Special dietary needs are creating a nightmare for airline caterers as more passengers demand gluten-free, vegan or culturally specific meals. So extensive has the list of demands become from travellers, some airlines are now devising up to 35 different menus for flights. Chef Luke Mangan who designs meals for Virgin Australia's Business Class cabins, said there was no longer any such thing as one menu for all. "You've got to think of gluten free, vegetarian, diabetic - you just can't write a menu nowadays, you have to do 3 or 4," Mangan said. Or in the case of SIA, 35. The airline leads the pack with its range of variations to meet cultural or dietary needs, including an ulcer diet meal, post-weaning meal, vegetarian lacto-ovo, lactose-free, raw vegetable and high-fibre. <br/>
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A panel of govt and aviation-industry experts has reached a preliminary agreement on proposed cybersecurity standards for airliners, including the concept of cockpit alerts in the event that critical safety systems are hacked. Some of the recommendations incorporate work already under way to create an entirely new category of automated in-flight warnings—intended to directly notify pilots if navigation signals are jammed or corrupted. Such safeguards for ubiquitous Global Positioning System satellite broadcasts aren’t widely available today, and regulators typically don’t mandate them on any aircraft. But the proposals envision that these and other provisions would be incorporated into a broad package of future cyberprotections and enhanced airworthiness requirements applying to both new and existing aircraft. <br/>
Airlines are doing a better job of sticking to their schedules, and consumer complaints are falling. The DoT said Monday that 84.5% of flights on the largest 12 US airlines arrived on time during April, better than the previous month and up from 81.8% in April 2015. Hawaiian Airlines and Delta Air Lines were the best at staying on schedule, while Spirit Airlines was last, arriving late more than one-fourth of the time. Consumer complaints about US airlines fell 20% to 870 from 1,083 in April 2015. The department said it received 870 consumer complaints about US airlines, down from 1,083 in April 2015. That was a tiny fraction of the roughly 60m people who boarded planes during the month, although many consumers who protest to airlines don't bother to file a complaint with the govt. <br/>
The EC has adopted a set of passenger rights guidelines, aimed at clarifying the rules ahead of a more major revision. The passenger rights rules entered force in 2005, but a number of legal cases brought before the Court of Justice of the EU have changed the content and scope of the legislation, causing inconsistencies in its application across Europe. “A clarification was therefore needed for travellers, airlines and the national authorities, which are in charge of making sure the rules are properly applied at national level,” the EC said. Specifically, they clarify that passengers are entitled to compensation after a delay of 3 hours at the final destination, rights in the event of missed connections and what classifies as extraordinary circumstances—perhaps the most controversial part of Regulation 261. <br/>
Europe and the US should broaden their Open Skies transatlantic aviation agreement so that airlines can operate more like other businesses, unshackled by ownership and control rules, the head of the EC’s transport directorate said. Henrik Hololei, the EC’s DG for mobility and Transport said the US-EU Open Skies agreement, signed in 2007, had irreversibly changed the transatlantic market for good and was an achievement that needed to be cherished and respected. “We should deepen our cooperation,” he said, adding that one of his “dreams” was to see a day when the full vision of that agreement was realised in a truly open market between the world’s two most advanced and developed aviation markets. “Let’s start thinking big,” he said. “If we do nothing we will go backwards.” <br/>
The Chinese govt has formally launched an aero-engine company in an effort to design and build engines to power Chinese-built aircraft. The new entity—China Aviation Engine Group—has a registered capital of CNY50b (US$7.62b). Its stakeholders include Chinese aerospace firm AVIC International Holding Corp, COMAC, Beijing State-owned Assets Administration Centre, and the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council. The new company consolidates all AVIC engine production subsidiaries, which include AVIC Aero-Engine Control, AVIC Aviation Engine Corp., Sichuan Chengfa Aero Science & Technology, and Shenyang Engine Design Research. Until now, all Chinese-made aircraft have been powered by engines built by non-Chinese manufacturers. <br/>