The boss of India's newest airline Vistara has urged the government to scrap a rule that restricts carriers in the country's cut-throat aviation sector from expanding their operations abroad. Phee Teik Yeoh, the Singaporean CEO of Vistara, which was launched last year, said that recent reforms were welcome but more needed to be done to help fledgling airlines. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a long-awaited shake-up of the rapidly growing market in June, including amending a regulation known as the "5-20 rule", which had been criticised by industry experts. The new policy stipulates that Indian carriers no longer need to have been in operation for five years before they can fly internationally, as was previously the case. But it insists that domestic airlines must still have 20 planes in their fleet before expanding to destinations overseas. "We are happy to see the 5-20 rule's partial lift, although we would like to see the complete removal of it in the near future," Phee said. "It would be the right decision in the right direction and would allow more choices for Indian travellers," the 47-year-old added. Carriers say scrapping the rule and allowing them to fly overseas is crucial to them turning an early profit while the government wants them to focus on improving India's domestic network.<br/>
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Air travellers were keeping a wary eye on Hurricane Matthew as forecasts continued to show it tracking toward the US East Coast later this week. Ominously for travelers to the region, the forecasts out late Monday evening showed an increasing likelihood that Matthew will at least come close to Florida and the Southeast. A US landfall remained a possibility by late week, though the storm’s projected path still had a large degree of uncertainty and it could still turn out to sea. For now, Matthew forced airlines to cancel some flights to Caribbean islands like Jamaica, Haiti and the Turks and Caicos. US fliers headed to those regions this week should prepare for disruptions. The complete cessation of flights is likely for parts of Cuba and the Bahamas. The US State Department had already issued travel warnings related to Matthew, advising Americans in parts of Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and the Bahamas to leave ahead of the storm, if possible. So far, no US airlines had waived change fees for airports on the US mainland. But they are waiving change fees for flights in some parts of the Caribbean.<br/>
In pursuing his historic opening of relations with Cuba, President Obama has frequently pushed legal and political boundaries. Now congressional Republicans are up in arms about another such initiative: an airline travel agreement they say exposes the United States to dangerous security gaps at Cuban airports. Congressional committees charged with overseeing the Department of Homeland Security and TSA have engaged in a months-long feud with the administration over security vulnerabilities at 10 Cuban airports that have begun direct flights to the United States. The lawmakers say the lapses increase the risk of terrorists, criminals, drugs and spies entering the United States. The security dogs that can be seen at Cuban airports are “mangy street dogs” that were fraudulently posed as trained animals, the TSA’s top official for the Caribbean, Larry Mizell, told congressional officials behind closed doors in March, according to these officials. He also told them there are few body scanners at the Cuban airports and that those in place are Chinese-made versions for which no reliability data exists.<br/>
Dubai International Airport expects to become the world’s busiest within this decade, overtaking Beijing and Atlanta, spurred on by the expansion of Emirates airline. The airport, which overtook London Heathrow, sees passenger traffic climbing to 83m this year from 78m last year and expects 90m people using the facility next year, said Paul Griffiths, the CEO of Dubai Airports. “The growth rates that we are experiencing are more than double what is being experienced by both Beijing and Atlanta," Griffiths said. “Within perhaps this decade, we should see ourselves exceeding the total traffic through those airports for the number 1 absolute spots." Dubai, already the world’s busiest airport by international traffic, added 7.5m passengers last year. While Atlanta Hartfield-Jackson, the main hub for Delta Air Lines Inc, remains the busiest, it only processed 5.3m additional passengers for a total of 101.5m. Beijing airport added 3.8m to reach 89.9m.<br/>
Boeing started to make money on each 787 Dreamliner it delivers just this spring, but thanks to a unique accounting strategy the jet has been fattening the aircraft maker’s bottom line for years. Boeing is one of the few companies that uses a technique called program accounting. Rather than booking the huge costs of building the advanced 787 or other aircraft as it pays the bills, Boeing—with the blessing of its auditors and regulators and in line with accounting rules—defers those costs, spreading them out over the number of planes it expects to sell years into the future. That allows the company to include anticipated future profits in its current earnings. The idea is to give investors a read on the health of the company’s long-term investments. Boeing calculates its Dreamliner earnings based on 10-year forecasts of supplier contracts, aircraft orders and options, productivity improvements, labor contracts and market conditions, which are reviewed by its auditors. The company, which delivered its first Dreamliner in 2011, estimates it will sell 1,300 Dreamliners over the 10 years ending in 2021. So far, it has delivered nearly 500 of them. The problem, analysts and other critics say, is that Boeing’s approach stretches its profit per plane on the Dreamliner into such a distant and uncertain future that it isn’t clear if it will ever recover the nearly $30b it has sunk into producing the plane and validate years of projected profits.<br/>