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The leading trade group for global airlines is criticising air traffic control agencies in Europe for seeking "super-normal profits" instead of investing to improve performance at a time when air travellers are facing longer waits. The swipe by the IATA, which called on governments to help resolve the "bottlenecks," comes after EUROCONTROL reported air traffic management delays this year have jumped 133% compared to a year earlier — reaching 47,000 minutes per day. IATA said delays were mostly caused by staffing and capacity shortages, weather disruptions like thunderstorms and strikes such as those this year in France. Demand, too, has grown: Traffic is up 3.8% this year in Europe, and June 29 set a new one-day record for commercial flights on the continent: 36,825. But the trade association largely pinned blame on air navigation service providers that direct air traffic. The industry association is in essence accusing the air control agencies of sitting on mounds of cash at a time when needs have soared. "Unfortunately, key ANSPs in Europe have not made needed investments in their businesses, preferring instead to make super-normal profits," IATA said. The largest ones, it said, had "either under-invested in staff" or used "outdated employment practices which don't deploy staff when and where they're most needed." Story has more details.<br/>

Airlines say demand for travel to Mexico’s beach resorts is in decline, a development that comes as security concerns in the region have made headlines in recent months. United reported Wednesday that passenger revenue from available seat miles for Latin America fell 2.9% during April, May and June, compared to the same period a year earlier. The drop contrasted with gains in travel across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. “While the region is more challenged than others, flights to Mexico beach destinations in particular have pretty severe demand weakness due to increased supply and travel warnings,” said Andrew Nocella, United’s chief commercial officer. “We expect Latin performance to trail other regions for the remainder of 2018.” Delta reported July 12 that unit revenue from Latin America was up slightly during Q2 after a 1.3% reduction in capacity, but only because the Caribbean rebounded faster than expected after last year’s hurricanes. “Weak demand to Mexican beaches and currency devaluations were offset by strength in Central America and the Caribbean,” President Glen Hauenstein said. But with the Mexico election over and stabilization of the peso, Hauenstein said business markets are improving in H2 2018. “Our (joint-venture) partnership with AeroMexico, which just celebrated a one-year anniversary, gives us a great platform for providing the best products for business and leisure travellers to and from Mexico,” Hauenstein said. The State Department updated its travel advisory for Mexico on Monday, urging travellers to “exercise increased caution” because of crime.<br/>

Deliveries by Brazilian planemaker Embraer fell in Q2 from a year earlier and its backlog fell sharply as it dropped an order from an inactive customer, according to a securities filing on Friday. The planemaker delivered 28 commercial jets to airlines in the three months through June, down from 35 planes a year earlier. Executive jet deliveries fell to 20 aircraft, from 24 jets a year before. Embraer’s firm order backlog, a gauge of expected revenue, fell sharply as the planemaker removed an order for 50 of its next-generation E2 passenger jets placed by Indian carrier Air Costa, which suspended service last year. With that, the backlog fell to $17.4b at the end of June. In March, the backlog stood at $19.5b under a new accounting method including all service and support contracts. Excluding most service contracts the backlog stood at $18.1b in March.<br/>

A supersonic jet capable of delivering passengers from London to New York in under four hours could be used to link hundreds of cities in an expansion of ultra-fast flights that would dwarf the impact of Concorde on long-haul travel, the man leading the project has said. Ambitious plans outlined by Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, would see the option of supersonic travel extended to vast swathes of the travelling public. Under his projection as many as 2,000 of the planes could be used on 500 routes crisscrossing the planet. “We are focused on accelerating long transoceanic trips,” he said. “We want to get the economy of the plane down so that anybody who flies can fly fast.” The company is promising future fares just shy of GBP2,000 for a one-way ticket from London to New York – broadly comparable with existing business class seat prices on conventional subsonic aircraft. Importantly, the journey will take three-and-a-quarter hours – halving the current journey time. “This is not a private jet for the ultra-wealthy,” he insisted, adding that high speed travel was becoming a priority for passengers. A demonstrator jet will take to the skies next year to test the technology before the company hopes to carry its first paying passenger in 2025.<br/>

Traditional plane deals grabbed headlines at the Farnborough International Airshow this past week. But a handful of futuristic air-travel concepts signalled a new excitement coursing through the industry. Global aerospace companies are grappling with new technology from self-flying planes to electrically-powered aerial taxis, perhaps the industry’s biggest tech surge since the dawn of the jet age in the late 1950s. Much of the attention at the biennial aerospace jamboree was on still-developing forms of air transport that were widely dismissed as science fiction barely a few years ago. Such next-generation projects are a contrast with the industry’s recent fixation on designing and building more fuel-efficient planes, such as Boeing’s Dreamliner and Airbus’s A350 long-range jet. Fast-selling single-aisle jets, variants of the Boeing 737 and Airbus’s A320 and the industry’s workhorses, have been the stars of recent shows. Those new planes were dreamt up when the industry’s future seemed focused in kerosene-burning, tube-and-wing shaped aircraft; the recent technological wizardry of such planes is in their fuel conservation, range and quiet engines. But a look at what generated the most excitement in Farnborough indicates another future for the industry is coming into view. At a Boeing briefing on the future of next-generation air transportation, Chief Technology Officer Greg Hyslop predicted urban flying vehicles would be able to transport passengers and goods relatively soon. Although it isn’t clear whether they would be fully autonomous, or how regulators would manage air traffic, Hyslop boldly called it a “new era of transportation and mobility.”<br/>