Organisations including London Heathrow Airport, Airbus and Rolls-Royce have shown their support behind a bailout for Virgin Atlantic from the UK government.
Large aviation companies in the industry have written to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to support Virgin. In their letters, they called for the UK government to “do all it can to support Virgin in these extremely difficult times”.
Virgin Atlantic had previously cut its services to only three routes and grounded 85 per cent of it fleet. As these commercial services were cut the airline was looking at cargo services to help prop itself up to prevent needing to put its fleet into storage.
Virgin Atlantic is a key customer for Airbus, notably for the Airbus A330neo, as well as for Rolls-Royce, which itself has run into issues as the demand for engines and leased engines paid by the flying mile being grounded is causing financial hardship for the engine supplier as well.
Other airline announcements overnight include:
- There are reports today that the Australian government will refuse Virgin Australia’s request for a bailout loan. It reportedly prefers to let the airline fail and then facilitate the entry of a new airline. However, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a press conference that the government has not yet made a decision on the loan request by Virgin Australia.
- On 30 March, Delta Air Lines resumed flights between Detroit and Shanghai using an Airbus A350 to support important cargo links.
- Singapore Airlines will operate flights to just three European cities; London, Frankfurt and Zurich.
- Air New Zealand will be making repatriation flights from London Heathrow despite the Airline looking to cease services from the airport in the near future.
- Wizz Air has flown domestic flights in the United States as part of a broader mission of repatriation flights.
- Frontier Airlines has cancelled most of its flights in April. The Denver-based low-cost carrier joins other US carriers in reducing capacity by up to 90 per cent this month.
- Kenya Airways has requested a multibillion-shilling bailout from its government amid the growing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Oman Air has terminated the contracts of hundreds of cabin crew, reportedly while many of them were overseas.
- Condor could soon find itself nationalised by the German government as a takeover deal with LOT owner PGL seems set to collapse.
