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The UN political chief Tuesday urged the world's nations to share information about airline passengers as part of a stepped up response to the growth of "transnational terrorism" sparked by the Islamic State group's expanding areas of attack. Jeffrey Feltman also told the UN Security Council that it is "critical" to improve the global response to "foreign terrorist fighters" leaving Syria and Iraq, even though many are still in conflict zones. He was briefing the council on Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' latest report on IS — also known as ISIL and Daesh. It said European member states have reported that between 15 and 40% of their nationals and residents who traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight have returned — and some governments highlighted a rising number of female returnees. "A proportion of those returning present a significant threat and are facing appropriate legal and control measures," the secretary-general's report said. "Other returnees are reported to have become disillusioned with the fighting and the distorted ideology of ISIL and therefore represent a lower threat."<br/>

The US NTSB said Tuesday that materials found by two American hikers in Bolivia do not contain any data from missing data recorders from a plane that crashed in 1985 killing 29 people. Two US hikers recovered several metal fragments in May, one damaged spool of magnetic tape and two additional off-spool sections of magnetic tape from Eastern Airlines Flight 980, NTSB said. The Boeing 727 jetliner crashed on Jan. 1, 1985 on approach to the airport in La Paz, Bolivia. The hikers recovered the material at the crash site on Mount Illimani, Bolivia about 25 miles from the airport. NTSB said its examination revealed no identifiable serial numbers, while one metal piece was identified as a cockpit voice recorder rack. Other metal pieces were consistent with parts from the flight data recorder pressurized container assembly. The magnetic tape on the spool was 3/4-inch U-Matic videotape. NTSB identified it as an 18-minute recording of an episode of the 1960s television series "I Spy," dubbed in Spanish. The plane, which was travelling at night from Asuncion, Paraguay to La Paz, veered off course and crashed at about 19,600 feet on Mt. Illimani, a 21,000-ft. Andean peak. The US FAA said in a 1999 report that "investigators speculate the flight crew were maneuvering to avoid weather in the vicinity, and that impact occurred with the aircraft in cruise configuration, in a shallow descent."<br/>

In a pair of US airline disputes with foreign carriers, the White House signalled Tuesday that President Trump’s focus will be on domestic jobs. The question previewed a meeting Trump scheduled Thursday with the CEs of American, Delta and United airlines. Those legacy carriers have asked the administration to block additional flights from state-owned Emirates, Etihad and Qatar airlines because they received an alleged $50b in subsidies during the last decade, which the carriers deny. The question also touched on Norwegian Air International, which won DoT approval in December to serve the US Airline unions have urged Trump to overturn the approval by arguing Norwegian is skirting labor laws with headquarters in Ireland, which the airline denies. Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, said Trump wants to talk with the Big 3 airline executives about economic growth and job creation. Spicer noted that Norwegian has hired American-based crews and is buying Boeing planes that provide “a huge economic interest” for the country. “I don't want to get ahead of the president on that, but just to be clear, we are talking about US jobs both in terms of the people who are serving those planes and the person who is building those planes,” Spicer said. “That’s a very big difference.”<br/>

The Canadian government will announce an aid package for Bombardier later Tuesday, although a source familiar with the matter said the amount would be far less than the plane-maker had requested. The assistance from the government could trigger a new trade dispute with Brazil, which said late last year it would start proceedings against Canada at the WTO over what it calls unfair support. Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer SA have battled for decades over the regional jet market. The source said Canadian Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains would announce that Ottawa was giving the firm C$372m in repayable loans. French-language public broadcaster Radio-Canada said just one-third of the amount would go to Bombardier's new C-Series passenger jet, with the rest going to the Global 7000 business jet. In late 2015, Bombardier asked the federal government to inject $1 billion into the C-Series. Negotiations dragged on for more than a year as Cabinet ministers outlined concessions they wanted the firm to make, such as changing its dual-class governing structure. Government officials declined to comment when asked about the report. Bombardier is now in a better position financially than when it initially asked Ottawa to match $1 billion in aid from the province of Quebec, where Bombardier is headquartered.<br/>

Chinese airlines are toasting an unexpectedly cheerful Lunar New Year, with a sharp pick up in international passenger numbers in January, according to a new report from JP Morgan. The lingering winter smog over large tracts of northern China, it seems, encouraged more to avoid not only the annual scrum in travelling to meet relatives, but exposing themselves any further to the worsening air quality, it said. The investment giant underlines it still maintains a cautious view for the airline sector this year, but it’s certainly hard to ignore the thumping 30% rise in international revenue passenger kilometers growth (a measure of sales volume of passenger traffic) compared to a year ago, from late December to the first three weeks of January. “This demand pick-up was pretty unexpected as Chinese airlines have been busy cutting international capacity growth since October, due to industry overcapacity and the collapsing yield,” said JP Morgan’s Boyong Liu. International consultancy firm Mckinsey & Company has highlighted China’s tourism industry as an economic bright spot as people earn more and head overseas in greater numbers. Mckinsey predicts China’s middle class will likely account for 54% of urban households and 56% of urban private consumption by 2022, and as a dark cloud, literally, continues to hang over many parts of the country, more are being encouraging to seek a break from the hazardous murk, overseas, it says. In December, Ctrip.com, one of China’s largest online travel agents, estimated 150,000 travelled abroad with the sole intention of giving their lungs a rest, and predicts a one million to do so annually, creating a whole new “reason to travel”. New phrases to emerge from the gloom are “smog holidays”, being taken by “smog refugees”. On two particularly bad days, December 16 and 17, international travel bookings soared, according to JP Morgan’s Liu.<br/>

Donna Hubbard, a flight attendant who lives outside Atlanta, has no problem speaking forcefully about the issue of human trafficking in the US. But her voice begins to falter when she talks about her own life — how years of exploitation shattered her confidence and turned her life upside down. “For many years, I couldn’t talk about being an addict,” she said. “I couldn’t talk about being imprisoned. I couldn’t talk about getting on my feet, getting my life back, getting my children back.” She paused to fight back tears. “I could not talk about that part of me where I was victimized.” But having realized that airline employees are perfectly positioned to stop human traffickers and their victims in transit, Hubbard has found her mission: teaching other flight attendants to spot and report cases of human trafficking. The nonprofit organization she joined in 2015, Airline Ambassadors International, trains workers at airlines and airports how to spot, and report, cases of human trafficking. It also delivers humanitarian aid around the world and transports sick children who need medical care. It was founded in 1996 by Nancy Rivard, who was then a flight attendant. “We just did it on our own as a public service because we had the front-line personnel,” Rivard said, noting that the organization began focusing on human trafficking in 2009 and has held 52 training sessions in the US and abroad since 2011. There were 8,042 reported cases of human trafficking in the United States last year — the most ever, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit organization Polaris. But it is not all bad news, said Bradley Myles, Polaris’s chief executive. “We don’t necessarily want to give the impression that just because we’re learning about more cases, the crime is increasing,” Myles said. “It’s actually possible that the response is getting more sophisticated.”<br/>