bhd is mulling flying thorny, pungent durians around the region as part of a plan to use its trucks and planes to send food straight from farms to restaurants. The Malaysia-based airline’s agriculture e-commerce platform Ourfarm has a network of 7,000 trucks for pickups and deliveries in the Kuala Lumpur area, and is ...