Belgium’s air navigation service, Skeyes, is to establish digital control towers at six airports in the country, including the main Brussels hub and the secondary Charleroi airport. Skeyes says its board has formally chosen to open a tender procedure which will also cover phased introduction of digital towers at Antwerp, Liege, Ostend and Kortrijk. The measure is the latest evidence of a shift towards increasing air traffic control efficiency by providing remote surveillance of airports – via camera technology – from a centralised location. Skeyes is aiming to issue a tender over the next few weeks to source a partner with which to pursue the programme. “Conditions and planning of implementation will be discussed with the operators of the airport infrastructure, taking into consideration the needs for renovation of the existing towers,” it states. Skeyes says the decision is part of a strategic plan agreed last year. “Digital towers are the future of air traffic management at airports and are being deployed all over Europe,” it says. “Just like other sectors, air traffic control is in the process of digitalisation. Skeyes wants to invest in the technology of the future to improve the quality of service provided to its customers.”

Source: Cirium

Singapore is rolling out a six-month support package for the country's aviation industry, with an aim of safeguarding Changi Airport's air connectivity, reducing business costs, and protecting jobs, amid the coronavirus outbreak that has affected airlines worldwide. The S$112 million ($80.5 million) package will comprise rebates on aircraft landing and parking charges, assistance to ground handling agents, and rental rebates for shops and cargo agents at Changi Airport, says Singapore's finance minister Heng Swee Keat while announcing the country's budget plan for fiscal 2020, which begins on 1 April. Airlines that had operated scheduled passenger flights between China and Singapore before the coronavirus outbreak will receive landing credits, Heng says, while those that continue to operate flights to China amid the ongoing outbreak will receive rebates on their landing charges. A full rebate on parking charges is being extended to all scheduled passenger flights to Singapore. In addition, a 10% landing charge rebate will also be given to all freighter carriers into Singapore, and applied to all scheduled passenger flights from Southeast Asia to Singapore. Singapore carriers that have obtained a new or renewed certificate of airworthiness for their aircraft from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) during fiscal year 2019 will receive a 50% rebate on regulatory fees. A planned 1% annual increase in landing, parking and aerobridge charges affecting all operators, which was due to start on 1 April, will also be waived off for a six-month period. The finance ministry adds the package, which is being co-funded by the government, Changi Airport Group, and the CAAS, “will provide immediate relief to affected companies during the [coronavirus] outbreak period”. The support package comes at a time when the coronavirus outbreak has led to a cancellation of more than 80% of scheduled flights between Singapore and China, says Singapore’s transport ministry. “There are now fewer than 80 services [to China] per week, compared with over 400 prior to the outbreak. Passenger traffic has dropped,” the ministry was quoted as saying in an 18 February report from Singaporean online news website Today. This has also led to a decline in traffic from other regions to Singapore, it adds. Hours before the budget plan was announced, Singapore Airlines said it will selectively cut flights to points outside of China for the next three months, including those to parts of Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.


Source: Cirium

Embattled Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific has warned that its first-half results for 2020 will be "significantly down" compared with the same period last year, as the outbreak of the coronavirus compounds an already challenging market.
In releasing its traffic figures for January, the Oneworld carrier also announced further capacity cuts across its network for February and March. The carrier, along with its Cathay Dragon unit, will slash passenger capacity by 40%. This, it notes, is an even deeper cut than the 30% capacity reduction it announced earlier this month. Cathay and Cathay Dragon combined carried just over 3 million passengers in January, a 3.8% decrease year-on-year. The carrier cut capacity as measured in ASKs by 0.3%, while traffic in terms of RPKs fell 1.8%. As a result, passenger load factor for January fell by 1.3 percentage points to 84.7%. Cathay Pacific Group chief customer and commercial officer Ronald Lam notes that while inbound traffic into the territory fell again, outbound traffic grew marginally. Cathay inbound traffic fell 40% year-on-year, slightly better than the 46% seen in November and December. Traffic figures at the carrier had already been impacted by political unrest in Hong Kong, where pro-democracy protests have been raging since June. Outbound traffic rose 1% in January. Lam says this was due to the earlier falling of the Chinese New Year holiday this year, which began at the end of January. Cathay says yield and load factors for its long haul routes were improving at the start of January, only for the coronavirus outbreak to hit its performance. "Our performance deteriorated rapidly in the last week of January as the novel coronavirus situation became more severe, and it continues to weaken significantly. We saw significant cancellation of bookings within a short period of time," says Lam. While Hong Kong is the not the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, travel restrictions imposed by some countries have also included Hong Kong. This, says Lam, led to a rise in cancelled bookings. Since last year, Cathay has flagged a financially challenging first half of 2020 amid the backdrop of local unrest. "The first half of 2020 was already expected to be extremely challenging financially. As a result of this additional significant drop in demand for flights and consequential capacity reduction caused by the novel coronavirus outbreak, the financial results for the first half of 2020 will be significantly down on the same period last year," Lam says. In early February, the carrier asked staff to take unpaid leave, in a bid to stave off the financial fallout from the virus outbreak.

Source: Cirium