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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke with airline and aviation union officials on Friday and said she believes there is bipartisan support for aid to the industry but only as part of a broader stimulus. That approach is at odds with the White House, which yesterday expressed support for a narrow bill to avert thousands of layoffs when a prohibition on job cuts in the industry expires at the end of the month. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows met with airline leaders Thursday and said afterward that the industry needs $25b. He said it should be passed in a separate measure next week. Pelosi has opposed piecemeal virus relief bills as part of her strategy for Democrats to win agreement on a multitrillion-dollar relief measure. She and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, spoke to airline executives and labor leaders in separate phone calls Friday. Pelosi said she was glad Republican support for airline jobs relief has finally grown “so that there will be bipartisan support for inclusion in a covid bill that meets the health and economic crisis facing all sectors of our country.” Nicholas Calio, president of the trade group Airlines for America, said after the call that he was encouraged by the bipartisan support for aid. “We had a very productive discussion with Speaker Pelosi and Chairman DeFazio this afternoon, focusing on the urgency for Congress and the Administration to reach a compromise on a package and extend the Payroll Support Program,” Calio said.<br/>

US airlines are facing what one leading analyst calls a “Thelma and Louise” moment as the industry approaches a government-funding deadline that could decide its future. On 30 September a government aid packages used to protect workers expires, the airlines have already announced huge layoffs but what comes next could be even worse. “I don’t think people get the Thelma and Louise analogy here. The car is up to speed, it’s headed toward the cliff and we know what happens next because you’ve seen the movie,” said industry analyst Robert Mann. Passenger numbers are down 70% and the loss of business and frequent flyer travelers has pushed revenue down by as as much as 85%. In March, airlines were offered two sources of money as part of the US government’s coronavirus stimulus package, the Cares Act. The act gave the industry $25b in loans to cover general costs and $25bn to keep workers on payroll. The payroll cash is made up of grants that don’t need to be paid back but the loans come with strings attached. Airlines will have to give the US government some equity stake in return for the loans. Some airlines, including American, Hawaiian Airlines and Spirit Airlines have agreed to take the cash. Others including Delta, United and Southwest, have yet to decide whether they will tap the loans. The situation is dire. Over the summer, American and Southwest both posted quarterly losses, with American dropping more than 86% to $1.6b from nearly $12b a year earlier. Southwest’s sales fell to $1bn, a drop of 83% from $5.9bn last year. With passengers avoiding airline travel over the peak summer months, conditions have barely improved. “Travel since March has been subsidized and the activity that is out there is 70% down and at fares 30% lower than they used to be,” said Mann. “There are no business travelers out there because companies have told them they’re under a travel ban, and if you do then don’t come back in the office.”<br/>

France is preparing to put plans for new environmental taxes on the airline sector on hold, officials said on Friday, despite a government push to speed up moves towards a greener economy. Before the coronavirus crisis brought air traffic to a standstill and many airlines to their knees, the sector had been fighting a losing battle against emissions taxes in Europe. New taxes on air travel were among proposals from a Citizens’ Climate Council in response to the “yellow vest” movement, which began as a protest at the cost of living and became a rebellion against President Emmanuel Macron himself. Macron has said that he would take on most of the council’s 150 proposals, and the taxes were not among those he has said would be excluded. After suffering losses to green candidates in June’s municipal elections, Macron sought to enhance his environmental credentials, but not at the expense of economic activity. “When a sector has its head under the water, you don’t push its head in deeper,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal told Europe 1 radio, echoing comments by the finance minister. Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday that it would be “completely grotesque” to hit aviation with new taxes at a time when the state is pumping 18 billion euros into the sector through various forms of aid to keep it afloat.<br/>

In August, Nadzri Harif, a DJ at Kristal FM radio station in Brunei, set foot in an airport for the first time in six months. The experience, he said, was exhilarating. Sure, moving through Brunei International Airport was different, with masks, glass dividers and social-distancing protocols in place, but nothing could beat the anticipation of getting on a plane again. His destination: nowhere. Harif is one of thousands of people in Brunei, Taiwan, Japan and Australia who have started booking flights that start and end in the same place. Some airlines call these “scenic flights”; others are more direct, calling them “flights to nowhere.” “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed traveling — missed flying — until the moment the captain’s voice came on the speaker with the welcome and safety announcement,” said Harif of his 85-minute experience on Royal Brunei Airlines. On its flight to nowhere, which the airline calls the “dine and fly” program, Royal Brunei serves local cuisine to passengers while flying over the country. At a time when most people are stuck at home and unable to travel, and the global airline industry has been decimated by the pandemic, flights that take off and return to the airport a few hours later allow airlines to keep staff working. The practice also satisfies that itch to travel — even if it’s just being on a plane again. Although most people may think of flying as a means to an end, existing solely to get them from one place to the next, some say that it is an exciting part of the travel experience. For those people, flights to nowhere are the salve for a year in which just about all travel has been canceled and people have been fearful of airlines not enforcing social distancing and mask-wearing rules. Royal Brunei has run five of these flights since mid-August, and since Brunei has had very few cases of the coronavirus, the airline is not requiring passengers to wear masks, but staff members are. <br/>

