Air Seychelles has entered into reorganisation with the appointment of two administrators, Bernard Pool and Suketu Patel of Pool & Patel Chartered Accountant, who will consider what carrier says will be the "optimum ways" of restructuring the company and settling its debts. During the company reorganisation, Air Seychelles will continue to operate normally with the same management and board of directors under the supervision of the administrators, who will prepare and present a rescue plan to the creditors, the main ones being the bondholders and the government, the airline and the Ministry of Transport say in a joint press statement on 5 October. This process is expected to take three to six months. Meanwhile, all the employees of Air Seychelles will remain in post and the operations of the airline will continue as before. Data shows that the African carrier operates a number of small regional aircraft along with one Airbus A320neo leased from CDB Aviation and another A320neo leased from Air Lease. The Covid-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to the Air Seychelles' business over the past 18 months, however, the airline's financial difficulties arise mainly due to significant debt that was incurred during its stewardship by Etihad Airways. This debt comprises amounts that were owed directly to Etihad and also loans of almost $72 million that were funded by the capital markets and are now controlled by bondholders of EA Partners, the joint statement read. The government of Seychelles, which owned the remaining 60% of shares in the Air Seychelles, has bought out Etihad's 40% shareholding, becoming the sole shareholder in the airline today. The government also negotiated a substantial discount debt of $70 million that was owed to Etihad. The government and Air Seychelles have been discussing with representatives of the bondholders of EA Partners but could not reach an agreement yet on terms for settling this debt that Air Seychelles can afford. The government's ability to assist Air Seychelles financially is also limited by the capping arrangements recently agreed with the International Monetary Fund whereby no further subsidy by government to Air Seychelles is permitted, the statement read. Meanwhile, the EA Partners bondholders have presented a petition for the winding up of Air Seychelles in order to exert pressure so that the bondholders can maximise their recoveries on their debt.

British Airways is returning the Airbus A380 to its active fleet as part of its plans for a massive increase in capacity to the USA and elsewhere. This follows the recent announcement that fully vaccinated UK citizens will be able to travel to the USA from November. IAG-owned BA will initially operate its A380s on short-haul European connections in order to re-familiarise crew with the equipment, before rolling it out on routes to Los Angeles, Miami and Dubai in December. Additionally, BA will increase frequency between London and New York to five times daily in November, rising to eight times daily the following month. Double-daily services will also be operated to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Dallas, Miami and Toronto, and there will be daily services to Philadelphia, Phoenix, Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, Houston and Vancouver. Through October and November, BA will restart services to Austin, Orlando, Tampa, San Diego, Las Vegas and Baltimore, followed by Nashville and New Orleans in December, "which both proved to be a hit with customers when they first launched". In total the airline plans to fly to 23 US airports this winter, with up to 246 flights a week – more, it says, than any other transatlantic carrier. Flights to popular luxury Indian Ocean destinations the Maldives and Mauritius will increase to 10 and six per week, respectively, over Christmas. Caribbean services will be bolstered to Barbados, Antigua and St Lucia, from Heathrow and Gatwick airports. Within its short-haul offering there will be an extra 13,000 seats to "holiday hotspots". Destinations such as Marrakech and Dalaman will feature in flight schedules for the October half-term school break. For the winter season, BA will restart several ski destinations including Innsbruck, Grenoble and Salzburg from December. Combined, the step-up in capacity will give BA its most extensive network since March 2020. “This is an exciting time for British Airways and our customers as we see borders reopening. With welcome news from the US, we are dramatically increasing flights and bringing home some of our A380s to give our customers as many options as possible," states Neil Chernoff, the airline's director of network and alliances. "Elsewhere across our network, we are also adding additional services to destinations all over the world, to ensure our customers can take advantage of a much-needed holiday."

The president of Emirates Airline is warning the airline industry not to make carbon-reduction promises it cannot deliver.
“People are expecting us… by the end of this decade, to take out 40% of our emissions… We are in la-la-land if you think we are going to do this,” Tim Clark said on 4 October. He made his comments in Boston on the opening day of IATA’s 2021 World Air Transport Summit. Earlier the same day, at its annual general meeting, IATA adopted a resolution calling for the airline industry to achieve “net-zero carbon emissions by 2050”. “If you create the expectation we are going to have electric A380s flying… We have to do something about that,” Clark says, adding that the industry must “bring people back to reality”. Much discussion on the event’s first day involved carbon reduction. Executives at airframers and airlines pledged their support for carbon-cutting goals, saying the world is emerging from the pandemic with renewed dedication to cleaner power. But exactly how the industry intends to achieve such change remains largely unclear. Executives laid out several potential paths – and accompanying hurdles. “Sustainable aviation fuel – that will be a step-function change in the very near term,” says Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Stan Deal. Airbus chief Guillaume Faury says: “We have planes… that are already certified for burning 50% sustainable aviation fuel.” SAF accounts for a sliver of the aviation industry’s current fuel burn. IATA has set out SAF goals calling for SAF to account for 5% of the industry’s total fuel usage by 2030. Emirates’ Clark raised skepticism that sustainable fuel prices can be made economically viable, noting that the fuel can cost two or three times that of traditional fossil-based aviation gas. IATA suspects that, as SAF production increases, the sector will achieve a “tipping point”, after which costs will start declining. “The next steps are to scale the use of SAF,” says Airbus’s Faury. “We have a challenge.” Some governments are on board. A bill now working through the US Congress would provide tax credits to sustainable fuel blenders. Boeing’s Deal says he also supports a “tax credit for consumption” of SAF. Airbus’s clean-energy strategy includes development of a hydrogen-powered airliner for service entry in the mid-2030s. The airframer revealed its hydrogen-aircraft concept last year. “There are many challenges with using hydrogen,” Faury says, citing “engineering work” and the need for a hydrogen supply chain.