Airport
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Troops from eastern Libyan forces are seen in Ain Zara, south of Tripoli, Libya April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer
April 12, 2019
By Ulf Laessing and Ahmed Elumami
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Gunfire and blasts echoed through downtown Tripoli in the small hours of Friday as the eastern Libyan LNA force pushed against the forces of the internationally recognized government around the disused international airport and the Ain Zara district.
Fighting between the eastern force of General Khalifa Haftar and troops loyal to the Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj has displaced 9,500 people in the capital, the United Nations said.
But the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had made contingency plans in case “thousands if not hundreds of thousands” were displaced.
Haftar’s push on Tripoli in Libya’s northwest is the latest turn in a cycle of factional violence and chaos dating back to the 2011 uprising that overthrew veteran dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
After sweeping up from the desert south, Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) has have been held up in the southern suburbs of Tripoli, about 11 km (7 miles) from the center.
The U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA said 3,500 people had left their homes in Tripoli in the previous 24 hours, and that 90 percent of those who had requested evacuation could not be moved to comparatively safer areas.
Late on Thursday, the European Union urged the LNA forces to stop their offensive.
As well as the toll on civilians, the renewed conflict threatens to disrupt oil supplies, increase migration across the Mediterranean to Europe, derail a U.N. peace plan and encourage Islamist militants to exploit the chaos. Libya is a main transit point for migrants who have poured into Europe in recent years, mostly trafficked by smuggling gangs.
The LNA forces swept out of their stronghold in eastern Libya to take the sparsely populated but oil-rich south earlier this year before heading towards Tripoli, where Serraj’s U.N.-backed government sits.
Dr Syed Jaffar Hussain, WHO representative in Libya, told a Geneva news briefing by telephone from Tripoli that he feared outbreaks of tuberculosis, measles and diarrhoeal diseases due to poor sanitation, especially among the displaced.
The WHO said it had two weeks of medical supplies available for Tripoli’s hospitals.
Haftar was among the officers who helped Gaddafi seize power in a 1969 coup before parting ways with him later. Critics call Haftar another strongman in Gaddafi’s mould.
He has so far resisted U.N. pressure to accept a power-sharing settlement to stabilize Libya, using his leverage as an ally of the West in attempts to stem Islamist militancy in North Africa.
(Additional reporting by Tom Miles, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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FILE PHOTO: A Hong Kong Airlines Airbus A330-343 descends before landing at Hong Kong Airport in Hong Kong, China, April 4, 2018. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo
April 12, 2019
By Julie Zhu and Jennifer Hughes
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong Airlines shareholders have demanded to see 2018 accounts before considering providing at least HK$2 billion ($255 million) needed to ensure the carrier – part owned by the indebted HNA Group – keeps its license, two sources said.
The demand came at a tense extraordinary shareholder meeting last week and at which former majority owner HNA did not speak at all, the sources said of the discussion, which has not previously been reported.
Shareholders questioned the airlines’ dealings with other HNA firms, including querying the prices paid to lease planes from affiliates as well as the cost of materials bought from them, the sources said, declining to be identified as the information was not public.
Hong Kong Airlines said, as a private company, it does not comment on its financial activities. HNA declined to comment.
Just weeks earlier, Hong Kong’s Air Transport Licensing Authority (ATLA) demanded the airline detail plans to improve finances. ATLA declined to comment further on Friday.
ALTA’s demand came after a travel insurer in January dropped protection against the airline’s collapse, prompting the airline to reassure customers it was operating as normal. A month before, the airline suffered a series of executive departures.
Meanwhile, the formerly acquisitive HNA – a planes-to-banking Chinese conglomerate – has been working to improve finances since China cracked down on aggressive debt-fueled foreign dealmaking began in mid-2017.
At that point, a $50 billion spree had netted HNA assets including the single largest stake in Deutsche Bank. It has since been selling off holdings, including low-cost carrier Hong Kong Express Airways last month.
At last week’s meeting, Hong Kong Airlines executives told shareholders that without fresh funds, the airline’s operating license was at risk, said the people familiar with the matter.
Executives then discussed raising HK$2 billion via share placements, the people said. Such a move would significantly dilute the holdings of shareholders if they do not participate.
Major shareholders include Chinese private equity firm Frontier Investment Partner with about 34 percent, and Zhong Gousong, a former executive and director of the airline, at about 27 percent.
