As air travel reopens and flight bookings begin to creep up, AvGeeks — aviation geeks — and others may notice some new legalese in the fine print when they buy plane tickets. More and more carriers are adding clauses that require passengers to settle disputes with the airline in private arbitration, rather than in court, and bar passengers from starting or joining class-action lawsuits. In early April, American Airlines updated its contract of carriage, a standard industry document that outlines the legal responsibilities of a ticket holder and an airline, with a class-action waiver. BA followed in late May, adding a class-action waiver and binding arbitration agreement in the terms and conditions of Executive Club, its loyalty program, for residents of the US and Canada. BA notified members by email. “What the airline is saying is: If you ever have a dispute with us, the only way you can pursue this is in private,” said Deborah Hensler, Ph.D., a professor of law at Stanford Law School. “These types of agreements are usually an effort to prevent people from having an effective way of challenging a company on what might arguably be a legal violation.” The timing hardly seems coincidental. Airlines of all sizes are being sued for withholding billions of dollars from passengers whose flights were cancelled because of Covid-19. American Airlines was named in a class-action lawsuit in April; a similar one was filed against British Airways in early May. Also in April, separate but similar class actions were filed against the low-cost carriers Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines, both of which had “No Class Action” clauses in their contracts of carriage before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic. Story has details.<br/>
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More than 500,000 people crossed through TSA checkpoints Thursday, the first time the numbers have climbed above that mark since travel cratered this spring due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 502,209 people TSA reported screening is still well below typical levels -- nearly 19% of the 2.7m the agency screened on the same Thursday last year. The passenger rates have steadily risen since bottoming out at about 3% of last year's traffic -- less than 100,000 daily travelers -- in mid-April. Airlines are operating more flights than at that point, and each plane is also carrying more passengers. Airlines for America, representing the major US carriers, said Thursday that the average departure carries 57 passengers, compared to 50 the group reported Monday and fewer than 20 at the low point.<br/>
The US government plans to distribute 96m cloth face coverings for free to people riding on planes, trains and public transportation systems. The Transportation Department said Friday it will provide 86.8m masks to airports and 9.6m to 458 transit agencies and Amtrak. “This Administration is committed to protecting our people and reopening the economy,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said. “Distributing these facial coverings will help boost public confidence as we begin to resume our normal lives.” The Transportation Department is working with the Health and Human Services Department, it said. The cloth coverings were obtained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and will be distributed in the coming weeks. Travellers are “still responsible for having their own facial covering” in situations in which it is required, the DOT said. The government’s supply is intended to be supplemental and availability is not guaranteed. <br/>
One nearly empty passenger jet “climbed like a rocket,” prompting the pilots to exceed their assigned altitude. Others have scraped their tails on takeoff, gone off course or strayed close enough to other aircraft to prompt mid-air collision alerts. The common thread: the massive disruptions to the US airline industry caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. While the plunge in travel has in many ways eased pressure on roads and the aviation system, it has at times had the opposite effect on safety. The rate of highway deaths has actually risen as motorists speed on empty roads. And the drop in airline passengers has triggered an unusual spate of incidents that are challenging flight safety, according to publicly available reports as well as government, industry and union officials. Moreover, the slow rise in air traffic is creating its own demands as parked aircraft are restored to service and pilots who may have missed training sessions are recalled. The Commercial Aviation Safety Team, comprised of the FAA, unions and airline officials, last month issued more than 50 warnings to carriers on the unusual factors they need to monitor more closely during the recent industry disruptions, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. They include tracking safety data related to unusually light aircraft, the stresses from employees fearing they could become infected by Covid-19 and possible fuel contamination on planes that were parked. “These dynamic changes are creating stress points on our systems and processes,” the group said in one of the documents. Story has more.<br/>
The coronavirus pandemic has hampered pilot training programs overseas, and Japan’s aviation industry is bracing for a shortage of commercial aviators in the near future. Airlines and universities often dispatch trainees to facilities abroad, but the countries hosting them have stopped issuing visas to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, bringing training programs to a halt. As the large number of pilots recruited during the bubble economy from the late 1980s to early 1990s will start retiring around 2030, the government, airlines and universities have been trying to increase training to counter a pilot shortage that could hamper flight services. About 50 trainees of ANA have been affected by the March 16 closure of flight schools in Germany and the US run by the Lufthansa Group, ANA officials said. Low-cost carrier Peach Aviation, also saw training programs for five trainees in New Zealand canceled from mid-March. <br/>
London to Glasgow is a small hop for an Airbus A320 jet. But it will be a significant leap out of lockdown for easyJet when its first scheduled flight since late March takes to the skies at 7am on Monday. No passenger has climbed into its orange-and-white planes since 11 weeks ago, when the airline shut down operations after flying its last holidaymakers from Tenerife back to Gatwick. Now, even though Covid-19 is in retreat (at best), airlines are praying for business to return. Some have kept flying a few routes throughout the restrictions, but this week will see a first, small ramp-up of services, among which easyJet’s resurrection is the most significant in the UK. Only 10 aircraft of its fleet of more than 300 will be in service on Monday, operating domestic flights between airports including Bristol, Liverpool, Belfast and Newcastle, as well as services within continental Europe around Switzerland, France, Italy and Portugal. A total of 310 flights are scheduled this week. Ryanair has maintained a skeleton service between Dublin and British airports and a handful of flights from Stansted to Europe while grounding 99% of its aircraft. Next Sunday it adds 79 routes between the UK and Ireland and Poland, which has reopened borders and lifted restrictions this weekend. From July, the airline hopes to bring back 40% of its schedule.<br/>
BA, easyJet and Ryanair are pushing ahead with legal action against the UK government over the introduction of its two-week quarantine period on travellers entering Britain. The group filed the legal papers on Thursday evening at the High Court, just days after the new quarantine rules came into effect. They have asked for their judicial review to be heard as soon as possible. The three airlines on Friday said they had launched their action against the government’s “flawed quarantine”, which they have claimed would have a “devastating effect on British tourism and the wider economy” as well as destroying thousands of jobs. Many in the travel industry have called on the government to introduce a system of “air bridges” or “travel corridors”, which would enable people to travel between two countries with similar levels of coronavirus infection without the need to quarantine. The UK’s three biggest airlines said in a statement on Friday that there was so far no “evidence on how and when proposed ‘air bridges’ between the UK and other countries will be implemented”. The group wants the government to readopt its previous quarantine policy introduced on March 10, where the restrictions were limited to passengers from “high risk” countries. This would be the “most practical and effective solution” and would bring the UK in line with much of Europe which is opening its borders in the middle of this month, the airlines said.<br/>
Phuket International Airport is fully ready to provide services to passengers, its director said, as the airport reopened on Saturday after the Covid-19 lockdown easing. Thai Vietjet was the first carrier to provide domestic flights on the Phuket-Bangkok route after the airport received the green light on Friday from the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT), said Thanee Chuangchoo, director of Phuket International Airport. With 19 passengers, Thai Vietjet flight VZ2306 landed at Phuket airport from Bangkok at 4.55pm on Saturday while flight VZ2307 took 37 people to Bangkok at 5.25pm, according to Plt Off Thanee. All passengers received face masks bearing the airport logo. Health screening and social distancing were also strictly enforced. “Phuket airport is 100% ready to receive passengers. Staff from all sections are well-prepared to perform their duties, such as helping and screening passengers, providing security and facilitating the use of Airports of Thailand and Phuket mobile apps. I can assure you that we are 100% ready," said the airport director. <br/>