South African Airways warned Tuesday, that its operations may be disrupted after one of the labour unions served the embattled airline with a notice of intention to embark on industrial action at its aircraft maintenance unit. This comes after the airline’s maintenance subsidiary, SAA Technical (SAAT), received a notice of the intention to embark on industrial action at the weekend from one labour union following the tabling of a wage increase proposal by SAAT. SAA said the industrial action was a consequence of wage increase disagreement between the employer and labour unions. It was not immediately clear as to what the union’s demands entail. The airline said parties have held several other meetings since the notice was served and are expected to meet again Wednesday morning. <br/>
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United Airlines is now detailing how the carrier's new voluntary overbooking compensation system will play out. After quietly testing the system last month in a handful of markets, Tuesday the carrier rolled out the new system in all of its US hubs. Now United management will get a much better sense of whether the system is working and whether it will remain in place for the long haul. Basically, the new compensation system is set up to alert passengers at check-in (up to 24 hours before flight departure) whether they may be on a flight where overbooking could be an issue. The alert will offer passengers on that flight — excepting unaccompanied minors and group bookings — the opportunity to decide the dollar amount in travel vouchers they would accept to change their reservation to a different flight. <br/>
Swiss investigators believe a remotely-piloted aerial vehicle might have been deliberately positioned above an air navigation waypoint for photography purposes before an airprox incident involving an Airbus A330-300. Despite the good visibility, says Swiss investigation authority SUST, the crew could not detect the vehicle's presence in time for evasive action. The SWISS aircraft had been conducting an ILS approach to Zurich following a service from Dar es Salaam May 6. "It is conceivable that the position and height of the [vehicle] was deliberately chosen, with the intention of making close-ups of commercial aircraft," the inquiry states. The inquiry states that a collision with an aircraft is "only a question of time", given the prevalence of remotely-piloted drones. <br/>