HNA cut its stake in the carrier two years ago and currently owns 29 percent through Hainan Airlines, its mainland flagship airline and China’s fourth-largest carrier.
Meeting attendees demanded to see the airline’s accounts for 2018 including details of interactions with other HNA firms before considering whether they would participate in the share placements, the people said.
The airline also told shareholders that it swung to a loss of about HK$3 billion last year, the people said. In 2017, it booked profit of HK$759 million, showed accounts for that year seen by Reuters.
The 2017 accounts showed signs of rising financial strain, including a 50 percent jump in trade receivables – money due but not received – while revenue rose only 11 percent. Payments owed to the airline by HNA companies more than doubled to HK$1.3 billion, or 73 percent of total receivables.
The airline also held stock of four unlisted HNA affiliates, worth $367 million at the end of 2017, and had outstanding loans at that point of $300 million extended to two other HNA firms.
(Reporting by Julie Zhu and Jennifer Hughes in Hong Kong; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
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A SpiceJet passenger aircraft Boeing 737-800 is seen after it overshoot the runway while landing on Tuesday night at the airport in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade
April 12, 2019
By Jamie Freed
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Budget Indian airline SpiceJet Ltd said on Friday it planned to lease a “first lot” of 16 Boeing Co 737-800s to help fill a gap in aviation capacity that ratings agency ICRA said has pushed up fares by 30 to 40 percent since September.
SpiceJet had canceled some flights due to the grounding of its 12 737 MAX planes after Ethiopian Airlines’ deadly March 10 crash. However, the bulk of the reduction, which ICRA said removed 15 percent of market capacity, is due to Jet Airways Ltd grounding more than three-quarters of its fleet as a result of funding problems.
“The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector,” SpiceJet Chairman Ajay Singh said in a statement. “SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimize passenger inconvenience.”
India’s civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu has directed the civil aviation secretary to review issues related to Jet Airways and take steps to minimize the inconvenience to passengers and ensure their safety, the minister said in a Tweet on Friday.
India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation has de-registered 11 737-800s that had been leased by Jet Airways on request from lessors, the agency’s website said, and another 14 requests for de-registration remain pending.
SpiceJet did not say whether it planned to lease planes that had previously been flown by Jet. The budget carrier’s shares rose 5 percent in early trade on Friday.
(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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FILE PHOTO: Guatemalan Attorney General Thelma Aldana participates in a news conference in Guatemala City, Guatemala, August 28, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas/File Photo
April 12, 2019
By Gustavo Palencia and Sofia Menchu
TEGUCIGALPA/GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – A Guatemalan presidential hopeful known for taking on high-profile corruption cases as attorney general said on Thursday she was detained at an airport in Honduras before abruptly leaving the country shortly afterward.
Thelma Aldana, Guatemala’s former chief prosecutor, is among the front-runners in next month’s election but faces an arrest warrant back home that she dismisses as the work of her political opponents.
Aldana said in a post on her Twitter page she was “arbitrarily detained” in Honduras and lashed out at what she dubbed a “pact of the corrupt” in which she included Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
The Honduran migration institute confirmed in a statement that Aldana landed at the main airport in the capital on Thursday morning on a flight from neighboring El Salvador, was processed, and “voluntarily” left the country nearly three hours later and returned to El Salvador.
The statement noted twice that Aldana was traveling in a private plane.
The Honduran national police said in a separate statement Aldana was never detained and that there are no restrictions on her travel in the country.
A senior campaign aide said security officials questioned Aldana without identifying themselves.
“Thelma was taken to an office where she was interrogated several times and questioned about personal matters and security issues that put her at risk due to the information they were seeking,” campaign strategist Jose Carlos Marroquin told Reuters.
Aldana, 63, served as attorney general from 2014 to 2018 and helped topple a former president on corruption charges. She also investigated current President Jimmy Morales.
A Guatemalan judge issued a warrant for Aldana’s arrest last month on charges including embezzlement and tax fraud.
She has dismissed the order as politically motivated, along with a separate ruling last week by Guatemala’s electoral tribunal that revoked her candidacy citing irregularities during her tenure as attorney general.
She has appealed against the electoral tribunal’s ruling to the constitutional court, Guatemala’s top court.
