Aviation

Bloomberg India ordered airlines this week to stop selling tickets. Hardly any listened. Four of the country’s top six airlines, which together control 80% of the local market, are selling domestic flight tickets for as soon as the third week of May, searches on their websites showed. That’s despite the government saying no decision has been made on allowing flights ...

Bloomberg United Airlines Holdings Inc raised $1 billion by selling new shares, stepping up efforts to increase capital to survive a collapse in travel demand. The company sold 39.25 million shares at $26.50 apiece, with an option for underwriters to buy an extra 10%, United said in a statement. The price is at the high end of what the stock ...

Bloomberg BOC Aviation Ltd, a Singapore-based aircraft leasing company, is testing bond markets at a time when global passenger airlines are nearly shut due to the coronavirus pandemic. The unit of Bank of China Ltd is marketing dollar bonds at significantly wider spreads than similar debt sold in January. Since that time, the crisis has plunged the aviation industry into ...

Bloomberg South African Airways’ (SAA) administrators will be asked to suspend a legal process to dismiss the airline’s entire workforce, a labor union said. Unions with members at the state-owned airline met with South Africa’s public enterprises, labour and tourism ministers in a video conference today after the administrators said they would start talks on retrenchments after the government cut ...

Bloomberg Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd became Asia’s first airline to fall to the coronavirus after the outbreak deprived the debt-burdened company of almost all income. Administrators at Deloitte, who have taken control of the Brisbane-based carrier, aim to restructure the business and find new owners within months. More than 10 parties have expressed an interest, Deloitte said on Tuesday. Virgin ...

Bloomberg The US Treasury Department disbursed $2.9 billion to passenger airlines in the first round of payroll assistance to an industry suffering financially from a pandemic-induced shutdown. The assistance that has been handed out so far went to two “major” airlines and 54 smaller passenger carriers, the department said in a statement. More payments will be sent out on a ...

Bloomberg United Airlines Holdings Inc tumbled after the company said it expected to record a $2.1 billion loss in the first quarter as the coronavirus outbreak all but erased air-travel demand in March. The pretax loss, which will be about $1 billion on an adjusted basis, came as revenue dropped 17% from a year earlier to $8 billion, the carrier ...

Bloomberg Nigeria extended the closing of the West African nation’s airports for two weeks as it continues a lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The decision is subject to review when appropriate, Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika said in an emailed statement. Nigeria closed its international airports for one month on March 23, a week before President Muhammadu Buhari ordered a ...

Bloomberg A US travel industry group estimates that lost revenue as a result of the coronavirus pandemic could approach $520 billion by the end of the year, with much of the tourism industry still depressed in December. The US Travel Association — which represents airlines and other transportation companies, local attractions, tourism bureaus and other parts of the industry — ...

Bloomberg US airlines face a bleak future of depressed traffic and volatile revenue well into 2021, as the global economy transitions from the acute damage of a public health catastrophe into a potentially long recession. Already a bumpy ride for the “Big Three” carriers, the journey promises to get worse this fall when billions of dollars in government assistance comes ...