A UN panel approved Monday a temporary ban on cargo shipments of rechargeable lithium batteries on passenger planes because they are can create intense fires capable of destroying an aircraft. The decision by the ICAO's top-level governing council isn't binding, but most countries follow the agency's standards. The ban is effective April 1. "This interim prohibition will continue to be in force as separate work continues through ICAO on a new lithium battery packaging performance standard, currently expected by 2018," said the ICAO council's president. Aviation authorities have long known that the batteries can self-ignite. Safety concerns increased after FAA tests showed gases emitted by overheated batteries can build up in cargo containers, leading to explosions capable of disabling aircraft fire suppression systems. <br/>
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Travel Capitalist Ventures (TCV) is withdrawing its investment partnership in IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) innovation fund, it was announced Monday. IATA said TCV cited “severely deteriorating global economic and market conditions affecting early stage investments” for pulling out of NDC. “The process to identify a new investment partner is underway. No NDCIF investments have been made to date,” IATA said. The announcement is a setback for NDC, an IATA-led initiative to implement a new distribution standard for airlines globally. NDC has been picking up momentum the past year, with airlines joining pilot programs to test the standard and some rolling our early live deployments. In early February, Sabre deployed NDC to sell American Airlines’ preferred and extra legroom seats. <br/>
After 6 years of negotiations over UN greenhouse gas regulations, the aerospace industry dodged the threat of spending billions of dollars to re-engineer airplanes. The industry got help from European and Russian negotiators, who successfully argued that the standards should not render newer, more efficient planes obsolete, according to 3 people familiar with the UN talks in Montreal this month. The latest planes from companies such as Boeing and Airbus - which cost tens of billions of dollars to develop - will meet the new emissions standards. European negotiators also led an effort to forge a compromise exempting older, fuel-guzzling aircraft from the standards until 2028 – 5 years longer than a competing proposal pushed by US negotiators. <br/>
The federal govt wants to improve the accuracy of its no-fly list and curb “false positives” by adding addresses, birth dates and social-insurance numbers to the security data it shares with airlines. Ottawa has been stung by a spate of complaints in recent months from airline passengers, including the parents of young children who have faced problems boarding flights because their names match those of people on the list. Public safety minister Ralph Goodale said Sunday he’s committed to improving the reliability of the govt’s flagging system, which is intended to keep people with terrorist ties from getting on planes. A spokesman for Goodale, said the changes could take time, in part because there are privacy implications to revealing more information to airlines about people on the no-fly list. <br/>
In a move that's likely to boost Indian carriers' plan to start flights to Dubai, the Indian govt has raised the issue of 'non-availability of commercially and operationally feasible slots' for Indian carriers at Dubai airport with the Dubai authorities. In a letter to the president of Dubai civil aviation authority, civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapati Raju has stressed that non-availability of slots is the reason behind non-utilisation of bilateral entitlements by Indian carriers. "The primary reason for low utilisation by Indian carriers is the non-availability of commercially and operationally feasible slots at the Dubai International ….they are not being provided the desired slots at Dubai airport, and Dubai Airport Authority has been turning down requests of Indian carriers or providing options which are not viable for operations," Raju wrote. <br/>