Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico Wednesday, bringing catastrophic winds of up to 155 mph. Initial reports told of “total devastation” on the island. Pictures from San Juan Luis Munoz Marin Airport in Carolina, Puerto Rico revealed destruction at the international hub. Photos posted by Radio Isla 1320 showed severe flooding on the airport’s runways and damage to the inside and outside of the building. The pictures appeared to show an airport rendered virtually unusable by the storm. The airport shut down at 5 p.m. Tuesday before the storm hit, according to Aviation International News. Airlines suspended operations out of Puerto Rico in the lead-up to the storm. Delta Airlines said it planned to restart operations at certain airports Thursday, but doing so would be dependent on the extent of the damage. Maria made landfall in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico early Wednesday as the worst storm to hit the region in 85 years. Winds of up to 155 mph during the Category 4 storm left the entirety of the island without power as of Wednesday afternoon, ABC News reported. Maria continued to forge a warpath through Puerto Rico, moving northwest at about 12 mph. “When we can get outside – we will find our island destroyed,” said Abner Gomez, director of the State Agency for Emergency Management and Disaster Management. <br/>
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New Zealand’s jet fuel crisis is worsening by the day with airlines restricting ticket sales, politicians limiting travel to essential flights only on some routes in the final days of the election campaign and all but the most critical exports halted. Rationing is set to continue for another week after a digger on Thursday struck the sole jet fuel, diesel and petrol supply pipe to Auckland, the country’s biggest city and major transport hub for international visitors. Three thousand people a day are being affected by cancelled domestic and international flights. Another 6,000 people will be impacted by delays or disruptions to normal service, Air NZ said, and it had taken the “unusual” step of restricting ticket sales to all but essential or compassionate travel to try and manage the shortage. As a result of the tightening fuel shortage, all airlines stopping in Auckland are only able to upload 30% of their normal capacity of jet fuel and the government has instructed its employees to cancel all non-essential travel. Export goods are being off-loaded from domestic and international flights unless they are at risk of rotting to lighten the load. Some international routes have been cancelled altogether or diverted to Australia and Fiji until the crisis is resolved.<br/>
US airlines have told the UK to move faster to ensure passenger and cargo flights to Heathrow, Stansted and other airports will continue without disruption after Britain leaves the EU. The aviation trade body Airlines for America, whose members include United, American Airlines and FedEx, says the multibillion pound traffic in both directions will be put at risk unless politicians concentrate their minds on the impact Brexit will have on the industry. “The negotiations are moving slowly, we are very concerned about the timing,” said Nick Calio, its CE, who was in London Tuesday to press the case in meetings with aviation minister Martin Callanan and other MPs. Calio warned that even a day’s disruption could be catastrophic, with 140 passenger flights and 43 cargo flights a day between the US and Britain. Car parts, farm machinery, food and iPhones are among the many exports flown into the UK and Europe from the US on a daily basis under the Open Skies agreement, which allows EU and US airlines flying into the European Union to operate in each other’s countries. Heathrow slots are “gold” gateways to the rest of Europe and Stansted is a major “airbridge” for cargo – even for FedEx, whose main distribution centre is in Paris. The aviation sector’s concern is that unlike other businesses, which can fall back on World Trade Organisation agreements, a cliff-edge Brexit would mean flights grounded as there are no historic rules to fall back on.<br/>
US President Donald Trump has made airlines' longtime goal of privatising air traffic control a key part of his agenda to boost America's infrastructure. But his prospects for closing the deal with Congress appear slim. A House bill that would put the aviation industry in charge of air traffic control has repeatedly stalled and prospects appear even worse in the Senate, where there has been no effort to take up the issue. While the White House and airline lobbyists have pushed for privatisation, there has been fierce opposition from private pilots, corporate aircraft owners and others who fear they will have to pay more to use the system and would lose access to busy airports. Airlines have pushed for getting the government out of air traffic operations for decades and seemed to have the brightest prospects after meeting with Trump early this year. Trump embraced the idea as part of his overall plan to boost infrastructure — a big part of his campaign promise to create jobs. While Trump has offered few other specifics about his overall infrastructure plans, he put the spotlight on air-traffic privatisation at a White House infrastructure event in June.<br/>
Travellers who check at least one bag when flying domestically are paying more overall than they did before airlines began unbundling fares in 2008 and charging separately for checked baggage, a government watchdog said Wednesday. A report by the Government Accountability Office said airline officials told GAO investigators that base air fares are now lower than before airlines began separately charging passengers for checked bags, reservation changes, priority boarding and other services. But the GAO's review of studies that have examined the effect of bag fees on ticket prices shows that charging separately for bags reduced fares by less than the new bag fee itself. "As a result, customers who paid for checked bags paid more on average for the combined airfare and bag fee than when the airfare and bag fee were bundled together," the report said. "Conversely, passengers who did not check bags paid less overall." One study found that airlines with bag fees lowered fares to appear more competitive and then made up the lost revenue in bag fees. Another study found that declines in airfares amounted to less than the bag fee, so on average the combined total of the fare and bag fee increased.<br/>
