2025-03-21 06:48
MAG to buy 18 Boeing 737 MAX 8, 12 MAX 10 jets Malaysia Airlines modernising aging fleet after safety concerns Group to consider option for 30 more jets depending on market conditions KUALA LUMPUR, March 21 (Reuters) - Malaysia Aviation Group, the parent company of Malaysia Airlines, said on Friday it will purchase 30 new Boeing (BA.N) , opens new tab 737 aircraft for 2029 delivery, aimed at modernising the flag-carrier's fleet and rebound from a series of setbacks. The group has agreed to buy 18 Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 12 of the 737 MAX 10 planes, MAG managing director Izham Ismail said. MAG declined to reveal the value of the deal. Sign up here. The group includes Malaysia Airlines, short-haul airline Firefly, and pilgrimage airline Amal, and has a mixed fleet of both Airbus (AIR.PA) , opens new tab and Boeing planes. It was not immediately clear how the new jets would be allocated. Malaysia Airlines has struggled to recover from two deadly disasters in 2014, and temporarily reduced its flights after it was investigated last year by Malaysia's civil aviation authority, which found several significant safety and maintenance issues. "It's very timely that Malaysia Airlines does not repeat the same mistake. So, the ordering of new planes must be well-timed, otherwise we will end up as we did last year," Izham told a press conference, describing the purchase as a very important milestone. The deal includes an option to purchase a further 30 jets, depending on market conditions, Izham said. The decision to purchase the aircraft was based on extensive evaluations. "Malaysia Airlines has to prove its credibility, that it is able to sustain its trajectory sustainably, commercially, and financially, then we'll make that decision," he said. The airline, which has been steadily growing its fleet, was delisted in 2014. Sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional then took over ownership of the restructured parent company, MAG. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he was pleased to see Malaysia Airlines continue its longstanding relationship with Boeing. "I trust that Boeing and GE Aerospace will recognise this partnership as a valuable opportunity to strengthen their presence in Malaysia,” he said. In February 2022, MAG agreed to lease 25 new Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets from Air Lease Corporation for delivery by 2026. Eleven have so far been received and the rest would arrive in the next 18 months, Izham said. Boeing plans to increase its 1000+ Malaysia workforce by 20% over the next two years, according to Brendan Nelson, president of Boeing Global, who also attended the signing. The new fleet of aircraft will be powered by CFM LEAP-1B engines from CFM International, jointly owned by GE Aerospace (GE.N) , opens new tab and Safran (SAF.PA) , opens new tab. MAG also said in 2022 it would acquire 20 new Airbus A330neo jets by 2028, the first of which arrived in November. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/malaysia-airlines-parent-buy-30-boeing-737-jets-2025-03-21/
2025-03-21 06:45
March 21 (Reuters) - Britain's Heathrow Airport said on Friday that it had begun reopening after a massive fire at a nearby electrical substation knocked out power, forcing a shutdown at Europe's busiest airport and disrupting the flight schedules of airlines globally. At least 120 inbound flights to Heathrow were diverted to other airports, according to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24. Sign up here. Here are the top 10 airlines by capacity whose aircraft were set to arrive at Heathrow Airport on Friday. Here is what airlines are saying about the closure: Source: Data from Cirium Ascend, company statements. Note: The seats represent capacity, not ticketed passengers. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airlines-flying-into-heathrow-airport-friday-2025-03-21/
2025-03-21 06:40
Gold backs down but remains above $3,000 an ounce Fed's cautious tone provides dollar support Investor focus turns to details of Trump's reciprocal tariffs Nasdaq breaks four-week losing streak NEW YORK, March 21 (Reuters) - Wall Street edged higher and the dollar gained ground on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump hinted he would be flexible regarding a new round of tariffs expected to be imposed early next month. Even so, lingering economic uncertainties and churning geopolitical tension kept investors cautious. Sign up here. All three major U.S. stock indexes reversed their losses after Trump's announcement, but their gains were held in check by weakness in economically sensitive sectors, such as chips (.SOX) , opens new tab, materials (.SPLRCM) , opens new tab and small caps (.RUT) , opens new tab. All three indexes registered weekly gains. Gold was off sharply from its all-time high but remained above $3,000 per ounce, a level it breached last week for the first time. "Clearly these are challenging times for investors," said Terry Sandven, Chief Equity Strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis. "With volatility and uncertainty on the rise, angst is swaying sentiment, while tariffs and their associated implications are rattling consumer and investor confidence." Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee and New York Fed President John Williams said it would be premature to gauge the economic effects of U.S. President Trump's tariff actions, and the central bank has time to determine the direction of its monetary policy. A spate of central bank policy meetings held investors' focus for much of the week, with the Fed, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England all holding rates steady. The common theme among monetary policymakers was caution, with most adopting a "wait and see" stance toward Trump's tariffs and trade policy, which has fostered what Fed Chair Jerome Powell called "unusually elevated" uncertainty. Investors await clarification on details of Trump's reciprocal tariffs expected to take effect on April 2. Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and a huge blast from a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian military airfield also dampened risk appetite and raised the appeal of safe-haven assets. "The number of factors that have the potential to impact investor sentiment has risen and this is fueling uncertainty," Sandven added. "Global tensions are heightened, valuation is elevated, and company guidance is measured." "That’s the teeter-totter we’re seeing in the broader market." Adding to the turmoil, Britain's Heathrow Airport was shut due to a huge fire at a nearby electrical substation. Markets watched for financial fallout from the detention of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's main political rival. Eyes were also on Germany's massive fiscal stimulus package, on track to pass the Bundesrat upper house of parliament on Friday. U.S. economic indicators in the coming week will include housing and industrial data. On Thursday, the Commerce Department will give its third and final take on fourth-quarter GDP. Its Personal Consumption Expenditures report is due on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) , opens new tab rose 31.88 points, or 0.08%, to 41,985.20, the S&P 500 (.SPX) , opens new tab rose 4.55 points, or 0.08%, to 5,667.44 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) , opens new tab rose 92.43 points, or 0.52%, to 17,784.05. European shares slipped, yet the STOXX Euro 600 nabbed a weekly gain, extending its year-to-date outperformance. MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe (.MIWD00000PUS) , opens new tab fell 1.47 points, or 0.17%, to 842.01. The pan-European STOXX 600 (.STOXX) , opens new tab index fell 0.6%, while Europe's broad FTSEurofirst 300 index (.FTEU3) , opens new tab fell 12.99 points, or 0.59%. Emerging market stocks (.MSCIEF) , opens new tab fell 9.49 points, or 0.83%, to 1,131.20. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) , opens new tab closed lower by 0.81%, to 588.59, while Japan's Nikkei (.N225) , opens new tab fell 74.82 points, or 0.20%, to 37,677.06. The dollar gained ground against the euro, ending the week higher as the approaching tariff deadline prompted caution. The dollar index , which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, rose 0.33% to 104.13, with the euro down 0.32% at $1.0816. Against the Japanese yen , the dollar strengthened 0.37% to 149.33. U.S. 10-year Treasuries turned higher to snap a four-day streak of declines as investors weighed tariff uncertainties against the probability that the Fed will hold rates steady for the time being. The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes rose 1.9 basis points to 4.252%, from 4.233% late on Thursday. The 30-year bond yield rose 3.9 basis points to 4.5948% from 4.556% late on Thursday. The 2-year note yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Federal Reserve, fell 0.9 basis points to 3.948%, from 3.957% late on Thursday. Crude oil prices edged higher and appeared set to notch a second straight weekly gain as new U.S. sanctions on Iran and the latest OPEC+ output plan raised expectations of tighter supply. U.S. crude rose 0.31% to settle at $68.28 per barrel, while Brent settled at $72.16 per barrel, up 0.22% on the day. Gold paused its record run, dipping in opposition to the stronger dollar, but notched its third weekly gain. Spot gold fell 0.8% to $3,020.10 an ounce. U.S. gold futures fell 0.58% to $3,022.50 an ounce. https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-markets-wrapup-1-2025-03-21/
2025-03-21 06:37
Heathrow reopening after power outage Flights have been diverted around the world Airport hopes to be fully operational on Saturday Industry, experts ask how it could have happened Police say not suspicious LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - Flights at Britain's Heathrow resumed late on Friday after a fire knocked out its power supply and shut Europe's busiest airport for the day, stranding tens of thousands of passengers and causing travel turmoil worldwide. Heathrow said its teams worked tirelessly to reopen the world's fifth-busiest airport after it was forced to close entirely after a huge fire engulfed a nearby substation on Thursday night, with travellers told to stay away. Sign up here. The airport had been due to handle 1,351 flights on Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers, but planes were diverted to other airports in Britain and across Europe, while many long-haul flights returned to their point of departure. Heathrow said there would be a limited number of flights on Friday, mostly focused on relocating aircraft and bringing planes into London. "Tomorrow morning, we expect to be back in full operation, to 100% operation as a normal day," said Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye. "What I'd like to do is to apologise to the many people who have had their travel affected ... we are very sorry about all the inconvenience." Police said that after an initial assessment they were not treating the incident as suspicious, although enquiries remained ongoing. London Fire Brigade said its investigations would focus on the electrical distribution equipment. The closure not only caused misery for travellers but provoked anger from airlines, which questioned how such crucial infrastructure could fail. The industry is now facing the prospect of a financial hit costing tens of millions of pounds, and a likely fight over who should pay. "You would think they would have significant back-up power," one top executive from a European airline told Reuters. Heathrow's Woldbye said back-up systems and procedures had worked as they should. "This (power supply) is a bit of a weak point," he told reporters outside the airport. "But of course contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100% and this is one of them." Asked who would pay, he said there were "procedures in place", adding "we don't have liabilities in place for incidents like this". British transport minister Heidi Alexander said the incident had been out of Heathrow's control. "They have stood up their resilience plans very swiftly and have been working in close collaboration with all the emergency responders and the airline operators," she told reporters. DIVERTED Airlines including JetBlue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Delta Air Lines, Qantas, United