Mexican low-cost carrier Interjet has extended its grounding until at least 11 January, after cancelling all flight operations during the Christmas period. Although other local carriers such as Aeromexico, Volaris and Aeromar have recovered many of their suspended frequencies to serve the increased holiday demand for travel, Interjet says it "is not operating some of its routes due to the situation created by the Covid-19 pandemic". Currently, no flight can be booked with a travel date on or before 10 January. Some domestic routes show availability from 11 January. Previously, ticket agents had indicated that flights would resume on 1 January. According to an airline source, almost 60 Airbus A320-family jets have been repossessed by their owners, while "those few still stored at Interjet's Toluca facilities" are not in airworthy condition. These leaves the airline with a small fleet of Superjet 100s, of which only five remain in operation, says the source. Mexico's federal customer-protection court Profeco has established a special procedure to collect claims from passengers with valid tickets that were neither honoured for transport nor refunded after the airline was suspended from IATA's BSP settlement programme.

South Africa’s political opposition is urging the country’s finance minister, Tito Mboweni, to abandon the R10 billion ($680 million) funding plan to restructure South African Airways and plough the capital into a vaccination programme. The Democratic Alliance has written to Mboweni claiming that the government should “divert” the SAA allocation to procuring vaccines against the coronavirus outbreak. According to the Democratic Alliance the R10 billion funding package could acquire some 23 million doses of the vaccine, enough for 40% of the country’s population. It has accused the main governing party, the ANC, of “skewed” fiscal priorities, claiming that the vaccine funding has come from the Solidarity Fund – a rapid-response organisation established to combat the pandemic, funded by donations which have amounted to some R3.2 billion. “Why is the ANC choosing an airline for the elite over a vaccine for the many?” the opposition queries, adding that it has also written to parliament’s appropriations committee asking for public hearings on whether South African citizens want the SAA budget reallocated. South African health minister Zweli Mkhize stated on 28 December, in reference to the effort to combat the pandemic, that “the problem in [South Africa] is that we have constraints in terms of financial resources” – a comment upon which the Democratic Alliance has seized to underline its point about SAA funding. While the government is still intending to press ahead with a restructuring of SAA in 2021, it has been attempting to resolve conflict among unions over unpaid salaries as well as a dispute with cockpit-crew representatives over conditions of employment in the new carrier. The South African department of public enterprises has stated that it cannot accept the “financial burden” of the pilot association’s three-decade-old regulating agreement, because there is a need to reduce cost structures in order to launch a reshaped SAA. It says the regulating agreement served to “preserve undeserved privileges accrued through unjust laws” which restricted aviation careers to a “small minority”, adding that it is “unconstitutional and unlawful and should be terminated”. Discussions over the situation failed to result in an agreement during December, prompting a lockout of the pilots. Pilots union SAAPA – along with the cabin-crew union SACCA and metalworkers’ union NUMSA – declined to accept a recent offer to pay three months’ worth of deferred salaries to SAA workers, which was taken up by a number of other unions at the company.

Southwest Airlines is rescinding its warnings of imminent furloughs to almost 7,000 employees after US president Donald Trump signed a government funding bill that sets aside a second tranche of coronavirus pandemic-relief funds for US airline workers. The Dallas-based low-cost carrier says on 28 December that as a result of the new stimulus legislation, it also does not plan to make any further involuntary cuts to its staff during 2021. “The new law will provide payroll support for all Southwest employees through March 31, 2021,” chief executive Gary Kelly writes in a note to the company’s employees. “Given this, we currently do not anticipate the need to conduct any furloughs or pay cuts next year.” “We are halting all efforts to furlough or reduce employees’ pay, and officially rescinding the WARN notices, furlough notices, notices of potential impact, and notices of pay reduction for non-contract employees that were previously sent,” he says. WARN stands for "Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications”, and are a required first step in announcing to large work groups that mass layoffs are imminent. According to US law, employers must give affected employees at least 60 days’ prior notice that their jobs are in danger. Late on 27 December Trump signed the bill, which Congress had approved a week earlier, after spending several days stalling and criticising some of its provisions. The legislation sets aside $15 billion to US airlines for the purpose of paying employee wages and benefits. The funds come on top of the $25 billion in wage-assistance funds afforded to US passenger carriers under the government’s initial pandemic relief law, passed in March. The additional $15 billion will be available within 10 days, the text says. Carriers taking funds must agree not to lay off staff or reduce pay rates until 31 March 2021. Earlier this month, Southwest had said it would be furloughing 6,828 employees or 12% of its workforce. If carried out as planned, this would have been the first large-scale involuntary furlough scheme in the company’s history. American Airlines and United airlines have already said they would be taking back the majority of the more than 32,000 employees they furloughed on 1 October after the first aid package ran out, if and when a new deal is agreed.