Nok Air has submitted its business rehabilitation plan to Thailand's Central Bankruptcy Court, meeting the May deadline after securing two one-month extensions allowable. "As it is a public holiday, the planners submitted the business rehabilitation plan to the official receiver today (17 May)," the low-cost carrier says in a same-day disclosure to the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). The official receiver will set a date for a creditors' meeting where the plan will be put to a vote. In a separate, same-day filing to the SET, Nok says it will submit half-yearly financial statements instead of quarterly. It is exempt from reporting quarterly financial statements, in accordance with Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission rules. The Central Bankruptcy Court accepted Nok's application for business rehabilitation on 30 July and approved it for the process on 4 November and appointed planners to prepare the rehabilitation plan. Nok was given three months from 15 December to file the plan by 15 March. That deadline was postponed to 15 May after two one-month extensions.

Uzbekistan Airways has put 16 older aircraft up for sale as part of a fleet-modernisation initiative. The aircraft include two 1999-vintage Boeing 757s and two 767s built in 2003-04. The Tashkent-based carrier is also offering five Ilyushin Il-76s built between 1982 and 1992, along with seven Il-114s built between 1999 and 2013. Additionally, an Il-114 flight simulator and a Mil Mi-8 helicopter are available.

British Airways and Heathrow Airport are urging the UK government to rapidly expand the number of countries that UK travellers can visit without needing to quarantine on their return. Speaking during a 17 May press conference to mark the official restart of international travel from the UK, British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle and Heathrow Airport counterpart John Holland-Kaye argued that with rapidly expanding vaccination rates and falling Covid-19 cases, much of Europe should be added to the 'green list' in time for the peak summer season. "Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, France and Germany are making tremendous progress, and we expect them to be added to green list soon," says Holland-Kaye. BA and Heathrow are also asking the government to specify which countries it expects to be on the green list for the peak summer season, in order to allow passengers to plan ahead. Holland-Kaye expresses his surprise that other destinations were omitted from the list, citing the case of Barbados – which has low incidence of the disease and "you could say embodies low risk". He notes that as many travel companies reply on their summer trading to see them through the leaner winter months, "many companies will not make it to next year" unless rules are eased. As a result, up to half a million UK travel jobs remain at risk. Doyle echoes Holland-Kaye's call for an expansion of the green list to include the USA, which has also run a successful vaccination campaign. He highlights the pent-up demand to travel from passengers, noting a 500-700% jump in customer searches for Portugal compared with the previous weekend, following the announcement that it was on the UK's green list. Flight searches to popular destinations such as Spain and Greece have also increased in recent days, "so we do hope for a meaningful return to flying this summer", he adds. Holland-Kaye and Doyle repeated the industry's calls for the UK government to allow passengers who have been vaccinated to travel to low-risk countries without testing requirements. They are also calling on the authorities to allow travellers to use lateral-flow tests to travel and to only require them to use more-expensive PCR tests if they receive a positive result. Value-added tax on Covid-19 tests should also be removed, they argue, to reduce the financial burden on passengers