South African Airways has reached a settlement with the US Department of Transportation, accepting a $300,000 civil penalty over delayed refunding of Covid-era tickets. The carrier says the penalty will be paid to the US Treasury in tranches over a period of 540 days from the consent order's issuance date. In May 2021, the US Department of Transportation's Office of Aviation Consumer Protection imposed a civil claim against SAA on behalf of passengers complaining about delayed refunds of their tickets for US flights cancelled during the Covid-forced grounding of airline operations. The carrier notes that in its continuous engagements with the DOT, it has always contended that, notwithstanding the challenges of its own business-rescue process and the pandemic, it took "extraordinary" steps during 2019-22 to process the refunds in all the markets served by it. It paid out around R2.2 billion ($117 million) relating to Covid-era unflown tickets refunds between April 2021 and March 2023, it adds. "The intention of the parties was always to find an amicable way of closing this case," states SAA's chief legal counsel Koekie Mbeki. "We look forward to normalising relations with our customers in the USA and welcoming them aboard SAA when we resume flights to the Americas in the future."

Supply-chain problems mean that Lufthansa Group currently has around 100 aircraft – more than 13% of its fleet – out of service, chief executive Carsten Spohr has revealed. "All of the key suppliers of the industry are having issues," he told journalists on 3 June, at IATA's AGM in Dubai. "There's shortage of airframes, shortage of engines, and even when you have an airframe with a matching engine, you [potentially] cannot fly the engine when it is a Pratt & Whitney engine," he adds, alluding to the ongoing inspection programme affecting PW1100G powerplants. This means that "out of 750 aircraft [in Lufthansa Group's fleet], currently 100 are not operating for various reasons", he says. Those reasons can include lack of crew or engines. Airlines always have a certain proportion of their fleets on the ground to serve as reserves and for maintenance reasons, but the current level is greater than usual, Spohr observes. He believes other large carriers have similar ratios of aircraft out of operation. In his view, given the problems at OEMs across the industry, "this will take a long time to balance out again", he warns. However, it also means the wider industry will not again fall into the "trap" of increasing supply leading to overcapacity. This is "obviously not because we have become any smarter", he acknowledges, but because supply-chain problems mean "we can't".

US airlines consumed 5.4% more aviation fuel in April for scheduled commercial flights than they burned in pre-pandemic April 2019, data from the US Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows. Fuel consumption for domestic flights in April was up 5.2% versus the same month in 2019. "Increased fuel consumption reflects an increase in airline passenger travel over the same period," the bureau says. The cost per gallon of aviation fuel in April ($2.75) was down 0.6% compared with March 2024, and up 33.8% versus April 2019, it adds.