China sharply ramped up restrictions on people leaving the capital on Tuesday in an effort to stop the most serious coronavirus flare-up since February from spreading to other cities and provinces. The decision to impose fresh curbs and raise the city’s emergency response level back to II from III came as Beijing’s current outbreak rose to 106 infections since Thursday. The outbreak has been traced to the sprawling Xinfadi wholesale food centre in the southwest of Beijing where thousands of tonnes of vegetables, fruit and meat change hands each day. As of Tuesday, Beijing had designated 27 neighbourhoods as medium-risk areas, subjecting people entering to temperature checks and registration. More broadly, Beijing will strictly control the movement of people in and out of the city, with both inbound and outbound travellers required to undergo tests, said Chen Bei, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing municipal government. But the measures fall short of a lockdown, with roads and highways still open and Beijing’s two airports in operation. <br/>
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People are less willing to fly now than they were at the height of the coronavirus lockdown, according to research carried out for the airline industry’s main trade group. Only 45% of those polled in late May and early June said they’d be prepared to board a plane within one or two months of restrictions being lifted, down from 60% in April, the IATA said Tuesday. “If anything, consumers have actually got rather more cautious and we have a majority saying now that they would wait more than six months before traveling,” IATA Chief Economist Brian Pearce said. “The survey is telling us that passengers are rather cautious.” Other indicators also point to an uncertain demand environment. New bookings are down 82% from a year ago, according to IATA, improving only slightly from a low point in April. Reservations are also being made far later, with 41% of people booking within three days or less of their journey last month, compared with 18% in 2019. Demand for long-haul flights remains close to zero.<br/>
Airlines are urging aviation regulators to extend a waiver on airport slot rules as they struggle to overcome the coronavirus crisis, their main international body said on Tuesday. Authorities are being asked to suspend rules requiring airlines to use 80% of their airport slots or else forfeit the capacity, the IATA said. The waiver should be extended beyond the 2020-2021 winter season as demand remains weak and visibility low, IATA Chief Economist Brian Pearce said. Without a waiver, “connectivity to long-haul destinations will be at risk,” he said.<br/>
The Covid-19 crisis is hardly a good time to be in the aviation business. Investors seem to have forgotten, though, that plane makers have years of purchase commitments locked in. Over the past month, markets have lost the will to discriminate, first piling into stocks particularly affected by the pandemic then, last week, dumping them due to fears of a second wave. The shares of Boeing and Airbus have performed broadly in line with those of airlines and engine makers, whose business models are more exposed to economic busts. Of course, plane makers will suffer too. Their main customers are airlines, which in aggregate won’t return to profit until 2022 at the earliest, according to the IATA’s estimates. Boeing has been particularly hard-hit, with a net minus 615 orders for its grounded 737 MAX jet this year as a result of cancellations. The firm also is more focused than its European rival on wide-body models used on international routes, which are expected to take longer to recover. Both companies have been forced to slash production rates. Since 2013, an increasing share of jet deliveries has been used to service new markets, rather than to replace aging aircraft, figures by analytics firm Cirium show. These “growth” markets have evaporated in the pandemic. Yet plane makers still look insulated from the worst of the slump. Airbus’s outstanding orders are above 7,600, while Boeing’s still stand at almost 4,800—about 10 and 6 years of production, respectively. <br/>
Alcohol sales may have boomed during lockdown, but our return to air travel will be an altogether more sobering experience. Airlines including Easyjet and KLM in Europe, Delta and American Airlines in the US, and Asia's Virgin Australia, are suspending all or part of their alcoholic drinks service in response to Covid-19. It's part of a widespread revision of the industry's food and drink service to minimize interaction between crew and passengers and to ensure a safer journey for all. With face masks already mandatory on pretty much all flights around the world, and new legislation introduced in January 2020 to curb anti-social behavior on flights, it's another in a line of barriers -- literal and legal -- to getting high in the sky. Many airlines are limiting drink options to water only. As face masks must be kept on other than when passengers are eating and drinking, it's a way of ensuring passengers are lingering over their refreshments for no longer than necessary. Story has more.<br/>
The Treasury Department is considering holding off on giving more companies access to an untapped $17b relief fund for national security businesses in case Boeing and General Electric eventually need the money, according to people familiar with the matter. The loan program was created under the $2.2t Cares Act with the two defense giants specifically in mind, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. But so far, both companies have taken a pass, saying they don’t need the government loans after raising cash on Wall Street. Only about 20 companies applied for loans by the program’s May 1 deadline, according to the Defense Department. There are about 300,000 companies in the Pentagon’s contractor supply chain, and some have turned to other Cares Act programs to win federal support. Treasury has until the end of the year to use the funds.<br/>
