Ryanair Group chief executive Michael O'Leary has accepted the need for "some form of carbon taxation system" for European airlines, and admitted that the Irish carrier might not be able to meet its target to power 12.5% of its flights with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by 2030. Addressing the Eurocontrol Aviation Sustainability Summit on 22 November, O'Leary criticised the European Union emissions trading system (ETS) for exempting what he describes as "the worst offenders" – long-haul network carriers – and called for a "much fairer distribution" of environmental taxes. "We are going to have to have some sort of environmental taxation. I think that's the only way," says O'Leary. "I have no doubt that we, as an industry and also our customers, are going to have to have some sort of fair contribution towards our carbon footprint." Whether this takes the form of a new carbon tax system or a "fuel uplift tax around Europe", O'Leary says he wants to see the money raised being used to increase the availability of SAF. "One of the key things governments should be doing with that money is actually putting it into the production and creating much greater availability of SAFs at Europe's airports," he asserts. Ryanair pledged in April to power 12.5% of its flights with SAF by 2030, but O'Leary casts doubt on this being achieved. "We've committed ourselves to 12.5% SAF usage by 2030 and that's a very ambitious target. I'm not sure we're going to get there but I think we need to set out ambitious targets first and then see how we go about reaching that. The challenge will be lack of availability of SAFs," he says. "We can all do one flight on SAFs. What we can't do at the moment, and it's not clear we'll get there by 2030 but we have to start, is whether we're going to have any reasonable availability of SAFs in reasonable volumes at the 230 airports that Ryanair is flying to." While SAF and new technology will play important roles in reducing aviation's carbon footprint in the medium to longer term, O'Leary suggests that emissions from Europe's airlines could be cut by as much as 20% within five years through air traffic control reform. "If Europe is really serious about reducing the environmental footprint of aviation, do something about the failed Single European Sky and reforming air traffic control. I've given up on the Single European Sky. It's never going to happen. It's a mess," he says. "My view would be to deregulate it and allow air traffic control providers to compete against each other in the same way the airlines do across Europe. That could be delivered before 2030…and would significantly reduce the environmental footprint of European air travel."

Airline capacity in Austria and Germany is once again moving away from pre-pandemic performance levels, as Covid-19 cases surge in the countries. Through most of the summer and autumn the gap between performance in 2019 and 2021 was closing; even when capacity levels declined, it was generally at a slower rate than normally happens into the winter season, a sign that travel markets were returning to trend. However, since around 10 November this dynamic has changed. In 2019 there was a rise in capacity as measured by number of flights and hours around this period, yet this bounce has tallies with higher Covid-19 rates.
German chancellor Angela Merkel said on 18 November that a fourth wave of the disease was "hitting us with full force". In Austria, the government has announced a return to a general lockdown from 22 November as cases in the country spike. There have been reports that Germany could follow suit in the coming days. Airlines have noted the strong link between customer bookings and Covid-19 cases and regulations. Higher incidence of the disease hits sales sharply.
In its interim report for the first nine months of the year, Lufthansa Group, which includes Austrian Airlines, warned that there was "still a large number of political risks in connection with the coronavirus pandemic that could impact the company's finances". It highlighted that "variants of the virus continue to drive tighter measures and travel restrictions imposed at short notice (for example border closures, bans on transportation, quarantine regulations)", adding: "There is a risk that states will seal themselves off (again) due to the spread of the coronavirus and reduce agreed international air traffic." With cases surging and fresh lockdowns being imposed, it appears these risks may be turning into reality. Airline stocks have reacted to fresh lockdowns in Austria and surging cases more broadly with sharp selloffs. IAG and EasyJet share prices were both down 4% on the day in late-afternoon trading on 19 November. Smaller falls were recorded across the remainder of the continent's carriers. Instead, capacity levels have sunk and the gap with two years earlier has begun to widen again.

Air Canada will withdraw from further financial support by the government of Canada due to its improved liquidity as travel recovers in that nation following the loosening of its international travel rules in September. The support package announced in April offered the Montreal-based carrier access to interest bearing loans of up to C$5.37 billion ($4.25 billion) through several separate credit facilities, the flag carrier says. The support, under the large employer emergency financing facility, also provided C$500 million in equity for a total of C$5.87 billion in liquidity. The package consisted of a C$1.5 billion secured revolving facility and three separate C$825 million unsecured revolving credit facilities. The airline says it has only accessed about C$1.2 billion of the C$1.4 billion unsecured facility solely dedicated to refunding customers' non-refundable tickets. All other remaining facilities totalling C$3.97 billion have not been used. Air Canada was entitled to terminate them at any time without penalty under the terms of its agreement. The government purchased C$500 million worth of Air Canada common shares at C$23.18 per share, representing about 6% of the current public float, which it continues to hold. The airline also issued about 14.6 million 10-year warrants to the government for the purchase of an equal number of Air Canada shares, at a price of approximately C$27.2 per share. With the termination of the operating credit facilities, half of these warrants, which have not yet vested with the government, have been cancelled immediately. Subject to the Toronto approval, Air Canada intends to call the balance of the vested warrants for cancellation as per their terms at fair market value. In the third quarter, Air Canada completed a series of financing transactions and generated about C$7.1 billion in gross proceeds. These financing transactions provided substantial liquidity to Air Canada and extended debt maturities out until near the end of the decade, the airline says. As of 30 September, Air Canada reported that its unrestricted liquidity was approximately C$14.4 billion and consisted of roughly C$9.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents, short-term and long-term investments and about C$4.9 billion in available undrawn credit facilities, including the C$3.97 billion in unused government facilities being cancelled.