general

Airlines have canceled upward of 600 flight after the parts of Northeast received a foot of snow or more with additional precipitation expected to fall through Thursday morning. Snow fell from northern Virginia to parts of New England on Wednesday. It carried on north into the evening, sustaining a storm that was poised to drop as much as 2 feet of snow in some places by Thursday. United had the most cancellations, calling off 103 flights. Southwest canceled 64 and JetBlue scrubbed 63. Delta and American canceled about 50 each, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware. As far as airports go, Boston Logan had 131 canceled flights as of 7:30 a.m. EST on Thursday, while Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey had 123. Most US airlines have already announced flight waivers covering travel on Wednesday and Thursday. The destinations covered, travel dates and other fine print vary by airline and are likely to change with the storm's projected path and severity.<br/>

The rollout of vaccines against Covid-19 has intensified debate about whether they should be made mandatory, with the head of a major tourism lobby saying that doing so would cause irreparable harm to the struggling sector. “I don’t think governments will require vaccination next year” for travel, Gloria Guevara, head of the World Travel and Tourism Council, said Thursday. “If they do that they will kill their sector.” Those first in line to get the jabs include the elderly and vulnerable, who “are the last people who will travel,” she said. Instead, rules for virus testing before departure are likely to be bolstered. Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas, ignited an industrywide debate last month when he said proof of vaccination would be a condition for travelers entering or leaving Australia on the carrier’s planes. So far, no country has made inoculation compulsory or said it would be required for people crossing borders. The use of digital systems as a way to revive travel has had mixed results so far. The Rome airport started a corridor with some US destinations this month, but another one planned between Singapore and Hong Kong was postponed until next year amid a resurgence in Covid-19 cases. In addition to CommonPass, IATA is working on its own mobile app, the Travel Pass, and is planning a test program with BA parent IAG this year. The AOKpass from travel security firm International SOS is being used on flights between Abu Dhabi and Karachi and Islamabad in Pakistan.<br/>

In balmy Singapore, a tiny island nation that sits almost directly on the equator, it’s usually flowers, meat and seafood that gets whipped away into SATS Ltd.’s cool rooms upon landing at Changi Airport. Now one of the world’s biggest ground handlers is gearing up for a more vital task. Like cargo operators everywhere, SATS is preparing for the arrival of its first shipment of vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech later this month. PM Lee Hsien Loong said this week that the country, which has a population of around 5.5m, should have enough vaccines for everyone by Q3. Multiple bets have been placed, with Moderna and Sinovac Biotech jabs lined up as other potential candidates. In anticipation, SATS has doubled production of dry ice needed to keep the Pfizer vaccine at the required storage temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius. The company has also purchased two cool dollies, like giant freezers, to move the vaccines around on the ground. “SATS will play an essential role in taking the vaccines off the planes, storing them at a low temperature and then sending them to the forwarders who will then take them to market,” CEO Alex Hungate said. SATS will play an important role in getting the vaccines out to cities including Beijing, Jakarta, Mumbai, he said.<br/>

Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft is a step closer to returning to Canadian skies, nearly two years after being grounded due to technical issues that resulted in two deadly crashes involving foreign airlines. Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau said Thursday that Transport Canada has approved design changes to the plane, among them allowing pilots to disable a faulty warning system that was found to be central to the crashes in 2018 and 2019. “Today is the validation, which means that we recognize the modifications that have been made to fix the problem with the Max 8,” Garneau said. “However, there’s still another step to take, and that will be done in January, when we will, as Canada, emit what we call an airworthiness directive.” After the government issues the directive, airlines will be permitted to fly the Boeing Max again in Canada, provided that they meet Ottawa’s criteria for procedures and training.<br/>

The UK and the US are hoping to reach an agreement on reducing trade tariffs, according to Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative in Donald Trump’s outgoing administration. Lighthizer said he was in talks with the UK’s international trade secretary, Liz Truss, which could remove hefty tariffs imposed by the US on goods including Scotch whisky. “I’m hopeful we can get some kind of an agreement out you know, we don’t have a lot of time left,” Lighthizer said. His comments come just days after the UK dropped EU tariffs on plane manufacturer Boeing, setting it at odds with the rest of the bloc, in the hope of securing a quick post-Brexit trade deal with Washington. The US and EU have been locked in a long-running trade dispute over subsidies to Airbus and the US planemaker. <br/>

Beleaguered Mitsubishi Aircraft, whose flagship SpaceJet programme is effectively frozen amid cost cutting, is reported to have slashed 95% of its employees. Japanese broadcaster NHK, citing sources, says the job cuts will begin next April, presumably at the start of the new financial year, leaving behind a skeletal workforce of just 150 employees. In late October, parent company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) announced that it would further cut the budget of - and put a “temporary pause” on - the SpaceJet programme, as it mulls a “possible programme restart”. While it will pause activities relating to the development of the baseline, 90-seat M90 SpaceJet variant, MHI says it will still carry on with type certification documentation work. It is unclear if the reported job cuts will have any impact on documentation efforts.<br/>