Aldana led the field of presidential candidates with 28 percent in a recent poll before the June 16 election, ahead of Zury Rios, the daughter of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, and former First Lady Sandra Torres.
Running on a platform of efficient and transparent government, Aldana has pledged to expand the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG.
Morales’ government announced in January it would not renew the CICIG’s mandate and expelled the anti-corruption body’s leader.
(Reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa and Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Paul Tait)
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FILE PHOTO: A number of grounded Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft are shown parked at Victorville Airport in Victorville, California, U.S., March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake
April 12, 2019
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Southwest Airlines Co said on Thursday it would remove its 34 Boeing Co 737 MAX jets from its flying schedule through Aug. 5, leading to around 160 daily flight cancellations during the revised summer schedule.
In a statement, Southwest President Tom Nealon said the decision is meant to “increase the reliability of our schedule and reduce the amount of last-minute flight changes,” especially during the summer travel season.
(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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FILE PHOTO: An Airbus A318-100 airplane of Avianca Brazil flies over the Guanabara Bay as it prepares to land at Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes
April 11, 2019
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Struggling carrier Avianca Brasil will not be allowed to take off from Brazil’s largest airport, located in Guarulhos, starting Friday, unless it resumes payments for the use of its facilities, the airport operator said in a statement.
Avianca Brasil filed for bankruptcy protection in December and has since incurred increasing debts with lessors and airport operators as it continued to carry out most of its scheduled flights. The airline is very low on cash and fell behind on its payroll in March.
(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
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FILE PHOTO: Jet Airways aircraft are seen parked at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo
April 11, 2019
By Aditi Shah
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s beleaguered Jet Airways said on Thursday 10 more of its planes had been grounded over unpaid dues to leasing companies, pushing it to the brink of shutdown and jeopardizing hopes of a new investor rescuing the carrier.
Jet, which had already been forced by lessors to ground about 80 percent of its fleet prior to this, also said it had canceled all west-bound overseas long-haul flights until tomorrow morning.
Thursday’s move comes even as Jet’s lenders still try to seek expressions of interest in the debt-laden carrier from potential investors interested in turning around the airline.
Jet airways has proactively canceled all west bound long haul flights from India from tonight until tomorrow morning, a company spokesman said.
With the fresh groundings on Thursday, a Reuters calculation pegs the size of Jet’s operational fleet at slightly over a dozen planes, down from over 120 aircraft last year.
Saddled with more than $1.2 billion of bank debt, Jet is fighting for survival as it also owes money to lessors, suppliers, pilots and oil companies.
If the size of its operational fleet drops below the 20 mark, Jet may be forced to halt all international operations, as Indian regulations demand that any domestic carrier has to have at least 20 operational aircraft in order to fly overseas.
A company spokesman declined to comment on whether the size of Jet’s operational fleet was now less than 20, only saying that it was still in the double digits.
Lenders, led by State Bank of India (SBI), want a new investor to acquire a stake of up to 75 percent in the airline. Initial bids were to be submitted by the end of Wednesday, but SBI extended the deadline on Wednesday to Friday.
At least three sources familiar with the matter said the lenders had so far received four expressions of interest in the airline.
It is far from clear though, whether any of these will translate into bids and whether an investor will be identified in time to rescue the 25-year old carrier.
Jet has yet to receive a loan of about $217 million from its lenders as part of a rescue deal agreed in late March, and many of its lessors that had earlier grounded planes have in the last two weeks begun to de-register these planes, further eroding value in the airline.
Once a plane is de-registered, the lessor can take it out of the country and lease it to other airlines.
Some fuel suppliers have also begun to tighten their fuel supply terms to the embattled carrier, piling additional pressure on Jet.
The airline, once India’s leading private carrier, has been forced in recent months to cancel hundreds of flights to dozens of destinations both in India and overseas, leading to a customer backlash and a steady slide in its market share.
(Reporting by Aditi Shah in New Delhi Chris Thomas in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Promit Mukherjee in Mumbai; Editing by Susan Fenton and Euan Rocha)
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FILE PHOTO: A Qatar Airways Boeing 7878 Dreamliner airplane is pictured at Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy, March 30, 2019. REUTERS/Alberto Lingria/File Photo
April 11, 2019
DUBAI (Reuters) – Qatar Airways said on Thursday its investment in Air Italy was fully compliant with the Open Skies agreement between Qatar and the United States.
