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Brazil’s civil aviation regulator ANAC said on Friday that it had suspended all flights and operations of carrier Avianca Brasil in the country as a precautionary measure, following the company’s filing for bankruptcy late last year, Reuters reported. “All the flights are suspended until the company proves it has the capacity to maintain operations safely,” ANAC said in a statement. Avianca Brasil has filed for bankruptcy protection and lost most of its fleet after lessors obtained favorable court decisions to take aircraft back for lack of payments. It is still trying to reach a deal to sell remaining assets. The carrier, which is controlled by the same holding company as publicly traded Colombia-based Avianca Holdings SA, was operating around 30 flights per day using the planes it had left.

Potential bidders for Jet Airways Ltd have so far failed to show any firm interest in bailing out the struggling airline, a source involved in the matter said, increasing the likelihood that the company will face bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported. Jet, once India’s largest private airline, was forced to stop all flight operations on April 17 after its lenders declined to extend more funds to keep the carrier going. “Companies that had submitted initial expressions of interest are not following up with binding bids,” said the source. A second source involved in the process said bidders had until May 10 to come up with binding offers, a few days later than the April 30 date indicated by lead lender State Bank of India (SBI) last month.

Struggling Brazilian airline Avianca Brasil had told regulators that it was permanently cancelling several routes as of yesterday despite continuing to sell tickets for them on its website, according to a letter seen by Reuters. The airline, which has been fighting aircraft lessors in bankruptcy court, told civil aviation regulator ANAC in the letter sent on Friday that it was ending 48 flight frequencies — around a quarter of its capacity — due to a shrinking fleet. The changes were due to take effect yesterday, according to the letter, but Avianca Brasil’s website showed it was still selling tickets for several of the routes that it had told ANAC it would discontinue. A representative for Avianca Brasil told Reuters the letter to ANAC was just a preliminary plan and that it was working hard to adjust its flights to affect the fewest passengers possible.

Icelandic budget carrier Wow Air has ceased operations and canceled its flights, leaving passengers stranded on both sides of the Atlantic, CNN.com reported. The airline announced the closure in a statement posted to its website on Thursday. It advised passengers to book new flights on other airlines, and said some may be eligible for compensation. Wow Air CEO Skúli Mogensen told Icelandic state broadcaster RUV that negotiations to save the airline went on until the early morning in Iceland. "As is normal, people believed we would get the investment," Mogensen told RUV. "We have been very transparent, but it didn't happen." Mogensen said more than 1,000 passengers had been affected by the grounding of aircraft. He said he didn't have an exact figure on the number of tickets that had been sold. "I'm very sorry about this as these are people who have supported us," said Mogensen. "I'm disappointed not to honor our commitments."

Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyal will step down from the board of the Indian carrier he founded 25 years ago and its lenders will seize control, the company said, as part of a deal led by state-run banks to save the airline from bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Saddled with debt of more than $1 billion, Jet has been on the brink of collapse, and had to ground more than two-thirds of its fleet as it struggled pay lenders, suppliers, pilots and leasing companies. Banks have moved in to take a majority stake in the airline after Jet failed to convince potential investors, including its largest shareholder Etihad Airways, to save the airline. Goyal’s departure, however, could reignite investor interest in India’s oldest private airline. Sources told Reuters in November that Tata Sons had been in active talks to invest in Jet on the condition that Goyal would step down or take a less prominent role.

Delta Air Lines Inc. and U.K. discounter EasyJet Plc may invest as much as 400 million euros ($452 million) in the latest attempt to revamp struggling Italian airline Alitalia SpA, Bloomberg News reported. Investors in a group led by rail operator Ferrovie dello Stato SpA are evaluating the financial needs of the “new Alitalia” that would emerge after the second bankruptcy process in a decade. Under consideration: a capital injection by investors totaling about 1 billion euros. The plan will be discussed with Delta and EasyJet this week and could be finalized by the end of February. At the core of the proposal is setting up a new company following the bankruptcy process that started in 2017. The new Alitalia would retain assets from the previous carrier, but debt wouldn’t be carried over.

From longer lines at airport security checkpoints to lengthier delays between flights, U.S. airlines are grappling with fallout from the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, one that Southwest CEO Gary Kelly says will curb early 2019 sales by as much as $15 million, the Washington Examiner reported. "I will sum it up in a word: It's maddening," Kelly told investors during a call detailing the Dallas-based company's goals for the year and its performance in the last three months of 2018. "Everyone needs to be on notice, on guard, that this shutdown could harm the economy and it could harm air travel." While both Southwest and American Airlines, the first of the largest U.S. carriers to report earnings, posted sales growth in the last three months of 2018 and were optimistic about the coming year, executives warned that the shutdown's effects on the industry were impossible to predict.