LATAM Airlines Group has secured financing commitments for a proposal that could enable it to exit US Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Chile-based group's exit financing proposal is subject to approval by the bankruptcy court for the Southern District of New York. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, BNP Paribas and Natixis have agreed to grant exit financing to LATAM, the airline group states in an 11 June Securities and Exchange Commission filing. LATAM filed for Chapter 11 in May 2020, and in March 2022 received the green light from the bankruptcy court to begin soliciting votes from creditors for the approval of the reorganisation plan filed in November 2021. The court on 17-18 May held a confirmation hearing on LATAM's reorganisation plan. The group has previously disclosed that it seeks to raise $8.19 billion in the form of new equity, convertible notes and debt, to enable it to exit Chapter 11 in 2022.

Trade unions representing Spanish cabin crews are planning six days of industrial action against Ryanair in late June and early July after negotiations on a collective labour agreement broke down. Staff across the low-cost carrier's 10 bases in Spain will stage 24h walkouts on 24, 25, 26 and 30 June and on 1 and 2 July, according to the USO union. "Ryanair crew continue to be third-party workers," states USO's Lidia Arasanz. "Our rights are still not respected. Ryanair has forced this strike and we have to return to the mobilisation so that the reality of our situation is known, so that Ryanair is forced to comply with the application of basic labour rights and court rulings and to achieve an agreement and some decent working conditions for the entire workforce. Ryanair is the only international company in our country without a collective agreement." Unions are seeking a collective labour agreement with Ryanair that would drive up pay and working conditions, and accuse Ryanair of failing to apply Spanish labour law, such as the entitlement to 22 working days of annual holiday plus 14 national holidays. Ryanair has signed a deal with the CCOO union, but SITCPLA and USO say this covers few if any employees at the airline and represents an attempt to marginalise them. The carrier, for its part, argues that the announcements by USO and SITCPLA are "a distraction from their own failures to deliver agreements" following three years of negotiations, and states its belief that cabin crews will not support the action. SITCPLA, USO and five other unions in Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal on 19 May signed an agreement pledging that they would "not hesitate to launch a Europe-wide strike action this summer" if negotiations with Ryanair broke down, raising the possibility of wider disruption at the carrier. Ryanair says collective labour agreements cover 90% of its staff across Europe, and that it has in recent weeks been negotiating with unions on improvements to these deals. "Those negotiations are going well and we do not expect widespread disruption this summer," it adds.

Over 1,000 SAS pilots are threatening strike action at the peak of the summer flying season, in the latest blow to the Scandinavian airline group. Pilots across Denmark, Norway and Sweden are threatening to walk out from late June following a stall in negotiations to replace a collective labour agreement which expired on 1 April. Talks between pilot representatives and SAS on a new CLA have been ongoing since November 2021, "but it is now clear that they are so far apart that there is no prospect of agreeing on a new agreement", says Danish union Dansk Metal. Unions are concerned that instead of reinstating pilots laid off during the pandemic, SAS is seeking to hire foreign staff into its new SAS Connect and SAS Link units on lower pay rates. They accuse SAS of creating these new divisions solely to circumnavigate labour agreements. The airline laid off 560 pilots amid the crisis. They were granted the right to reinstatement within five years ahead of SAS hiring new pilots. "SAS is in big financial trouble, and employees cannot save the company alone," states Henrik Thyregod, chairman of the Danish Pilots Association. "The sense is that even if the pilots flew for free for SAS, it is not enough." The airline group has warned that it is facing growing competitive pressure in its home markets, and a potentially difficult winter. Meanwhile, analysts have questioned its ability to remain solvent. The Swedish government in recent days announced its participation in a debt-to-equity conversion scheme as part of joint action with Norway and Denmark. It said that it would not provide the carrier with any further financial assistance, however, having provided state aid throughout the Covid crisis to keep the airline afloat. Despite seeing bumper trading into the summer in line with its peers, SAS is concerned that a return of the pandemic in some form could lead to a brutal winter. As part of this it is rushing to implement its "SAS Forward" transformation strategy, which includes bolstering its presence in secondary Scandinavian cities, refocusing towards leisure travel and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) traffic, and streamlining its fleet away from widebodies towards smaller aircraft such as the Airbus A321. Earlier this year chief executive Anko van der Werff noted that the company had only a limited window in which to place itself on a stable financial footing.