Pressure is growing in Congress for at least modest changes in how federal regulators approve new passenger planes after two deadly crashes involving the Boeing 737 Max. On Tuesday, two key senators on transportation issues proposed several changes that would increase FAA's direct role in the aircraft-certification process. Their legislation would not end a decades-old practice in which the FAA relies on aircraft manufacturers' own employees to certify the safety of systems on their planes. But it would require the FAA to select the people who do the safety work instead of letting the manufacturers pick them. Supporters of the FAA’s reliance on employees of aircraft makers point to the safety record of US airlines – no fatal crashes since 2009 – as proof that the policy produces safe planes. Critics say, however, that FAA approved the Boeing Max without fully understanding an anti-stall system that was later implicated in the crashes. The new bill by the Republican chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and the panel’s top Democrat, Maria Cantwell of Washington, would make other changes, too. Story has more.<br/>
Canada and the US have agreed to extend their agreement to keep their border closed to non-essential travel to July 21 during the coronavirus pandemic. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau said Tuesday's agreement extends the closure by another 30 days. The restrictions were announced on March 18 and were extended in April and May. "This is a decision that will protect people on both side of the border as we continue to fight COVID-19,” Trudeau said. Many Canadians fear a reopening. Americans who are returning to the US and Canadians who are returning to Canada are exempted. Immediate family members of Canadians are also allowed entry into Canada, but must quarantine for 14 days. And essential cross-border workers like healthcare professionals, airline crews and truck drivers are still permitted to cross. Truck drivers are critical as they move food and medical goods in both directions. <br/>
Airports are turning to artificial intelligence to keep their borders secure from rising drone threats. Aviation officials are concerned about unauthorized drone traffic especially as airlines plan to resume commercial flights suspended during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. In the US, the FAA says it now receives more than 100 reports of unmanned aircraft sightings a month and that the number is rising despite criminal penalties for breaching secure airspace. Intrusions can create headaches for airport operators. Newark Liberty International Airport closed for 90 minutes in January due to a drone sighting, and London’s Gatwick Airport grounded flights for 36 hours in December 2019 because of a similar incident. Traditional detection systems, such as radar, run into problems when trying to detect small, nimble drones on their own. “They can see a long way, but sometimes they can’t discriminate between a seagull, or a happy birthday balloon and a drone,” said Paul Hicks, head of wireless at Warwick, England-based technology provider Telent Technology Services Ltd. The new detection systems use environmental sensors placed throughout an airport to take in various information points about a particular environment, such as controlled airspace, and use machine learning to quickly determine whether the objects they detect are genuine threats.<br/>
Singapore will halt construction of a new terminal at Changi Airport for at least two years as it studies how the aviation industry will develop after the coronavirus outbreak wiped out travel demand. The building of a fifth terminal will be put on hold until the study is completed, Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan said in a meeting with officials Tuesday. The government had planned to invite tenders for major sub-structure works in October, he said, with the new facility originally planned to be completed in 2030. “I am quite confident that aviation will recover, but how fast it will recover is a big question mark,” Khaw said. “We don’t think we will get the answers very quickly within the next few months. It will take us a couple of years.” SIA said last month that it could take 12 to 18 months for capacity to recover to levels seen before the outbreak. Singapore has been working on a third runway and the fifth terminal, which will be the size of three existing ones put together, to meet growing demand. Changi, Asia’s third-busiest airport for international travel, temporarily closed Terminal 4 from May 16 due to declining passenger traffic. In the first four months of this year, passengers handled at Changi halved to 11.1m.<br/>
Flying $450m airliners was once a dream job, and there was no shortage of opportunity. Last year Boeing estimated that airlines would need to add 800,000 pilots over the next 20 years to feed an Asia-led travel boom; some carriers in China were offering salaries of more than $300,000 a year, plus perks, to woo industry veterans. Then coronavirus began to spread and overseas travel halted, grounding 51% of the world’s global fleet. As they wait to see whether they’ll ever get back in the cockpit, pilots have turned to a mishmash of odd jobs and second-choice careers. Few jobs have swung from a stubborn and severe shortage to a vast surplus within a matter of weeks, and it offers insight into how one specialized workforce is adapting to a potential hammer blow. “We will do anything we can by problem solving and managing risks to protect our families,” said Chris Riggins, a pilot for Delta and a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association. “If that means working in a grocery store, pilots will do it.” In fact, some are working at supermarkets, others at phone companies, still more learning to drive trucks or working in financial services. Many are finding that the side gigs they’ve developed over the years are now the mainstay. It’s not clear when, if ever, the industry will fully recover. Story has more.<br/>