AirAsia is resuming flights from India to Malaysia and Thailand from April and May onwards. The carrier says flights from Bengaluru and Chennai to Kuala Lumpur commenced from 1 April, while flights from Tiruchirappalli and Kochi to Kuala Lumpur start from 5 April and 18 April, respectively and from Kolkata and Hyderabad to Kuala Lumpur from 23 April and 1 May, respectively. AirAsia is launching five new routes from India to Thailand. These are from Bengaluru and Chennai to Bangkok’s Don Mueang International airport, starting 4 May; between Kolkata and Don Mueang, from 2 May; and commencing 1 May, from Kochi and Jaipur to Don Mueang. AirAsia’s regional commercial head for India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh Manoj Dharmani states: “With Malaysia and Thailand reopening and travel restrictions being lifted, AirAsia will be continually re-introducing international services, starting from April 2022. In this regard, India, Malaysia, and Thailand are countries with significant potential in terms of stimulating tourism and reigniting the economy. “We believe that our flight resumption will bring great opportunity and support to the countries’ economic recovery.”

Wizz Air carried nearly 2.48 million passengers in March, over five times its level in the previous year. The central European budget carrier says it boosted its capacity, as measured in available seat-kilometres, by nearly 300% year-on-year, while traffic in revenue passenger-kilometres rose by 440%. Load factor during the month increased by 23.7 percentage points to 86%. Wizz Air last month announced the ongoing expansion of its operations in Romania with plans to add one Airbus A321 each to its bases in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca between July and August. The airline will also add one A321 aircraft to its base in Tirana, Albania, this summer. It also revealed plans for new routes across its network originating from Italy, the UK and the UAE to destinations ranging including Greece, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Montenegro, Israel and Sri Lanka.

EasyJet and British Airways have been forced to cancel a flurry of flights as Covid-related absences hit the UK airlines’ abilities to operate their full schedules. Low-cost carrier EasyJet has cancelled some 222 services in the past three days, including around 60 on 4 April. It attributes this to “higher than usual levels of employee sickness.” It adds that it has sought to offset some of these problems with additional standby crew, but warns that Covid levels made some cancellations inevitable. The roughly 60 pre-emptive cancellations to and from the UK on 4 April represent a small share of the airline’s planned 1,645 flights, it points out. BA has also cancelled some services, but says these amounted to just six flights on 4 April. It adds that during March it took the decision to moderate capacity slightly during April and May as it ramps back up. “Aviation has been one of the industries worst hit by the pandemic and airlines and airports are experiencing the same issues rebuilding their operations while managing the continuing impact of Covid,” states IAG-owned BA. “We are also building a completely new subsidiary at Gatwick while increasing the size of our schedule at Heathrow.”