SpiceJet's controlling shareholder pledges shares
SpiceJet announced KAL Airways Pvt Ltd, the controlling shareholder in the Indian airline, has pledged 38.43% of its holding in the Indian low-cost carrier. KAL Airways has pledged 60.15 million of its shares, 14.84% of the total outstanding share capital in the company. Of this, 31.2 million shares were pledged on 01-Apr-2011. Shares in SpiceJet rose 1.7% yesterday, while Kingfisher Airlines shares were up 0.7% and Jet Airways shares fell 0.8%.
Virgin Blue announced it has reached a "mutually satisfactory" agreement with Navitaire , the operator of the airline's booking and ticketing systems. Virgin Blue claimed that an 11-day outage of its systems last year cost it up to AUD20 million pre-tax.
Major share movers were Japanese carriers Skymark (down 6.4%) and All Nippon Airways (2.5% lower). Skymark announced on that it will temporarily suspend domestic services to/from Ibaraki Airport, as it needs to clean the engines of all 18 aircraft at Tokyo Handea due to the risk of radiation contamination, while checking and cleaning their replacement components stored at Ibaraki.
Shares in Philipine Airlines rose 5.4%. The carrier confirmed it is preparing for strike action by unions and is ready to implement contingency measures to minimise flight disruptions and avoid passenger inconvenience.
Selected Asia-Pacific airline share price movements (% change): 04-Apr-2011
