Four Pakistani airports were beginning partial operations on Friday and they will fully resume commercial flights on Monday, the Civil Aviation Authority said, after airports were closed when military tensions with India erupted earlier this week. Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta airports were resuming some flights on Friday, with the remainder opening next week, a spokeswoman said. Airspace for all commercial flights would be re-opened on Monday at 1:00 p.m. (0800 GMT), she said. The re-opening of Pakistani airspace came amid signs the conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors was cooling. On Friday, Pakistan handed back to India a pilot who was captured after his MiG-21 jet was shot down by a Pakistani fighter during an aerial clash over the disputed Kashmir region on Wednesday. The airspace closure disrupted not just Pakistan’s air transport but flights worldwide as airlines were forced to cancel or reroute flights to other destinations that pass over Pakistan. Flights between Asia and Europe were severely affected, with thousands of passengers stranded, although airlines were later able to reroute many flights through China that normally pass over Pakistan.<br/>
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German airports could be in for another costly summer of delays and disruptions due to lingering air-traffic control and logistics problems, the head of airline TUI fly, part of the TUI group, said in a newspaper interview. “We can already see now that the coming summer will be a challenge for us all,” managing director Oliver Lackmann said in advance abstracts of a story due to run in Berlin daily Tagesspiegel on Monday. “We still have bottlenecks in air-traffic control, and we see further logistical difficulties at the airports at the same time that air travel is growing,” he said. The German Aviation Association BDL also warned of further delays and cancellations in an online briefing on Thursday. Strikes and bad weather also contributed to backlogs last year, leading to costly compensation claims from passengers that burdened the airlines already struggling with lower ticket prices and ruinous competition. Lackmann said that to limit problems TUI fly has booked replacement capacity and together with tourism company TUI Deutschland, another subsidiary of the TUI group, has reserved maintenance capacity for the summer.<br/>
Four months after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged to scrap a $13b airport project for Mexico City, the airline industry is bursting with questions about his plan to operate three hubs for the nation’s capital. His administration is still short on answers. Running three airports will be “very, very, very challenging” given Mexico City’s altitude, temperature and surrounding mountains, IATA head Alexandre de Juniac said at a conference in the Mexican capital. “Let me be perfectly clear, there will be no compromise on safety.” With other panelists and attendees echoing his concerns at the conference, Lopez Obrador’s top transportation official had few details to offer in response. “We need to look for a valid solution that is absolutely safe from an aeronautical standpoint,” said Transport Minister Javier Jimenez Espriu. The safety focus underscored the airline industry’s misgivings about Lopez Obrador’s intention to upgrade the existing hub and an airport in nearby Toluca, while tapping the Defense Ministry to transform a military base into a commercial airport. Aeronautical analysts at Mitre Corp. have argued that the Santa Lucia air base can’t safely operate in tandem with Mexico City’s main airport if capacity grows at both, which would be needed to ease saturation. Trekking out to Toluca from any of those two airports can take an hour and a half or more, depending on traffic, complicating passenger connections. Story has more detail and background.<br/>
Airbus is looking at assembling its newest A330neo wide-body jet in China as part of a bid to win orders for the plane in one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Airbus may expand its existing plant in Tianjin to accommodate the model, but a decision hasn’t been made with the business case yet to be established, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The plan may not go ahead, they cautioned. A spokesman for Airbus declined to comment. Airbus previously offered to build its A380 superjumbo in China in exchange for orders from the country’s airlines, but that pitch was rejected amid concerns about the double-decker plane’s suitability for the local market, according to two of the people. The smaller, more fuel-efficient A330neo is potentially a better fit, with more than 200 of the original-generation model already sold in the Asian nation. Building wide-body jets in China would boost Airbus’s challenge to Boeing, which opened a so-called completion centre near Shanghai last year but has so far held off from assembling planes in the country. <br/>