Myanmar’s largest airport was forced to close temporarily after a military plane skidded off the runway, forcing inbound international flights to be diverted, an official at the civil aviation department said on Thursday. A Chinese-made Y-8-200F transport plane slid off the runway at Yangon international airport in the morning after one of its engines failed, according to a government statement. There were no injuries reported, but outbound flights were delayed and inbound flights suspended. “We are in a situation that the airport has temporarily shut down,” said Ye Htut Aung, Deputy DG of Myanmar’s Department of Civil Aviation. International flights would not resume until the aircraft could be removed, he said.<br/>
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Airline bosses sought to defend their business against a rising tide of criticism over aircraft emissions as an upswell of activism threatens to overwhelm the industry before it can mount an effective response. The heads of carriers including Emirates, JetBlue and EasyJet warned that reducing carbon emissions would take years, if not decades, given the limitations of current technology and expansion of air travel to an ever-wider slice of the global population. They also objected to punitive measures they maintain would be counter-productive or unintentionally hurt those who couldn’t afford additional costs. While carriers are taking action to cut carbon emissions and mitigate the impact of flying, significant advances such as electric or hybrid jets are decades away from commercial flight, Emirates President Tim Clark said Thursday. “Let us not kid ourselves that the Holy Grail is going to come overnight,” Clark said. “In the next couple of decades we might see some short-haul aircraft, but with long-haul it’s much more difficult to do.” Activists from Extinction Rebellion targeted the event the executives were speaking at. The demonstrators are part of the growing “Flight Shaming” movement that’s already dented air travel in Scandinavia. Formulating a quick response is particularly challenging for airlines, which rely on long development cycles for aircraft that can stay in service for decades. “Be careful about over-promising,” Clark said, adding that he understands if customers ask airlines about their environmental priorities. “The automotive industry is well ahead, but then cars don’t fly.”<br/>
The TSA says the nine busiest days in its history occurred this summer as travellers jammed airports. TSA acting deputy administrator Patricia Cogswell said Thursday that the agency screened 262m people and 164m checked bags from just before Memorial Day until the day after Labor Day. That's up 3.4% from last summer. Of the nine hectic days, the peak was July 7, when TSA screened nearly 2.8m airline passengers and crew members. Cogswell says TSA hired enough screeners, although the agency didn't give numbers, and worked with airlines to anticipate where screeners would be needed. TSA has struggled with turnover — about one-fifth of screeners leave every year. The agency has countered with retention bonuses.<br/>
Russian authorities are proposing to assess airports' vulnerability to bird activity, in the wake of the Ural Airlines Airbus A321 landing accident outside Moscow. The aircraft came down in a field shortly after departing Moscow Zhukovsky on 15 August. Federal air transport regulator Rosaviatsia adds it is proposing to co-operate with law enforcement to "verify the legality" of waste landfills near airports – sites which potentially attract particular bird species such as gulls. The authority states that it seeks to analyse the results of recent ornithological surveys at airports to check on the presence of facilities that "negatively affect" the bird situation in the vicinity. Rosaviatsia will also examine the frequency of planned and unscheduled inspections of airports for the presence of birds. All the occupants of the A321 survived the accident, which destroyed the jet, after a suspected bird-strike resulted in a loss of thrust in both engines.<br/>
Technology startups are luring airlines with demand-forecasting tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI), promising to boost efficiency at a time of rising fuel costs and upheaval in trade relations that has clouded the aviation sector's outlook. Demand intelligence firm PredictHQ on Tuesday announced product Aviation Rank which alerts airlines to major events, whereas software developer Volantio is touting Yana, a platform that helps carriers rebook customers to maximize revenue. Airlines are turning to such products at a time when their global profit is set to decline 7% to $28b this year, showed data from the IATA, as rising fuel, labor and infrastructure costs crimp margins while a Sino-U.S. trade war pulls down demand to transport cargo. Artificial intelligence is making in-roads in industries across the spectrum. In aviation, airlines use AI for website chatbots aimed at cutting customer service costs, for more targeted advertising, and to improve aircraft maintenance. PredictHQ's Aviation Rank can alert airlines to over 3,000 major events a month such as conferences, music festivals and sporting meets, and determine relative importance to demand. Carriers can then raise fares to take advantage of high demand or focus on filling seats at lower prices when they know there will be slower periods, said PredictHQ's San Francisco-based CE Campbell Brown. "Airlines are coming to us rather than sitting in a room and having a guess at what events might be impacting them and putting it into a spreadsheet and trying to kind of anecdotally match that to their forecasting," Brown said. Story has more details.<br/>