The airline issued the statement after the U.S. said it was scrutinizing the Qatar state-owned carrier’s 49 percent stake in the Air Italy.
(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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FILE PHOTO: The US flag (L), and the Mexico’s flag are pictured on the international border bridge Paso del Norte in between El Paso US and Ciudad Juarez in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico December 28, 2016. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo
April 11, 2019
By Anthony Esposito
MERIDA, Mexico (Reuters) – A meeting of U.S. and Mexican government and business leaders on Thursday aims to shore up investor confidence in Mexico and defuse U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to close their shared border if illegal immigration is not halted.
Part of regular business forum the U.S.-Mexico CEO Dialogue, the talks in Mexico coincide with renewed tensions over trade and the border after two years of uncertainty sparked by Trump’s push to rework the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
They also give Mexico an opportunity to address investor concerns about how President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has run Latin America’s No. 2 economy since taking office in December.
“We want the American investors that visit our country to go back home feeling confident about their investments here,” said Moises Kalach, a top executive in the CCE business lobby, which represented Mexico’s private sector at the NAFTA talks.
Lopez Obrador and officials including his foreign minister and energy minister, plus U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, are scheduled to attend the two-day meeting in the city of Merida.
Among investors due to attend is Larry Fink, chief executive of the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock Inc.
The leftist Lopez Obrador took power vowing to fight entrenched corruption, crime, inequality and poverty, scourges that cost Mexico billions of dollars every year.
He has said he wants to boost both private and public investment, but some of his early decisions, such as canceling a partially-built $13 billion Mexico City airport and steps to rein in the autonomy of regulatory bodies, have spooked investors.
Questions remain over the future of trade in the region because the deal agreed to replace NAFTA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), has yet to be ratified.
U.S. Democratic politicians say Mexico must approve a new labor law to strengthen its trade unions before they approve the USMCA, and Kalach said the implications of that legislation now in the Mexican Congress would be addressed.
Time would also be given to how Mexico proposes to cope with a migrant surge which has led to Trump threatening to close the border, causing trade hold-ups at the frontier, he added.
“So as to lower the pressure on this issue, which is a real issue and an important issue,” Kalach said.
Trump said on Wednesday he would have to mobilize more of the military at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Cutting through the noise surrounding the issue of immigration, Mexico wants to ensure that the message goes out that both countries’ private sectors keep working “hand in hand”, said a Mexican official, who asked not to be named.
Mexico is also eager to drum up interests in “strategic projects” in Mexico’s southeast, and to ensure there is a good business climate in the country, the official said.
Key among the projects is the planned $8 billion construction of a new Pemex refinery on Mexico’s Gulf Coast, which American firms were recently invited to bid on.
Other schemes the government wants to pitch to investors include a rail project across popular tourist areas of the Yucatan peninsula, known as the Mayan Train, development of border areas, and an alternative new Mexico City airport.
(Additional reporting by Dave Graham, Frank Jack Daniel and Sharay Angulo in Mexico City; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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FILE PHOTO: A logo of Groupe ADP (Aeroports de Paris) is seen during the company’s Investor day in Paris, France, April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann/File Photo
April 11, 2019
PARIS (Reuters) – French lawmakers adopted on Thursday a government bill aimed at kickstarting a wave of privatizations, including a sale of the state’s stake in airports group ADP, to raise cash for a new innovation fund.
The Assemblee Nationale – in which President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist LREM party has a commanding majority – voted in favor of the so-called “Loi Pacte” legislation bill, with 147 votes in favor of the bill versus 50 against.
“This is a law which will help our economy and prepare us for the future,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters in the parliament.
“We want to make ADP a world champion in terms of airport traffic,” he added.
Macron’s government has consistently said it aims to start the ADP privatization process in 2019, but the plan has been criticized by some opposition parties over fears it could result in job cuts or a loss of control for a key national asset.
Those privatization proposals form part of a broader strategy to raise cash to boost the economy and finance technological innovations in France.
Le Maire had said last year that France would block any moves by a foreign power to gain control of ADP.
Based on current market prices, the French state’s 50.6 percent shareholding in ADP is worth around 8.8 billion euros ($9.92 billion).
Privatizations are only part of the wide-ranging law, which also reduces red tape for starting new firms and makes it easier to introduce employee profit-sharing schemes.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Leigh Thomas)
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