general

For President Donald Trump to succeed with his plan to place the air-traffic system outside government, he will need to win over lawmakers like Jerry Moran, a deeply conservative Republican senator from Kansas. So far, it doesn’t look good for the president. "I remain entirely opposed to privatizing air-traffic control," Moran said Monday in an interview just hours after Trump unveiled one of the signature elements of his plan to revamp US infrastructure. The president delivered a fiery denunciation of the existing flight-monitoring system and urged Congress to place it under a nonprofit corporation funded by new fees. But opposition of lawmakers like Moran -- who represents a state that is home to private-plane manufacturers -- combined with near-universal hostility to the idea by Democrats, makes it all but impossible to reach the 60 votes needed for passage in the Senate. “I would say slim to none,” Craig Fuller, an aviation consultant who has monitored the fight over air-traffic control for years, said of the proposal’s chances. “I think it’s very difficult to get it done for a number of reasons.” For one thing, there is a split in the industry. Airlines such as American Airlines and Southwest cheered the president’s plan. But groups representing private-plane manufacturers, such as General Dynamics’s Gulfstream Aerospace, which worry about the service smaller airports would receive, issued statements saying it would have a negative impact on aviation. <br/>

International travel to the US in the month of April rose 4% year over year, an industry group reported on Tuesday, however the group cautioned that a strong dollar and uncertainty about the Trump Administration's policies could discourage foreign visitors in the months ahead. Data released on Tuesday by the US Travel Association (USTA), in partnership with Oxford Economics, showed stronger-than-expected April demand despite the initial messy rollout of President Donald Trump's order in January barring travel to the US from several Muslim majority countries. That order has been stayed by a number of federal courts, and is now awaiting a review by the US Supreme Court. April is the first month when data on international travel would reliably reflect the impact of the controversy over Trump's order, the US Travel Association said. "There have been many claims that the administration's actions on travel have tarnished America's brand abroad, but we're seeing hard economic evidence of the US travel sector's remarkable resilience," USTA CEO Roger Dow said. However, the full report cautioned that international travel to the United States in April grew at "a slower pace than the six-month moving average" and may have been helped by holiday travel.<br/>

China’s growing ranks of middle-class consumers love to fly, putting the nation on track to surpass the US as the world’s biggest airline market within the next decade. But they won’t find many bargains. Budget airlines carry just 7% of domestic fliers in China, according to CAPA Centre for Aviation, an aviation-intelligence company, compared with two-thirds in neighboring India and Thailand. Budget airline AirAsia is aiming to change that, hoping to shake up China’s aviation sector by exporting its no-frills model to the region’s biggest air-travel market. In a regulatory filing last month, it said it plans to open a unit in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. But the Malaysia-based carrier could experience a bumpy landing in China, as the country’s big state-run airlines— Air China , China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines —enjoy a stranglehold that limits the opportunities of low-cost competitors. The incumbents command all the best landing slots and lobby against the awarding of operating licenses and slots to low-cost rivals, said Will Horton, a senior analyst at CAPA. The government also tightly regulates aircraft purchases, limiting the expansion of potential rivals, he said, and airlines are barred from hiring pilots away from competitors to help them grow. “It will take AirAsia a long time to build up and achieve its goals” in China,Horton said. The Malaysian carrier already flies to 15 destinations in mainland China, but setting up a local base would help spur a boom in budget air travel, it said in the filing, and enable AirAsia to capitalize on surging Chinese demand. <br/>

Feeling the heat from customer complaints amplified by social media, airline executives meeting in Mexico this week said they need to apologise and explain more quickly when things go wrong. In the past few months, United Airlines has been criticised after authorities dragged a passenger from an overbooked flight, and BA came under fire after an IT meltdown left thousands stranded on a holiday weekend. In both instances, customers took to social media to attack the airlines, with a video of the United passenger being dragged from his seat going viral. Malaysia Airlines CEO Peter Bellew said during a panel session with other CEOs that they had "15 minutes or less to say sorry." Last week a Malaysia Airlines flight departing from Melbourne had to turn back after a passenger suffering mental health issues attempted to enter the cockpit. "We had the first statement out within 14 minutes from the minute I heard about it in the sky," Bellew said. He said that with passengers live streaming the events from their phones and the proliferation of fake news, it was crucial to react fast. United boss Oscar Munoz said he had not apologised quickly enough after 69-year-old passenger David Dao was dragged from a United flight. "The initial focus for me should have been to do what I did a few hours later and apologise," he said. However, he rejected Bellew's suggestion that 15 minutes was the cut-off point, saying there was more time than that and it was important to establish facts first.<br/>

It may be a sign of the times, but the latest round of terrorist attacks in Europe appears not to be having the usual impact on travel demand as tourists show signs of becoming inured to the threat of violence. BA has seen no dip in bookings following the recent deaths in London and Manchester, according to the head of its parent group IAG, who said international travelers may be growing accustomed to the risks. Lufthansa also said the market is proving surprisingly resilient. Demand from Asia has advanced more than expected and the weaker pound is encouraging travel from the US, IAG CEO Willie Walsh said. Both markets have experienced sharp dips and slow recoveries in the wake of previous terrorist attacks. “It would be terrible if people start just considering that this is routine or normal, but we haven’t seen an impact on bookings,” Walsh said. “In the past we would expect it to have some impact, but we haven’t seen anything.” Britain has suffered three major terrorists incidents in as many months. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr also reported surging demand despite the string of terror attacks that has also affected Germany. “I’m concerned as a citizen about these attacks because they’re terrible, but from an outlook perspective we are getting more optimistic every week,” he said. “It’s definitely moving along a lot better than we expected.”<br/>