A federal lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of a number of travel agents alleges the nation’s 3 largest airlines’ enacted new rules to block their least expensive prices from being used on many connecting and multi-city trips, a “conspiracy” to raise fares in violation of antitrust laws. Before the new policies, reservations computers would find the lowest price for each one-way flight in an itinerary and add them up to one price for the trip. But now the least expensive fares can’t be combined and travellers need to purchase each flight separately to get the lowest prices on trips with multiple stops. The new rules have raised the prices on multi-city trips, and, according to the suit, the airlines have put travel agents on notice that they could be required to pay the airlines the differences between the lower one-way tickets and the new higher prices. <br/>
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Aviation regulation is not keeping up with the fast pace of change in the air transport industry and needs to become more responsive to the changing operational environment, EASA executive director Patrick Ky said. “The aviation industry is extremely innovative, in particular in finding new business models to be able to grow and improve operations," he said. “What we see more and more is that the traditional way of regulating those new business models can no longer apply. We as regulators have to find new ways to regulate, possibly finding regulatory approaches that are less dependent on the way the business is operated but more on the outcome. We need to ask these innovative new business models to show to us that they can be as safe as any traditional business model and this is not going to be easy to do.” <br/>
The US Senate has passed legislation to reauthorize FAA through Sept 30, 2017, by a 95-3 vote. The bill gained wide bipartisan support by staying away from issues that were controversial among lawmakers, such as separating air traffic control from FAA, and focusing on areas of consensus, such as airline consumer protection and unmanned aerial vehicle safety. Following the March 22 terrorist attacks in Brussels, senators added aviation security provisions to the bill, including enhancing requirements for vetting airport employees with access to secure areas of airports, mandating the TSA review perimeter security at airports and seeking to reduce crowds in pre-security check areas of airports by expanding TSA’s Pre-Check program. A4A has strongly criticised the Senate bill for regulatory overreach. <br/>
The European Cockpit Association (ECA) has criticised the US DoT and the EC for the tentative approval of Norwegian Air International’s bid to start transatlantic services. It has accused the two regulatory bodies of “firing a gun on a race to the bottom” in crews’ working conditions. The ECA, which represents more than 38,000 European pilots, said the April 15 approval of NAI’s requested traffic rights opened the door for the same type of “flag of convenience” arrangements that had driven down working conditions in the shipping industry. “This decision is an own goal,” ECA president Dirk Polloczek said. “In opening the door to this flag of convenience scheme, the US DoT and the EC have chosen to undermine their own airline industries and destroy decent jobs and the social rights of their own citizens." <br/>
No flights will be able to land or take off at Belgium’s Charleroi Airport for more than 4 hours Wednesday morning due to a shortage of air-traffic controllers, a spokesman for the airport said. Charleroi Airport serves as Brussels’ secondary airport and is an important hub for Ryanair and other low-cost airlines. It has also taken on extra flights in the wake of the attacks at Brussels Airport, which have constrained operations there. The spokesman declined to give a reason for why there wouldn’t be sufficient air-traffic controllers to allow normal operations Wednesday morning, pointing to Belgocontrol, Belgium’s air-navigation service provider. Belgocontrol couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday evening. <br/>
In the past few years, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Continental, and Hawaiian Holdings have repeatedly clashed about 4 slots reserved for US airlines at Tokyo Haneda. Now they're going to have to do it all over again. Last week, the DoT finalised its decision to start from scratch in allocating Haneda flights now that US airlines will no longer be limited to overnight operations there. Since late 2010, the US govt has been allowed to allocate 4 daily flights to Haneda, but all take-offs and landings have been relegated to the undesirable 10 p.m.-7 a.m. window. Japanese carriers have been allowed to operate another 4 daily roundtrips from Haneda to the US. All 4 US airlines that serve Haneda have been pushing the US govt to negotiate for better access to that critical airport. <br/>