European airlines are beginning to see faint glimmers of economic sunlight and preparing to come out of their coronavirus hibernation.Deutsche Lufthansa AG (OTCMKTS:DLAKY) on Friday said group airlines Lufthansa, Eurowings and SWISS will collectively reactivate 80 aircraft for June, doubling the operational fleet size to serve a total of 106 destinations. IAG Group this week said it plans to ramp up passenger service in July on the expectation that travel restrictions will ease and more people will start flying again. Both airlines have shrunk flight operations to less than 10% of their pre-crisis level as the pandemic caused the travel market to collapse.Most of the Lufthansa Group aircraft currently in service today are flying cargo or rescue missions for governments and travel operators to bring home tourists and other travelers stranded abroad by coronavirus travel bans. Lufthansa operates a dedicated fleet of freighters and is using many passenger planes for dedicated...
Many U.S. airliners are "reasonably confident" that a return to 30% to 50% of pre-COVID-19 capacity by the end of 2020 is possible, Boeing Co (NYSE: BA) CEO David Calhoun said in a Fox Business interview Friday. A 'Crawl Back' For Airline Industry Investors expecting a swift return to 2019 traffic levels may be disappointed, as the industry will "slowly crawl back" to pre-crisis levels over a three-year period, Calhoun said.It will take another two years afterward for the industry to resume the growth curve seen over the past 20 years, the CEO said. The timeline could change based on different factors, including a quicker-than-expected development of a COVID-19 vaccine that results in a "more robust" recovery, he said.Boeing 737 MAX Update The pandemic is far from Boeing's only problem to deal with, as the two 737 MAX crashes set the company back two years, Calhoun said.The company continued to manufacture...