Environmental campaigners have condemned the rise of scenic “joy flights” aimed at passengers “missing the excitement of travel”. Tickets for a seven-hour round trip from Sydney with Qantas sold out within 10 minutes, making it one of the airline’s fastest selling flights ever. Seat prices on the 10 October flight range from A$787 (£607) economy to $3,787 for business class. Using 787 Dreamliner aircraft usually employed for long-haul international flights, Qantas’ Great Southern Land flight will fly as low as 4,000 feet (1,220 metres) over Queensland, the Northern Territory and New South Wales. Qantas is not the first airline to introduce recreational flights in a bid to make up for financial losses inflicted by the Coronavirus pandemic. Last month Taiwanese airline EVA launched a Hello Kitty-themed flight that took off from Taipei airport and landed back there three hours later. Japan airline ANA plans to run two 90-minute “Hawaiian experience” flights in October after a sightseeing flight in August was massively oversubscribed. And Singapore Airlines is reported to be planning to launch no-destination flights by the end of October. Climate campaigners have been quick to decry the trend and dismiss Qantas’ promise that its flight will be carbon neutral. “We’ve got to get our heads around the fact that flying can’t be emissions free anytime soon,” said Mark Carter of campaign group Flight Free Australia. He said passengers on board the Qantas flight will be increasing their annual emissions by 10% in just seven hours “as they gawk at the Barrier Reef they are helping to destroy”. <br/>

The young woman and her sister had traveled across Europe just as the coronavirus pandemic was taking off there, visiting Milan and Paris before heading to London. When the woman left London on March 1, she had a sore throat and cough as she boarded a flight home to Vietnam, but no one noticed. By the time she got off the flight in Hanoi 10 hours later, 15 other people who had been on the plane with her were infected, researchers reported Friday. This story is one of two published Friday demonstrating how coronavirus can spread on airline flights, and suggesting that simply spacing people out a little will not fully protect them. In another incident, passengers on a flight from Boston to Hong Kong appear to have infected two flight attendants. Both cases involved long flights early in the pandemic, before airlines began requiring face masks. A team from Vietnam tracked down a cluster of cases linked to the flight that arrived in Hanoi from London on March 2. "A 27-year-old businesswoman from Vietnam, whom we identified as the probable index case, had been based in London since early February," Nguyen Cong Khanh of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi and colleagues wrote. "On February 22, case 1 and her sister returned to Milan, Italy, and subsequently traveled to Paris, France, for the yearly Fashion Week before returning back to London on February 25," they wrote in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. At this time, coronavirus was starting to spread fast in Italy but very few cases had been reported in Britain. The woman boarded a flight to Hanoi on March 1. "She was seated in business class and continued to experience the sore throat and cough throughout the flight," the researchers added. She went to a hospital three days after landing and tested positive for the virus. Health officials tracked down 217 passengers and crew who had been on the flight with her and found 12 fellow business class passengers, two economy class passengers and one crew member were also infected. Story has more.<br/>

The closure of passenger air links between the US and the UK will strip at least GBP11b off UK gross domestic product in 2020, according to a report commissioned by British Airways’ parent IAG, London’s Heathrow Airport, the Airlines UK trade group and airport services firm Collinson Group. The authors called for the creation of city or state-based travel corridors between the US and the UK as well as airport testing for Covid-19. Keeping the routes closed will cost the UK economy GBP32m a day by the beginning of October, according to the report. “Government inaction on aviation and its impact on Britain’s economy couldn’t be clearer,” BA CEO Alex Cruz said. “Ministers must reach agreement with their US counterparts on a testing regime that minimizes quarantine and permits regional travel corridors to re-open the UK-US market.” Airlines have been campaigning to lift restrictions on trans-Atlantic travel which have been in place since early March. New York to London is BA’s most profitable route, with business travel a key driver of demand. The route generated about 7m seat sales last year. The US is the single biggest source of visitors to the UK, with almost 4m people visiting annually, according to the report.<br/>

An alliance of more than 5,000 travel and tourism companies across Europe have issued an unprecedented appeal for the introduction of airport testing to replace quarantine. Twenty associations, representing the 5,000 firms, have issued an open letter to the European Commission calling for a testing regime to help save the jobs of 27m people across Europe working in the travel and tourism industry. The appeal comes as figures show that passenger traffic across Europe during September dipped to a new low - and was even worse than August, raising questions over the long-term recovery of the industry. Airline chiefs forecast that the flying will not return to pre-covid levels for up to five years. ACI EUROPE data showed that during the first two weeks of September showed passenger air traffic as down 73 on the same period last years, worse than the “peak recovery level” of minus 67% in mid-August. In their letter to the EC president Ursula von der Leyen, the 20 groups said testing would help restore confidence by showing people were clear of the virus on departure - and could shorten their time in quarantine potentially four or five days after arrival by having a confirmatory second negative test. <br/>

