general

Investigators are trying to determine how a man with apparently no security clearance ended up on a runway at a Texas airport where he was struck and killed by a landing commercial jet. Junin Ko, 22, died Thursday night when a Southwest plane struck him as it landed at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, authorities said. Pilots had reported seeing a person while landing. The Boeing 737 aircraft was arriving from Dallas with 53 passengers and five crew members, airport spokesperson Bryce Dubee said. The man didn’t have a security badge, which would have cleared him to enter the airport’s secure side, Dubee said. Employees at the Austin Department of Aviation, airlines and concessions are required to have a badge, he said, adding that the man didn’t work anywhere in the airport where a security badge is not required, such as a hotel or gas station. “This type of thing is defined as a runway incursion,” Dubee said. “This is the first time we’ve ever had a security breach of this nature.” The FAA, the TSA, Austin police and the airport are investigating what happened, Dubee said.<br/>

The top three US airlines have told their flight attendants not to force passengers to comply with their new policy requiring face coverings, just encourage them to do so, according to employee policies reviewed by Reuters. American Airlines, Delta and United have told employees that they may deny boarding at the gate to anyone not wearing a face covering, and are providing masks to passengers who do not have them, the three carriers told Reuters. Inside the plane, enforcement becomes more difficult. "Once on board and off the gate, the face covering policy becomes more lenient. The flight attendant's role is informational, not enforcement, with respect to the face covering policy," American told its pilots in a message seen by Reuters explaining its policy, which went into effect on Monday. "Bottom line to the pilots: a passenger on board your aircraft who is being compliant with the exception of wearing a face covering is NOT considered disruptive enough to trigger a Threat Level 1 response," referring to some kind of intentional disruption by a passenger that could cause the captain to divert the flight. Story has full details.<br/>

The US DoT Tuesday said it will allow carriers to halt flights to up to 5% of destinations as a condition of receiving government assistance amid the coronavirus pandemic. Separately, the department again urged airlines to comply with legal obligations to refund tickets if they cancel flights. The department typically gets about 1,500 complaints and inquiries a month and is now getting them at a rate of 20,000 per month. US travel demand has fallen by about 94%, while carriers are still flying around 30% of flights. Airlines for America said airlines are burning at least $10bi a month and averaging just 17 passengers per domestic flight. "The department is asking all airlines to revisit their customer service policies and ensure they are as flexible and considerate as possible to the needs of passengers who face financial hardship during this time," Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said, adding the department is working to "ensure that airlines’ policies and practices conform to DOT’s refund rules." The department in early April issued a notice to airlines reminding them of their obligations. The department said Tuesday that airlines " can offer consumers alternatives to a refund, such as credits or vouchers, so long as the option of a refund is also offered and clearly disclosed if the passenger is entitled to a refund."<br/>

US airlines carried 51% fewer passengers in March amid the massive coronavirus pandemic travel collapse to the lowest air travel level in nearly two decades, the US DoT said Tuesday. Airlines carried slightly more total, domestic and international passengers in March 2020 than in September 2001, the month of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. In total, airlines carried 38.7 million passengers in March, down 51% from March 2019. Prior to March, air travel had risen for 29 consecutive months year-over-year dating back to October 2017. <br/>

The EU executive will recommend Wednesday that border restrictions be gradually lifted and travel stalled by the coronavirus pandemic allowed to restart in order to revive tourism, a major industry across the 27-country bloc. Nearly all travel has been halted in Europe, a devastating blow for the tourism sector, which normally contributes almost one-tenth of the EU's economic output. Even within the Schengen area, comprising 26 EU and other European countries, and where frontiers are normally invisible, at least 17 countries have put emergency border controls in place to contain the virus. The executive EC will make a slew of non-binding recommendations, including that targeted restrictions replace a general ban on travel, and that internal border checks slowly be lifted as the health situation improves. The three Baltic states have already decided to reopen borders to each others' citizens from May 15, creating a "travel bubble" within the EU as pandemic curbs are eased. But the overall picture is not rosy, with even countries that are cautiously relaxing their strictest lockdown measures moving towards imposing a two-week quarantine period for travellers arriving from abroad. The Commission estimates some 6.4m jobs could be lost in tourism, which employed 12m people before the crisis.<br/>

Boeing said Tuesday that its jetliner order book slipped below 5,000 for the first time in seven years as customers cancelled more deals for 737 MAX jets. The aerospace giant scrubbed another 108 MAX jets from its backlog and downgraded the status of deals for another 101 planes because of airlines’ weakening financial health in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It didn’t lose any deals for larger wide-body aircraft. Boeing’s report came as CE David Calhoun painted a dire near-term outlook for the airline industry, saying growth wouldn’t likely return to 2019 levels for three to five years. “There will definitely be adjustments that have to be made on the part of the airlines,” Calhoun said. Airport temperature checks, onboard mask requirements and other safety measures will help reassure passengers as they look to resume flying, Calhoun said.<br/>