A man who worked as a baggage handler at Singapore’s Changi Airport swapped tags on hundreds of bags, sending the luggage to the wrong destinations, the Straits Times newspaper reported. Tay Boon Keh, a 63-year-old working as a baggage handler for a sub-contractor of the Changi Airport Group, was charged in court on Tuesday with 286 counts of mischief, the newspaper said. He did not explain his actions, but intends to plead guilty, it said. The next hearing is on Oct 17, when, if convicted, he can be jailed for up to one year and fined for each charge. Luggage originally bound for various parts of the world, including Perth, Manila, Frankfurt, London and San Francisco, was affected, according to court documents. Tay is believed to have changed baggage tags almost every day from November until February, they said. An airport spokesman said there was no breach of security. <br/>
Heavy rains battered India’s financial hub for the second time in weeks causing massive disruption at the country’s second busiest airport and forcing authorities to shut down schools and colleges. Monsoon rains that lashed Mumbai since Tuesday evening delayed services on the heavily-used suburban train network in a city that is home to India’s two biggest stock exchanges and the headquarters of several major companies. Low visibility, strong winds and slippery conditions caused a SpiceJet flight to overshoot the runway while landing on Tuesday night. The airline said all 183 passengers on the flight from the northern city of Varanasi were safe, but the incident led to widespread disruption in air traffic. India’s largest carrier Indigo and rivals Jet Airways and Vistara said they had halted some flights to and from Mumbai due to bad weather and unavailability of runways. “The main runway has been closed for operations and there are delays in arrival and departure of flights due to fluctuating weather,” said a senior official at the Mumbai airport, adding at least 50 flights had been canceled.<br/>
As President Michel Temer’s administration continues to seek ways to repair a gaping fiscal deficit, the government has revived an airport concession programme begun by Temer’s predecessor, Dilma Rousseff. In March this year four airports were tendered out; a further 14 are due to follow next year. With no interstate passenger rail network, air travel is vital in this continent-sized country. But that is no guarantee that every concession will succeed. In 2012, Presidente Juscelino Kubitschek international airport in Brasília and Viracopos international airport in Campinas, São Paulo state, were tendered out — with very different results. The former has flourished, while Viracopos has struggled and its concessionaires want to give up the contract. The Car Wash graft investigation into contracts at state-run oil company Petrobras hit concession partners at both airports. But while recession cut into traffic at Viracopos, its impact on Brasília was less severe because the capital city had established itself as a regional hub. Orlando Lima Júnior, a professor of logistics and transport at the State University of Campinas, says the success of a concession depends on “the conditions of the market it is in, but also the model and the financing”.<br/>Story has more details.<br/>
Airbus Wednesday opened its Chinese completion plant for A330 jets, with hopes that an increased presence in the world’s fastest growing aviation market would help boost demand for the firm’s profitable but ageing wide-body jets. Europe’s largest aerospace firm marked the opening of center in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin with the delivery of the first A330 jet from the plant to Tianjin Airlines. The center is a joint venture between the Aviation Industry Corporation of China and Tianjin Free Trade Zone Investment Company and was first agreed during a visit by President Xi Jinping to France in 2014. Airbus already has a final assembly line for single-aisle A320 jets in Tianjin, which began operations in 2008. At the centre just opened, Airbus will perform tasks such as aircraft painting, cabin installations as well as flight tests on aircraft received from Airbus’ final assembly line in Toulouse, France.<br/>
China’s planned wide-body jet joint venture with Russia will see a higher proportion of work from Chinese suppliers, though for key systems like avionics it will still rely mostly on western manufacturers, the jet’s chief designer said. China has been plowing billions of dollars into developing jets to raise its profile in global aviation and to disrupt the current Boeing and Airbus duopoly, most recently with its C919 narrrowbody aircraft. It has also been vocal about wanting to support local industry. “Western suppliers need not be too worried,” said Chen Yingchun, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China’s (COMAC‘s) chief designer for the C929 wide-body program with Russia’s United Aircraft Corp. There will be more Chinese contribution to the C929 project, compared with the C919, “but all systems, like signaling, won’t be affected”, Chen said Wednesday. <br/>
Aviation communications specialist Inmarsat is to conduct a demonstration of potential future flight-data recording concepts through a tie-up with Canadian firm FLYHT. The so-called "black box in the cloud" concept is based on transmission of data which would normally be stored by on-board flight recorders – devices which are vulnerable to loss in the event of an accident in oceanic regions. Inmarsat intends to trial its SwiftBroadband-Safety high-speed communications product in tandem with FLYHT's flight-information reporting equipment. The planned demonstration will illustrate the potential benefits of real-time performance monitoring and detection of the possible exceedance of critical parameters. Inmarsat vice-president of aviation safety Capt Mary McMillan says the technology can also address upcoming ICAO requirements for flight tracking. The trial will take place using an experimental aircraft later this year, says the company.<br/>