A US airline industry group said it had a "productive" meeting on Thursday with President Donald Trump, who "shares our concerns" about accusations that subsidies by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are costing jobs in the United States. "We had a productive meeting with President Trump today to talk about the importance of American jobs and not letting foreign governments break their agreements with the United States," Scott Reed of the Partnership for Open & Fair Skies said in a statement. "The president shares our concerns and instructed us to keep working with the US Department of Transportation, which we plan to do," he said.<br/>
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Pakistan’s aviation minister Thursday said that his country suffered loses of over eight billion rupees ($50m) from airspace restrictions imposed since February which affected hundreds of commercial and cargo flights. Pakistan closed its airspace after an attack by a Pakistan-based militant group in Indian-controlled Kashmir led to clashes between the nuclear-armed powers, adding flight time for passengers and fuel costs for airlines. “Over eight billion rupees worth of losses have been suffered by the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority,” Ghulam Sarwar Khan, Pakistan’s aviation minister told a press conference in Karachi. “We don’t have exact figures of losses of their (Indian) civil aviation authorities but its more than ours,” Khan added. Pakistan reopened its airspace to international civil aviation on Tuesday.<br/>
An uneasy alliance between airlines as they face down criticism over carbon emissions has collapsed into a high-profile dispute involving Europe’s biggest network carrier and largest discounter. Lufthansa CE Officer Carsten Spohr lashed out at low-cost carriers including Ryanair Holdings in a Swiss newspaper last weekend, saying their loss-leading fares are stoking demand for needless flights that raise pollution and make the industry an easy target for climate campaigners. Ryanair CMO Kenny Jacobs hit back by pointing to Lufthansa’s inferior record on carbon dioxide output and emailing 15m clients in Germany and Central Europe drawing attention to Spohr’s remarks, which he said highlighted his company’s lower fares and emissions. “I give our thanks to Lufthansa for making our marketing costs less,” Jacobs said Wednesday in Frankfurt, where the German carrier has its biggest base. “We’re very happy with the comparison.” Spohr’s interview came amid mounting pressure over the close to 1b tons of CO2 airlines spew into the atmosphere each year at a time when high-profile polluters such as carmakers and power stations are starting to clean up their acts. The European Aviation Safety Agency said in June it will grade jets by emissions to help people choose between airlines, while France has unveiled a flight tax it says is partly a response to the sector’s role in global warming. Speaking with Zurich-based NZZ, Spohr labeled fares as low as 10 euros ($11) “economically, ecologically and politically irresponsible” and partly to blame for making aviation “a target for criticism” in the climate debate. The spat underscores fault lines between network and low-cost carriers, despite efforts to find common ground via lobby groups such as Airlines for Europe, which Spohr helped found with Ryanair counterpart Michael O’Leary.<br/>
US aviation regulators have no timeline for returning Boeing’s grounded 737 Max to service and won’t act until they are sure it is safe, the nation’s top transportation official said Thursday. The FAA has to be assured that a fix being developed by Boeing in the wake of two fatal crashes will prevent any future accidents, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a speech in Washington. “The FAA will lift the aircraft’s prohibition order when it is deemed safe to do so,” Chao said. “That is the bottom line: There is no timeline.” Chao was speaking before the Air Line Pilots Association’s Air Safety Forum. ALPA is the largest pilot’s union in North America. FAA is also developing new training requirements for pilots on the 737 Max, Chao said. A technical advisory board including experts from NASA and the Air Force is also weighing in on the decision, Chao said. Her comments mirror what FAA acting Administrator Daniel Elwell has been saying in recent months. The attempt to adapt the software on the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which has been identified as a factor in crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, has been slower than was initially predicted.<br/>
US government officials in 2014 revealed an alarming safety issue: Passenger cellphones and other types of radio signals could pose a crash threat to some models of Boeing 737 and 777 airplanes. More than 1,300 jets registered in the US were equipped with cockpit screens vulnerable to interference from Wi-Fi, mobile phones and even outside frequencies such as weather radar, according to the FAA, which gave airlines until November 2019 to replace the units made by Honeywell International. Today, potentially hundreds of planes worldwide are still flying with the unsafe systems cited in the FAA report. Flight-critical data including airspeed, altitude and navigation could disappear and “result in loss of airplane control at an altitude insufficient for recovery,” the FAA said in the safety bulletin, known as an airworthiness directive. Honeywell hasn’t heard of any blanking display screens caused by cell phones or other radio frequencies while an airplane was in flight, a spokeswoman said. When airlines and Honeywell argued that radio signals were unlikely to cause safety problems during flight, though, the FAA countered that it had run tests on in-service planes -- and the jets flunked. Boeing found the interference in a laboratory test in 2012 and hasn’t seen similar issues on other aircraft, a company spokesman said. Honeywell is aware of only one case where all six display units in a 737 cockpit went blank, Krauss said. The cause was a software problem that has been fixed and is currently being flight-tested, she said. Story has more details.<br/>
Boeing plans to report a $4.9b accounting charge with its Q2 results next week, a sign of the widening financial toll from the company’s beleaguered 737 Max jetliner. The after-tax writedown, equivalent to $8.74 a share, covers potential concessions and considerations for airline customers who have been forced to cancel flights and line up replacement aircraft as the Max’s grounding enters its fifth month, Boeing said in a statement Thursday. The costs will clip $5.6b from revenue and pretax earnings in the quarter. The assumptions behind the accounting charge also provided a glimpse of Boeing’s recovery plan. The company estimated that the Max will be approved to return to service in the US and other countries beginning “early in the fourth quarter,” easing fears that the timetable would slip to 2020. “This is a defining moment for Boeing,” CEO Dennis Muilenburg said. “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of the flight crews and passengers who fly on our airplanes. The Max grounding presents significant headwinds and the financial impact recognized this quarter reflects the current challenges and helps to address future financial risks.” While Boeing warned that the timing of a return to service could change, the estimate of Q4 approval was in line with recent schedule changes by the model’s US operators. The Q4 time frame also rebuts a recent Wall Street Journal report suggesting that initial flights would slip to 2020.<br/>