United pilots have reached a tentative agreement with the carrier to avoid furloughs until the middle of next year. United’s chapter of pilot union Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) said Wednesday that the agreement is a “temporary lifeline” for the 2,850 United pilots who had been warned their jobs may disappear after 1 October. “This [tentative agreement] underscores our commitment to all 13,000 United pilots and represents the importance of creative solutions needed to mitigate massive layoffs for our pilots,” says the carrier’s pilot union chair Todd Insler. The agreement, which will go to the entire membership for a vote later this month, gives older pilots with more than 10 years’ experience the opportunity to take advantage of further early separation options and adds restrictions on regional carrier flying. It also secures triggers for pay increases as passenger demand returns. If members agree to the conditions, the airline will avoid furloughing any pilots until June 2021. The airline says on 16 September that it continues “to try and reduce the number of involuntary furloughs at United and are now one step closer to saving thousands of pilot jobs”. That will allow it to respond quickly once travel demand returns, the Chicago-based carrier adds. <br/>
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For the past four months, United and Boeing have been flying around jetliners loaded with mannequins, aerosol sprays, sensors and scientists in an effort to understand how contaminated air moves through passenger planes. The research is just one small part of a sweeping global campaign to figure out the threats posed by the coronavirus. But for the airline industry, the results could help determine how quickly carriers bounce back from the edge of disaster after the pandemic made people afraid to get on a plane. The US military initiated the $1m study when the spread of Covid-19 raised concerns about infection risks for troops transported on passenger jets. Companies including United, Boeing and Zeteo Tech, a Maryland-based biodefense and medical device maker, are contributing equipment and expertise. If the findings can show how likely it is for a passenger to be infected by breathing the air on a plane, “it’ll probably drive some policy decisions,” said Mike McLoughlin, Zeteo’s VP of research. To collect data, researchers placed mannequins with human-like heads in various seats throughout seven models of Boeing and Airbus jets, then made them cough. Or rather, they simulated a human cough, and how aerosolized particles are expelled and disseminated through the air on the plane, McLoughlin said. Aerosol particles will behave differently under different cabin scenarios, said Byron Jones, an engineering professor at Kansas State University who studies airline cabin air and was not involved in the project. Gas and particles in a cabin become “a witches’ cauldron,” he said, based on air flows, particulate sizes and other factors. “It just swirls and churns and twists. It’s very chaotic,” he said. But that churning isn’t necessarily a bad thing: “That’s what you want to see in a general ventilation (system).” Story has more.<br/>
United said Wednesday it would add an antimicrobial coating to the airline's safety and cleaning procedures to protect against the novel coronavirus. The US carrier said it is currently applying the coating each week on more than 30 aircraft and expects to add this latest measure to its entire fleet before the end of the year.<br/>