Airlines added more seats back to their flight schedules this week, led by carriers China and Hong Kong, suggesting the industry is starting to recover from the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to OAG Aviation Worldwide. Carriers globally added a net 600,000 seats to reach a total of almost 30 million, up about 2% from the previous week, OAG senior analyst John Grant wrote in a report. That’s still a long way off the weekly capacity of about 110 million seats this time last year, but it is an encouraging sign nonetheless. Northeast Asia is a bright spot. China, the first place hit by the virus, added 1 million seats to schedules this week, including 800,000 on domestic routes, and is now operating twice as many seats as the US as its economy reopens. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways added 40,000 seats and increased frequency by some 120 flights, Grant said. “China’s domestic capacity stands at 75% of January’s level, the United States at 27% and Russia at 49% of pre Covid-19 levels,” he said. “For anyone interested the U.K. level is now some 4%.”<br/>

Israel is drawing up plans to resume commercial flights to some nearby countries with low COVID-19 contagion rates starting July 1, a report said Tuesday. Travel in and out of Israel has been all but shut down for over a month, but Israel and other countries that have managed to escape the pandemic relatively unscathed have been discussing the possibility of creating a special travel zone that would see trips resume without the need for strict quarantine measures. According to a report, Israel would start reopening travel with Greece and Cyprus on July 1, before resuming flights to several other European destinations. A preliminary pilot program in June would see flights to unspecified nearby destinations resume, albeit while still requiring returning travellers to quarantine for 14 days, according to a proposal drawn up by airline executives and presented to the Health Ministry Tuesday. The Health Ministry will monitor passengers, and ask them to undergo coronavirus testing when they return to Israel. If the travel is not seen to contribute to a new wave of infections, authorities would roll back the quarantine requirements and other restrictions. The Airports Authority is thus hoping to start regular flights to and from Greece and Cyprus from July 1. <br/>

Iceland will test all airline passengers arriving at Keflavik Airport for coronavirus by June 15, with those resulting negative spared a mandatory two-week quarantine, the government said Tuesday. Testing will take place inside the terminal of the international airport. Visitors will be allowed to head to their accommodation while they wait for the result of their test, which is expected to be delivered on the same day. The rule will also apply to visitors who have tested negative abroad, but only if the country’s health officials deem their certificates to be reliable. Iceland has carried out extensive testing for Covid-19 and has been able to contain the pandemic, with no new cases registered over the last five days<br/>

Armed with strong funding, Asian lessor BOC Aviation has struck an estimated $5.5b of deals with carriers including Southwest and United to buy and lease back aircraft as the sector faces its deepest ever crisis. BOC Aviation CE Robert Martin also said that the Singapore-headquartered lessor had 100% of its fleet on lease after reaching three-month partial payment deferral deals with many customers. “Our general approach has been to talk about a three-month deferral where we maybe defer around half of their rent and then have them pay back whenever their strong period is later in the year,” Martin said Tuesday. The pandemic has spurred BOC Aviation into a flurry of deals to purchase and lease back aircraft this year, with transactions agreed on more favourable pricing terms for the firm than would have been achieved in a stronger market, Martin said. “If you are brave enough to step out where others dare not venture then obviously the pricing is different,” he said, adding that BOC Aviation had mostly completed its purchase and leaseback deals for this year.<br/>

Our globalised world has been brought to a crashing halt by coronavirus. By April, over 90% of the world’s population – 7.1b people – lived in countries with coronavirus-related travel restrictions on people arriving from abroad, a Pew study found. And while local lockdowns are starting to ease in many countries now, the pause on international travel is likely to last far longer. With countries still focused on staving off a second wave of infections, there is little appetite for rapid reopening. “Travel and immigration – for work, study, seeking asylum – is going to be disrupted much longer than our daily lives, in a way unprecedented in our lifetimes,” said Prof Lindsay Wiley from the American University Washington College of Law. Senior figures in the aviation industry have already said they expect it to be several years before passenger demand returns to 2019 levels, if it ever does. Countries that acted fast to bring the disease under control – at least for now – are exploring ways to open up a limited “bubble” for their citizens to travel without restriction. The first to discuss the idea were New Zealand and Australia. Nine countries scattered across the world, but united in their successful handling of the virus are also actively seeking ways of setting up travel bubbles or corridors, broadening an unlikely alliance. In their second meeting via teleconference on Thursday, the leaders of Austria, Greece, Israel, Norway, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand agreed that as each begins to ease restrictions they could capitalise on low infection rates by creating tourism safe zones. Story has more. <br/>