Istanbul’s main Ataturk airport was reopened to traffic Thursday after a private jet crashed on the runway, causing authorities to suspend flights, the head of Turkish Airlines said on Twitter. The jet, registered as TC-KON, crashed after reporting a malfunction as it was taking off, the state-run news agency Anadolu said. The flight was heading to the Ercan airport in northern Cyprus, Anadolu reported. Police said the jet’s two pilots, a cabin crew member and a passenger were slightly injured in the crash. The jet’s rear end was detached from the aircraft, with emergency teams and firefighters at the crash site, images from a Reuters photographer on the scene showed. The jet had briefly burst into flames after crashing, causing traffic at the airport to be suspended, Anadolu said. Turkish Airlines CE Bilal Eksi said both runways at the airport were now operational.<br/>
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Airlines plan to resume flights to Puerto Rico as early as Friday after Hurricane Maria left the island territory without power. American Airlines says it plans to send its first plane to San Juan from Miami Friday morning. Spokesman Ross Feinstein says passengers will include federal airport screeners to help run security checkpoints at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport. Delta expects to resume flights from Atlanta and New York to San Juan Saturday. A spokesman for United says the airline is still assessing the situation but won't operate flights there Friday. A spokesman for Frontier says the airline plans to fly in relief supplies and take passengers out to Orlando, Florida, as soon as the San Juan airport opens.<br/>
New Zealand will partially ease fuel rationing Thursday night, a spokesman for the country’s oil industry said, a sign that the five-day long fuel shortage that has caused air travel disruptions is subsiding. More than 120 flights have been cancelled this week in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, disrupting thousands of travellers each day, after the single privately owned pipeline that carries jet fuel from a refinery to the city’s airport was damaged. Air NZ said it expected flights to run as usual on Friday, with no cancellations for the first time since Sunday. Airline fuel allocations will rise to 50%, from 30%, at midnight on Thursday, said Andrew McNaught, manager for Mobil New Zealand Ltd and a spokesman for the customers of the country’s only oil refinery operator Refining NZ. Travel restrictions for government officials have been lifted. New Zealand’s government and oil industry have taken a series of measures to try to contain the crisis, from fuel rationing to calling on the military to help truck in supplies of fuel, and have set up an industry-government group to handle the fallout.<br/>
A suspected Iranian hacking group has been targeting aviation and energy companies in the United States, Saudi Arabia and South Korea since 2013, computer security company FireEye said in a report Wednesday. The group seems largely to have engaged in stealth spying to give Iranian military and corporate interests information about possible enemies and competition. However, the researchers also found signs of a data-destroying program capable of wiping disks, erasing volumes and deleting files deployed in affected companies located in the Middle East, said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at FireEye. During its investigation, FireEye found signs of links to malicious software called SHAPESHIFT capable of destroying data within a company's network. FireEye said it had not directly observed the hackers carry out any destructive operations, but the capability appears to be present.<br/>
A series of errors by the pilots of the plane carrying then vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence sent it skidding off a runway in New York in October, the NTSB said in a final report establishing probable cause of the accident. The safety investigator said the first officer, who landed the Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-700, sailed far beyond the start of the runway before touchdown on the rainy evening, and should have aborted the landing and returned for a second try. The plane didn’t touch down until passing over about 4,200 feet of runway, leaving it just 2,800 feet to stop. The plane was damaged when it hit a crushable concrete barrier at the end of the runway. No injuries were sustained by the 37 passengers or 11 crew members. “Several failures in close succession” caused the mishap, the investigators concluded.<br/>
Changi Airport handled more passengers in August compared to the year before, with traffic boosted by growth from all regions. The airport registered 5.27m passenger movements last month, a 7.0% increase compared to August last year, Changi Airport Group said in a release Thursday. However, it was lower than the 5.42m passengers that passed through Singapore in July. Changi said that, among its top 20 busiest routes, the fastest-growing were Guangzhou, Penang and Taipei. Of its top 10 markets, India achieved double-digit growth for the eighth consecutive month. Traffic from India grew by 18% in August, Changi said.<br/>
The European Regions Airline Association (ERA) has announced that Montserrat Barriga will be its new director general. She takes over the post from Simon McNamara, who left in July to become director of communications at UK-based regional carrier Flybe. Barriga, who will take up her new position Nov. 1, was previously director-international development & industry affairs at Spanish ERA member regional airline Binter Canarias. “I hope to meet most of ERA’s members at the forthcoming ERA General Assembly in Athens [in October],” Barriga said. “ERA is a well-established and respected association and I look forward to continuing the great work carried out on behalf of its diverse members in the future.”<br/>