Airlines, IAG-owned British Airways and Virgin were diverted or returned to their origin airports in the middle of the night, according to data from flight analytics firm Cirium. Shares in many airlines, including U.S. carriers, fell. Aviation experts said the last time European airports experienced disruption on such a large scale was the 2010 Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that grounded some 100,000 flights. While flights are restarting, it will be some time before all scheduled passenger services return to normal. "We have flight and cabin crew colleagues and planes that are currently at locations where we weren’t planning on them to be," said Sean Doyle, chief executive of British Airways, the biggest carrier at Heathrow which had 341 flights scheduled to land there on Friday. "Unfortunately, it will have a huge impact on all of our customers flying with us over the coming days." Britain's Department for Transport said it had temporarily lifted restrictions on overnight flights to ease congestion. Passengers stranded in London and facing the prospect of days of disruptions were scrambling to make alternate travel arrangements. "It's pretty stressful," Robyn Autry, 39, a professor, who had been due to fly home to New York. "I'm worried about how much is it going to cost me to fix this." Prices at hotels around Heathrow jumped, with booking sites offering rooms for 500 pounds ($645), roughly five times the normal price levels. A WAKE-UP CALL Airline executives, electrical engineers and passengers questioned how Britain's gateway to the world could be forced to close by one fire, however large. Heathrow and London's other major airports have been hit by other outages in recent years, most recently by an automated gate failure and an air traffic system meltdown, both in 2023. Philip Ingram, a former intelligence officer in the British military, said Heathrow's inability to keep operating exposed vulnerability in Britain's critical national infrastructure. "It is a wake-up call," he told Reuters. "There is no way that Heathrow should be taken out completely because of a failure in one power substation." Willie Walsh, the head of the global airlines body IATA and a former head of British Airways, said Heathrow had once again let passengers down. Heathrow said it had diesel generators and uninterruptible power supplies in place to land aircraft and evacuate passengers safely. Those systems all operated as expected. But with the airport consuming as much energy as a small city, it said it could not run all its operations safely on back-up systems. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's spokesperson said there were questions to answer about how the incident occurred and there would be a thorough investigation. https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-heathrow-airport-experiences-power-outage-due-fire-substation-2025-03-21/
2025-03-21 06:36
KAMPALA, March 21 (Reuters) - Uganda's parliament has approved a government request to borrow $190 million from Stanbic Bank (SBU.UG) , opens new tab to compensate power distributor Umeme Limited (UMEME.UG) , opens new tab for unrecovered investments after its concession expires, the energy minister said. "Parliament has approved our request as @GovUganda (government) to borrow $190 million from Stanbic Bank for the buyout of Umeme," Ruth Nankabirwa said in a post on social media platform X late on Thursday. Sign up here. Umeme is listed on both the Ugandan and the neighbouring Kenyan stock exchanges, and has monopoly rights to distribute electricity in Uganda through the concession which started in 2005. The company was notified that the licence, which is due to expire at the end of this month, would not be renewed. According to the terms of the concession, however, the government must compensate Umeme for any capital investments in the power distribution network that the company has not recovered by the end of the concession period. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ugandan-parliament-approves-190-million-loan-pay-power-distributor-umeme-2025-03-21/
2025-03-21 06:36
MOSCOW, March 21 (Reuters) - An explosion rocked an oil depot in Russia's Krasnodar region where firefighters are trying to extinguish a blaze that broke out after a Ukrainian drone attack earlier this week, regional authorities said on Friday. "During the extinguishing process, due to depressurisation of the burning tank, there was an explosion of oil products and release of burning oil," officials said on the Telegram messaging app. Sign up here. The fire spread to another tank, and the fire area increased to 10,000 sq metres (108,000 sq feet), they added - more than twice the original area of the blaze. More than 450 firefighters were trying to tackle it, and two had been injured. Interfax news agency quoted regional authorities as saying that excess levels of harmful chemicals including benzene, had been detected in atmospheric tests at two locations nearby. The depot, near the village of Kavkazskaya, is at a rail terminal for Russian oil supplies to a pipeline linking Kazakhstan to the Black Sea. The challenge of putting out the blaze highlights the disruptive impact of Ukraine's frequent strikes against Russia's vast energy industry, whose revenues fuel Moscow's war effort. Russia too has pounded Ukraine's energy grid throughout the war, causing frequent blackouts affecting civilians and industry. Russia's foreign ministry said on Thursday that Ukraine had already violated a proposed ceasefire by attacking the depot. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Kyiv is ready to join such a ceasefire - discussed on Tuesday between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin - if there is a documented agreement with Russia. Ukrainian officials have also accused Russia of breaking its word on the ceasefire by launching attacks on civilian targets. Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that Russian attacks on infrastructure, including hospitals and rail equipment, showed "Putin's words are very different from reality". https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/blast-shakes-burning-russian-oil-depot-authorities-say-2025-03-21/
