Boeing’s 737 Max jet will probably not be ready to fly by early March, an aviation safety expert said Wednesday. Major US airlines have continued to delay the return of the troubled plane to their flight schedules, but even their latest estimates are likely too hopeful, said Alan Diehl, who has worked at both the FAA and the NTSB. “It’s probably slightly optimistic,” Diehl said of the early March target on “Power Lunch.” “It’s going to depend on the reaction of the stakeholders, the unions, the airlines, the other regulatory authorities.” The first hurdle the 737 Max needs to clear before it can return to service is certification from the FAA, which issued a statement Tuesday that said it had not yet completed its safety review. It is the third time in two weeks that the FAA has said publicly it will take all the time it needs to deem the 737 Max safe. Diehl, a former air safety investigator at the NTSB, said he believes FAA certification is hardly imminent. “If I were a betting man, I would not expect this certification ... to be issued anytime, at least, for a couple, three months,” said Diehl, who works now as an aviation safety consultant. He also was a human performance scientist at the FAA in the 1980s. And once that certification is issued, Diehl said, the public comment period following its release will likely be extensive, as the other relevant parties — such as the FAA’s European counterparts — weigh in. If there are a lot of objections or “yes, but” type comments from those parties, “it may be later than March,” Diehl said.<br/>
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EU finance ministers are set to endorse a revamp of energy-taxation laws that could end exemptions for jet fuel while promoting cleaner forms of energy, as the bloc steps up efforts to cut carbon emissions. Ministers meeting in Brussels on Dec. 5 will ask the EC to present updated rules on the taxation of biofuels and sectors such as aviation, “taking into account their specificities and existing exemptions,” according to a draft of their communique. The wording signals that the preferential tax treatment of aviation fuel could be phased out, under a new set of regulations. Tackling transport emissions is one of the biggest challenges for the EU, which is weighing a commitment to climate neutrality by 2050. Carbon discharges from international aviation have more than doubled since 1990, bucking a broader European trend that’s seen total emissions drop 22% over that period. The UN says the industry is set to overtake power generation as the single biggest CO2 producer within three decades. The existing energy-taxation law, unchanged since 2003, was “adopted long before the emergence of new technologies and uses that are predicted to become important building blocks on the path to the EU’s decarbonised future,” the commission said in September.<br/>
Airlines that fly to and from Hong Kong will be able to keep their prized airport slots even if they temporarily cut capacity due to weak travel demand through March, according to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department. Many airlines, including flagship home carrier Cathay Pacific Airways, South African Airways and Malaysia’s AirAsia Group have cut flights to and from Hong Kong temporarily as a result of sometimes violent anti-government protests that have led to a sharp fall in tourist and business travel demand. More than 5,800 people have been arrested since the unrest broke out in June over a proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China, the numbers grew in October and November as violence escalated. Under more normal conditions, it is tough for airlines to get take-off and landing slots at Hong Kong’s airport because it lacks capacity until a third runway will come into operation in 2024. A “use-it-or-lose-it” rule stipulates an airline normally only keeps slots out of historic precedence if it can demonstrate it used them at least 80% of the time in the previous airline scheduling season. The current winter season, which began on Oct. 27, ends on March 28, 2020. Hong Kong’s Civil Aviation Department said on Thursday evening that in order to provide airlines with greater flexibility in aircraft deployment to deal with the fall in passenger demand, the “use-it-or-lose-it” rule had been temporarily suspended for the winter season.<br/>
NZ PM Jacinda Ardern apologised Thursday for the then-government’s handling of a plane crash in Antarctica 40 years ago that took the lives of 257 people in the country’s worst peacetime disaster. On 28 November 1979, Air New Zealand flight 901 was on a sightseeing tour from Auckland when it crashed into the side of Mount Erebus, a 3,794m volcano near the US Antarctic research base of McMurdo Station. Most of the 237 passengers and 20 crew killed were New Zealanders but other nationalities included Americans, Canadians, Japanese and Australians. Originally the crash was blamed on the pilots, but following a public outcry, a Royal Commission of Inquiry was set up to investigate the disaster. It concluded the main cause of the accident was the state-owned airline’s actions in reprogramming the aircraft’s navigation system without advising the aircrew. The Commission head, former justice Peter Mahon, controversially also said witnesses from Air New Zealand had conspired to give false evidence, famously describing the airline’s defense as “an orchestrated litany of lies”. This led to his report being criticised by both Air New Zealand and the government. The actions of the then government and the airline caused more pain and grief to the victims’ families, PM Ardern said at a memorial service at the Government House in Auckland on Thursday. “After forty years, on behalf of today’s government, the time has come to apologize for the actions of an airline then in full state ownership; which ultimately caused the loss of the aircraft and the loss of those you loved,” Ardern said in her speech. “The pilots were not responsible for this tragedy, and I stand here today to state that again,” she added.<br/>