Sydney is scrambling to contain an outbreak of Covid-19, throwing travel plans into chaos a week out from Australia’s peak summer holiday season as states reimpose restrictions on visitors coming from New South Wales. Australia’s largest city reported an additional 10 cases on Friday, taking the total cluster on Sydney’s northern beaches to 28, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Friday. “If we get on top of this in the next two or three days, all of us will be able to have a much better Christmas,” Berejiklian said. If that doesn’t happen, “it could mean further restrictions,” she said, adding all of Sydney’s 5m people should be on high alert. The state health department has asked the northern beaches region’s 250,000 residents to remain at home as much as possible over the next three days and avoid unnecessary gatherings to assist with contact tracing. The outbreak ends a more than month-long run with limited community transmission in New South Wales state.The uptick is a concern as many Sydneysiders prepare to travel across the country for the Christmas and New Year holiday period. While most states have reopened their borders in recent weeks, rising infections could see restrictions re-imposed. The Sydney cluster shows the challenges in controlling the virus, even in a nation that has been spared the scale of infections and deaths experienced in Europe and the US. Authorities have been rushing to control the outbreak after a van driver who transported international airline crew at Sydney Airport tested positive. <br/>

Cargo.one, which operates an online system for air-freight booking, raised $42m from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners after the Covid-19 crisis helped to drive new business. The Berlin-based start-up lets shipping firms such as freight forwarders book air cargo in a way similar to how websites like Skyscanner sell airplane tickets. It plans to use the money -- its second funding round this year -- to expand in the US and Asia, it said Thursday. Air-cargo costs have skyrocketed in the past year as the Covid-19 crisis kept planes on the ground, limiting the space available in the holds of passenger jetliners. A surge in online shopping and port congestion has also contributed to the squeeze, leading to a four-fold increase in Cargo.one’s user base and an eight-fold rise in bookings, according to managing director Moritz Claussen. “Most airlines have a manual system where freight forwarders call around the various booking offices for a quote and then go back to the lowest one to confirm the booking,” Claussen said. “When the pandemic hit, booking offices were suddenly working from home and the phones went unanswered. And that’s when our business really took off.” Cargo.one said it has processed about 45,000 tons of cargo in Europe through its 15 airline partners, which include the air-freight units of Lufthansa, Finnair, Etihad Airways and ANA.<br/>

The US plans to unseal charges soon against a Libyan man suspected of assembling the bomb that blew up a US airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, US newspapers reported on Wednesday. The suspect, Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, is currently being held by the Libyan authorities, according to The Wall Street Journal newspaper and US authorities are seeking his extradition to stand trial in the US. The Journal said Masud, alleged by US prosecutors to have been a top bomb-maker for the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, is suspected of assembling the device that blew up Pan Am Flight 103. The New York Times said Masud’s exact whereabouts are unknown but he had been imprisoned in Libya at one point for unrelated crimes. Monday is the 32nd anniversary of the bombing which killed a total of 270 people, including 190 Americans and 11 people on the ground. The bombing on December 21, 1988, remains the deadliest attack ever by a hardline group perpetrated on British soil. The Journal said the case against Masud is based largely on a confession he gave Libyan authorities in 2012 as well as travel and immigration records. The FBI said that while it “cannot comment on any upcoming announcement, we can assure the public and most importantly, the families of the Pan Am 103 victims, that we have worked tenaciously for 32 years to investigate this horrific terrorist attack”.<br/>

Peru’s top three airlines are operating with little or no Peruvian ownership despite a rule that local carriers be at least 30% owned by its nationals, company filings, court documents and interviews with industry officials show. Increased competition has lowered ticket prices for Peruvians in recent years, but it has also meant multinational carriers have driven locally-owned players out of business. Motivated by what lawmakers say is a lack of reinvestment in the country from its dominant foreign-controlled airlines, Peru’s Congress is analyzing a bill to create a state carrier. As of last year, 82% of Peru’s 13.8m domestic passengers flew either on LATAM Airlines Peru, Viva Air Peru or Sky Airline Peru, which are all foreign-owned and operate popular routes such as the Lima-Cuzco shuttle. But while LATAM Peru, the largest carrier, was for many years 30% Peruvian, just 0.39% remains in local hands after this year’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Chilean parent LATAM Airlines Group, court records show. And low-cost competitors Sky Airline Peru and Viva Air Peru, more recent entrants into the Peruvian market, only have non-Peruvian shareholders, company filings and interviews show. Aviation regulator DGAC confirmed in a statement that Peruvian citizens were required to own at least 30% of any domestic airline. <br/>

A Turkish court hearing the case against four pilots, two flight attendants and a private airline official accused of smuggling former Nissan Motor chairman Carlos Ghosn out of Japan to Lebanon via Istanbul, on Thursday rejected a request for the pilots’ travel bans to be lifted, a lawyer said. In the second hearing of the case, the court listened to testimony from two ground technicians who said they saw the airline official accompanying Ghosn in Istanbul while he left one jet and boarded the next, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. The court then adjourned the trial until Jan. 20. The seven are accused of helping Ghosn flee while he awaited trial in Japan. Turkish prosecutors are seeking up to eight years in prison each for the four pilots and the airline official on charges of illegally smuggling a “migrant.” The two flight attendants face a one-year prison term each if convicted of not reporting a crime. In the opening trial in July, the court released the four pilots and the airline official from custody pending the outcome of their trial, but barred them from leaving Turkey. They were also ordered to report to authorities at regular intervals. The flight attendants were not under custody. The pilots and flight attendants have denied involvement in the plans to smuggle Ghosn or of knowing that Ghosn was aboard the flights. <br/>