Airlines can they be helped

Travel news: With the passenger numbers falling, The chief executives of the major Airlines need help yet again.

British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa and Air France-KLM have joined forces to pressurise the EU transport boss take urgent action to help the airline industry.

They emphasised they were not looking for bail-outs from the taxpayer like other industries but wanted the removal of regulatory barriers that made it more difficult for them to manage their own way out of the crisis.

The chief executives, who were meeting Tajani on behalf of the Association of European Airlines, called for four measures of support:

• A review of the European Investment Bank’s decision to stop supporting airlines

• An extension from the summer to winter season of the “slot waiver”, which suspends the rule that if an airline stops using a slot at an airport it loses its right to operate it.

• Closer monitoring of the European Aviation Safety Agency, which the chief executives said had been proposing laws of “questionable effectiveness but unquestionable costliness”.

• A formal statement outlining the “disastrous state of the airline sector”.

Willie Walsh, Steve Ridgway, Wolfgang Mayrhuber and Jean-Cyril Spinetta met transport commissioner Antonio Tajani to warn him the industry was in the midst of an “economic maelstrom”.