Deadly dust storms sweeping over the densely populated north Indian plains are part of a "new normal" of disruptive weather events worsening the country’s already-lethal air pollution and causing disruption in the $2.3t economy. In recent months, dust clouds and storms have killed hundreds of people, destroyed thousands of homes and farmers’ crops and led to flight cancellations. The government in New Delhi, a city of more than 20m people, ordered a halt to construction activities as the airborne sand significantly worsened north India’s air quality, far outside the winter months that usually herald the region’s descent into a months-long toxic haze. "It’s definitely a new normal -- the frequency and intensity of these storms is unprecedented," said Sunita Narain, director general of New Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment, who added that recent weather is related to desertification, deforestation and an over-extraction of groundwater. Flights were canceled across north India on airlines including Air India, Indigo and Spice Jet, said Kapil Sabharwal, a spokesman for New Delhi’s airport.<br/>
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US regulators are ordering operators of winglet-equipped Boeing 767-300s to conduct checks on the wing structure following occurrences of fatigue cracking. Aviation Partners Boeing formally launched its winglet for the 767-300ER in 2007 and, two years later, American Airlines put the modification into service. The winglets have since been adopted by several carriers including Delta, United and UPS. In an airworthiness directive the US FAA states that operators need to conduct high-frequency eddy-current inspections for cracking of the lower outboard wing skin on the modified aircraft. It also orders follow-up actions including repeat inspections, modification of internal stringers, and other measures. The FAA says the fatigue cracking in the wing skin could potentially result in separation of the winglet and reduced controllability. It says the directive affects some 140 US-registered aircraft.<br/>
The EC is refusing to agree to any back-channel discussions between UK and EU aviation agencies to avert a crisis in the event of a “no-deal” outcome to Brexit. Attempts by the aerospace industry to persuade Brussels to start contingency talks to ensure Europe’s planes keep flying and the aerospace industry can function effectively have apparently been rebuffed by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, according to industry sources. At the strike of midnight in Brussels on 29 March 2019, when Britain leaves the EU, UK-made parts for planes will no longer be legally valid and its pilot licences will be defunct in the eyes of international regulators acting under agreements with the bloc. The General Aviation Manufacturers Association and the UK aerospace group ADS wrote to Barnier earlier this month to warn that the current approach would impact not only Britain but could damage the whole of the GBP193b EU aerospace and defence industry. They have called for the European Aviation and Safety Agency and the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority to immediately open discussions on a way forward in the event of the breakdown of wider talks in Brussels. Their letter to the commission warns: “Our risk analysis concludes that EASA and the CAA need to urgently begin technical and contingency planning discussions by the June European council, and separate to the political negotiations.” It added: “Without an agreed solution ... supply chain disruption across Europe will occur, parts will be unable to be delivered, pilots and maintenance technicians will be unable to work, aerospace companies in the UK will lose foreign validations for their business, and aircraft will be grounded globally.”<br/>
Airlines improved the luggage handling and canceled fewer flights in April, and passengers filed fewer complaints, the US DoT announced Monday. The dozen airlines that report about their baggage handling to the department had 2.39 reports of mishandled bags for every 1,000 passengers in April, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That rate is down from 2.59 in March and 2.54 the same month a year earlier, according to the bureau. Consumers filed 1,169 complaints with the department about airline service, according to the bureau’s monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. That figure is down nearly 39% from the 1,908 filed the same month a year earlier. The lists for flight disruptions were topped by the usual suspects in April. Overall, the 17 airlines that report their flight operations to the department had flights arriving within 15 minutes of their schedules an average 81.3% of the time in April, according to the report. That compared to 80.9% in March and 78.5 for the same month a year earlier. The most punctual carriers were Hawaiian Airlines, Delta and Mesa Airlines. The carriers with the lowest rates of on-time arrivals were JetBlue, Frontier and Southwest.<br/>
French air traffic control causes one-third of flight delays in Europe each year, at a cost of about E300m to airlines, according to a French parliamentary report. Strikes by controllers and outages caused by antiquated equipment have been blamed for the disruption to aviation, the senate’s finance committee said. Vincent Capo-Canellas, a centrist senator and the report’s author, said: “Our country is responsible for 33% of the delays due to air traffic control in Europe.” He said the situation was unlikely to improve when France’s 4,000 ATC staff were facing increases in air traffic: there were 3.1m flights last year in Europe, 4% more than in the previous year and 8.6% more than in 2015. Capo-Canelas added: “We are a long way behind our [European] neighbours. The control equipment is antiquated.” He said this was especially worrying as E2b had been spent modernising ATC since 2011. Last week Ryanair said there would be an airspace “meltdown” unless urgent action was taken to halt the rolling industrial action by French controllers. The senate report found that between 2004 and 2016 they were on strike for a total of 254 days, far more than controllers in any other European country. Second were controllers in Greece, with 46 days, followed by Italy, with 37 days and Germany, with four days.<br/>
Whether it is in the boardroom or the cockpit, the aviation industry trails on the issue of gender and diversity. Only 3% of airline CEs are women, according to a 2017 survey by industry journal Airline Business of the 100 biggest carriers by revenue. This compared with 7% in the FTSE 100 at the time of the study. The International Air Transport Association’s board of governors only has two women out of 31 members. When it comes to pilots, the figures are just as unforgiving. In the US in 2017, just 7% of 609,000 pilots were women, according to data from the FAA. As part of a transparency initiative, the UK government uncovered poor gender pay gaps in aviation. Ryanair’s median hourly rate for women was 72% lower than for men, easyJet’s was 46% lower and BA’s was 10% lower. The median pay gap across the UK was 9.7%, while Ryanair had only 3% of women in its top quartile by pay. Personal experiences of some women in the industry also highlight disturbing examples of discrimination. Kathy McCullough, who started as a pilot in the early 1980s, said in the first years of her career discrimination was overt. “You should be home barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen,” was the attitude directed at her, she said. “I just tried not to bristle.”<br/>