The grounding of Boeing 737 Max jets likely means that fare increases this summer will be larger than already expected and airlines will struggle to handle disruptions such as storms that shut down hub airports. With Max jets grounded after two deadly accidents, US airlines will operate about 200 fewer daily flights than planned through the heart of the peak summer season. That's around 35,000 seats lost every day. Travel-data firm Hopper said this week that it expects the average domestic round trip in May will cost $236, 7% more than a year ago, and keep rising in June. Most of that increase is due to the price of jet fuel and other economic causes, but some of it is due to the Max, according to Hayley Berg, the firm's economist. The grounding of Max jets will leave other planes more crowded. "We expect a certain level of chaos," said Henrik Zillmer, CEO of AirHelp, which helps travellers get compensation for travel disruptions. "With so many passengers being rebooked, flights may get more overbooked than usual, especially when weather or other factors cause cancellations." For some passengers, the grounding of the Max will mean a change in travel plans. Story has more details.<br/>
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A US House subcommittee has scheduled a May 15 hearing on the Boeing 737 Max airliner. The Aviation Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold the hearing at 10 a.m. The committee's website says the hearing will be on the "status of the Boeing 737 Max." Witnesses were not announced, but the committee is likely to summon representatives from Boeing as well as the Federal Aviation Administration and the NTSB. They'll be asked about how the FAA certified the plane to be airworthy. The Max was grounded when an Ethiopian Airlines Max crashed March 10, less than five months after a Lion Air Max plunged into the sea off the coast of Indonesia. In all, 346 people died. Faulty flight control software has been implicated in the crashes. Boeing has been working on an update to the software in an effort to get the planes back into the air. During a March hearing in the Senate, lawmakers peppered Acting FAA Administrator Daniel Elwell with questions about the agency's practice of relying on aircraft makers to help certify their own planes for flight. Elwell defended the strategy and said it has produced safe aircraft designs for decades. He also said the FAA would need 10,000 more employees and another $1.8b a year to do all the work now done by designated employees of the companies it regulates.<br/>
India began evacuating almost 1m people from the eastern state of Odisha to temporary shelters as the nation braces for its worst cyclonic storm since 2014. Cyclone Fani is set to hit the country’s eastern coast on Friday, with wind speeds likely reaching as high as 200 km per hour. The Navy and the coast guard have deployed ships and helicopters for relief operations, according to a government statement. Odisha is battered by cyclonic storms every year with some intense enough to damage crops, plantations, trees, mud houses and communication and electric poles, as well as disrupt road traffic and transportation of essential goods. PM Narendra Modi, who held a meeting on Thursday to review the preparations, has asked top officials to take preventive measures as well as make preparations for relief and rescue operations, according to a government statement.<br/>
Rolls-Royce Holdings could re-enter the competition to power a medium-sized jetliner under development at Boeing if the US planemaker pushes the project back to help cope with the 737 Max crisis. Rolls, which exited the New Midsize Aircraft program earlier this year saying a new engine won’t be ready for the plane to enter service in 2025, may return to the contest if the timetable slips, Chief Executive Officer Warren East said Thursday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Bristol, England. “We said to Boeing, we can’t produce something that we are confident will be sufficiently mature,” East said. “If Boeing change their timescales then obviously we can reassess. We think technically we have a good solution.” Rolls had initially regarded the NMA, also dubbed the 797, as a potential launch platform for the new Ultrafan engine that will form the basis of its turbine offerings for the foreseeable future. That was before East said in February that it would be wiser to withdraw than “screw up the launch” of the plane and create service issues for customers. Boeing put back a decision to select an engine for the NMA even before the fatal crash of an Ethiopian Airways Max on March 10. The subsequent worldwide grounding of the 737 has led some analysts to suggest that the company may need to suspend work on the new plane to focus its full attention to getting the narrow-body workhorse flying again.<br/>