Two efforts to make airline fare information easier for customers to understand were killed by President Donald Trump’s Transportation Department. The department announced Thursday that it was withdrawing the proposals as part of Trump’s effort to reduce regulatory burden on US businesses. As airline charges for such items as checking bags or getting seat assignments have grown, transportation regulators had sought to make the process of comparing prices more transparent. One pending regulation would have required airlines and ticket agents to disclose to consumers all fees during the process of buying a ticket, and the other would have collected more detailed revenue information from large carriers. The department said it was withdrawing them after input from industry and the public. “Having the DOT step back from developing rules to allow consumers to know the full price of travel and to be able to comparison shop is an affront to America,” said Travelers United, an advocacy group for passengers.<br/>
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The UN aviation agency is not considering the creation of a “no-fly” zone around North Korea because the direction of Pyongyang’s tests are not predictable, two sources familiar with the organization’s thinking said Thursday. The news comes after IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac was quoted in the SCMP Thursday saying that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) “could declare a no-fly zone” in the region. Montreal-based ICAO cannot impose rules, such as ordering countries to close their domestic airspace, but regulators from its 191-member states almost always adopt and enforce the standards it sets for international aviation. ICAO has condemned North Korea for launching missiles without notice, a move that could represent a threat to commercial flights. Airlines are already largely avoiding airspace controlled by North Korea in the Pyongyang flight information region, one of the sources said. An IATA spokeswoman said by email on Thursday that de Juniac’s remarks were in reference to the airline trade group’s support of a recent decision by ICAO to “strongly condemn North Korea’s continued launching of ballistic missiles over and near international air routes.”<br/>
The British government needs to set out its vision for Brexit, the head of two of the country's biggest airports said on Thursday, reflecting exasperation building among the business community. Discussions with the EU have stalled this week, throwing the whole timetable into doubt, and finance minister Philip Hammond said on Wednesday that PM Theresa May's cabinet had not yet discussed what it wanted from its final deal. Executives within the airlines industry are increasingly alarmed because the aviation sector does not have a natural fallback arrangement that will keep flights in the air if Britain leaves the EU without a deal in March 2019. "It's important that the government move quickly, and it's a bit worrying when you hear senior politicians saying there is no end state for Brexit agreed in cabinet," said Charlie Cornish, CE of the Manchester Airport Group (MAG). "I do think that the government need to seriously up their act and get that end-state vision for the future relationship with Europe sorted." Chief executives rarely comment on politics in Britain but many have become increasingly concerned in recent weeks about slow progress towards a transition deal to help ease the path out of the EU.<br/>
Senegal's new international airport was opening its runways Thursday as the West African country hopes to become a travel hub for the region. Airport International Blaise-Diagne, which had faced more than 10 years of delays, is meant to anchor Senegal's economic and tech center. The airport has had mixed reviews with its location of more than 50km from the capital, Dakar. A connecting train service is still years from completion. The airport, with an estimated cost of $575m, is five times larger than the old one. It is expected to see 3m passengers in its first year. The government is aiming for 5m passengers in 2023 and 10m in 2035. A number of cities in West Africa are competing to be the region's air hub including Lome, Togo, which is the base of operations for ASKY Airlines, and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Leopold Sedar Senghor international airport, located in the congested capital, was closing Thursday and has been handed over to Senegal's military. Most airlines including Delta, Royal Air Maroc, TAP and others have confirmed they will switch over once the old airport closes. <br/>
After a decade of instability and bankruptcies during which hiring slowed to a crawl, US airlines have been adding pilots at a breakneck pace over the past three years. Major US commercial and cargo airlines have hired more than 3,000 pilots in each of the past three years and have hired 4,353 more through October this year, surpassing the total hires in 2016. Regional airlines are raising entry-level pay and adding bonuses in hopes of attracting more new pilots to fend off a looming pilot shortage. Add in continued waves of departures as more pilots reach the federally mandated retirement age of 65, and arguably there's never been a better time to become a pilot. "Right now, the demand is so strong, when you qualify, you're going to get multiple job offers," said Louis Smith, a retired Northwest Airlines pilot and president of career-counseling company Future & Active Pilot Advisors. "It's a sellers market." It's a career Smith said that can yield $10 million dollars in lifetime earnings and benefits at a major airline, with a job description that's unlike any other. But getting there means investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, thousands of hours of training and years working up the airline food chain. During the depths of the recession, major airlines hired just 30 pilots in 2009 and 408 in 2010, according to data from Future & Active Pilot Advisors. Now, the industry averages more than that in a month, a reflection of a changed and consolidated airline industry whose profits have soared. That bodes well for the long-term stability of a career that in the past was often marked by uncertainty and the looming threat of layoffs or furloughs.<br/>
The TSA’s push to enroll 25m people in its expedited screening program has fallen short, mainly because the agency failed to assign enough workers to review applications, a federal report found. The TSA has failed to keep pace to meet its goal for TSA PreCheck, the agency’s key program to get airport security lines moving faster, primarily because the agency didn’t anticipate how successful its marketing efforts would be and didn’t staff accordingly, according to a new report by the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The program launched in 2013 and has so far enrolled 5.6m fliers. The TSA has set a goal of enrolling 25m travelers by 2019. TSA PreCheck is designed to pre-screen low-risk passengers, such as business travelers, to focus the TSA’s limited staffing on all other passengers. Travelers who are approved to be PreCheck members can use a special expedited lane at most of the nation’s airports. To meet the goal of enrolling 25m, the agency spent more than $3.7m over the last three years on an advertising campaign, touting the benefits of the program. A five-year membership for TSA PreCheck costs $85. Although the campaign more than tripled the applications for the program last year, the Office of Inspector General said the TSA had a backlog of applications because the agency didn’t employ enough staff to manually check applications that require extra review.<br/>
Airlines are waiving change fees for flights to Atlanta on Friday because of the threat of wintry weather. American, Delta and United – the USA’s three biggest airlines – all enacted weather-related waivers Thursday. The waivers cover Friday flights to or from Atlanta, which was expected to see wet weather fall at near-freezing temperatures. The National Weather Service had issued a winter weather advisory for the region, including Atlanta’s airport. While the prospects of snow appeared limited, the weather service warned that “brief ‘bursts’ of snow” could leave spotty accumulations of a half-inch to an inch. Any snow that did accumulate was expected to quickly melt, according to the advisory. Cold rain seemed likely for most parts of the metro area, perhaps with wet snow mixing in. Still, even the hint of snow can create panic in Atlanta. The Southern metropolis sees snow infrequently, and light accumulations have been known to paralyze the city before. While the weather was unlikely to create major flight problems at the world’s busiest airport, the airline advisories added flexibility for fliers worried about traveling to or from the airport if Atlanta does in fact see accumulating snow. The waivers were especially notable for Delta, which is by far the dominant carrier there. Delta runs its busiest hub in Atlanta, connecting thousands of passengers through the airport every day. <br/>
A group of 15 airlines from the Middle East & North Africa has signed a 10-year framework agreement with Amadeus for distribution services. The deal was negotiated and led by the Arab Air Carriers Organization (AACO), which represents 34 airlines in the region. The agreement concluded an 18-month process during which AACO’s “taskforce for future distribution strategies” assessed several technology and distribution providers’ abilities to support the long-term needs of its member airlines. Amadeus said the partnership would drive economies of scale and technological efficiencies, as well as supporting the airlines’ vision for future distribution paths. The participating AACO carriers will now work with the global distribution system provider to explore how further to develop and maximize the potential of its travel agency network, including enhanced merchandising and retailing capabilities.<br/>