Airlines flying stranded Australians home have said national cabinet’s decision to increase the weekly intake of international passengers doesn’t go far enough. The 2,000 a week increase announced on Friday is “certainly not an ‘Oh wow, I can finally get on a flight home now’ moment,” said the executive director of the Board of Airline Representatives of Australia, Barry Abrams. The airlines warned the majority of the 27,000 Australians stranded overseas would continue to struggle to access flights for several months unless the arrival caps were boosted significantly. Abrams said the proposed increase “doesn’t add a lot for Australians overseas” but a suggestion arrivals from New Zealand could soon skip hotel quarantine would create considerable capacity for other international passengers. The federal opposition also criticised details of national cabinet’s Friday agreement to boost weekly arrivals from 4,000 to 6,000. It argued the government should draw on more commonwealth resources – including 3,000 available beds at the Howard Springs quarantine facility in the Northern Territory – to repatriate desperate Australians faster. On Friday, Scott Morrison announced New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland had each agreed to increase their weekly arrival intakes by 500 passengers. Story has more.<br/>

The families of two Britons killed in two Boeing air disasters have hit out at the airline after a US Congressional report blamed them on its unwillingness to share key technical information with regulators and pilots. A total of 346 people were killed when two Boeing 737 Max aircraft operated by Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashed into the Java Sea in October 2018 and near Addis Ababa, in March last year. Families of the victims have now accused the airline of "rolling the dice" with the lives of their loved ones by allowing the Max 737 to carry on flying after the first crash. The US House of Representatives’ Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has now issued a damning report criticising a “culture of concealment” at Boeing. The 18-month inquiry into the two crashes found that the US airline regulatory system was “fundamentally flawed”. The Congressional report added that the crashes were “the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing's engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA." Clive Garner, from the families’ solicitors Irwin Mitchell, said the House of Representatives’ report confirmed there had been an “almost unbelievable series of errors and misjudgements” by Boeing and the FAA in relation to the design, build and certification of the 737 MAX. He said: “Boeing and the FAA rolled the dice with critical safety issues and, as a result, hundreds of lives were needlessly lost and countless families have been torn apart. The Committee’s report highlights cavalier and totally unacceptable conduct by the Boeing Company and a deeply flawed system of oversight and regulation by the FAA.”<br/>

The FAA hasn't updated standards for emergency airliner evacuations in nearly two decades, a period when travelers have increasingly had to deal with tighter aircraft seats, more carry-on bags and support animals, a government watchdog says. The Transportation Department’s Inspector General said in an audit report released Friday that the FAA and hasn't done enough research to evaluate the new risks. In addition, it says the FAA largely only updates standards after accidents and hasn't revised them since a 1991 accident. “This lack of data inhibits FAA’s ability to determine how to improve evacuation regulations and protect passenger safety in emergencies,” the report said. It's also hampering the FAA's response to 2018 mandates by Congress that the agency evaluate evacuation procedures and set minimums for seat sizes and the distance between rows, the report said. The FAA also doesn’t account for smoke in emergencies, or the use of personal electronic devices, the report concluded. The Inspector General recommended that the FAA regularly collect and analyze emergency evacuation data to find out if standards need to be changed. The agency also should make sure that data used in airplane manufacturers' evacuation demonstrations is up to date. The FAA agreed with both of the Inspector General’s recommendations, the audit report said. But in a memo responding to the report, the FAA said it has enacted increasingly rigorous cabin safety requirements over the years including tougher standards for exit pathways, emergency lighting, escape systems, flammability of materials and testing of seats. “These system requirements have increased survivability and the amount of time available for successful evacuations, as demonstrated in many accidents,” the FAA wrote.<br/>

The fuel that powers passenger planes is normally among the most expensive oil products, but in a sign of the times the coronavirus has turned it into a blending component for typically cheaper shipping fuel. Straight-run kerosene, usually processed into jet fuel, is now being used to make very low-sulfur fuel oil for the maritime industry amid a plunge in consumption by airlines. Higher than normal amounts of diesel and vacuum gasoil are also finding their way into shipping fuel. The shift, almost unthinkable just a year ago, reflects the obliteration of demand the aviation industry has suffered in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. And with the IATA not expecting air travel to get back to pre-virus levels until 2024, it may be a feature of the market for some time to come. Jet fuel components were used for blending in April and May in Singapore before it became uneconomic as prices moved back to a premium to VLSFO, said Eugene Lindell, senior analyst at consultant JBC Energy GmbH. The switching is picking up again after aviation fuel flipped back to a discount, he said. “Only in a situation where the economy is in complete tatters, do we see usually more expensive components heading straight into VLSFO,” Lindell said. Jet fuel prices in Singapore plunged from above $70 a barrel in January to close to $20 in early May before recovering to trade around $41, according to Bloomberg Fair Value data. VLSFO bunker prices in the Asian oil hub, meanwhile, are now 54% lower than they were at the end of last year.<br/>