WestJet Airlines says it will operate the first commercial flight of the Boeing 737 Max in Canada since the aircraft was cleared to fly again in Canadian airspace. The flight will take off from Calgary on Thursday and land in Vancouver, where company executives will hold a press event, WestJet said Wednesday. Starting Jan. 22, WestJet plans to fly the Max three times weekly between Calgary and Toronto. Transport Canada lifted its grounding order for the Max on Jan. 20 after approving a number of changes to the airplane's design, including allowing pilots to disable an alarm system found to be central to the crashes. Air Canada, which has 24 Max aircraft in its fleet, has said it intends to start flying the plane as of Feb. 1.<br/>
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Indonesian investigators probing the Jan. 9 crash of a Sriwijaya Air flight are looking at the possibility that a malfunctioning automatic throttle could have led to the pilots losing control, according to a person familiar with the investigation. The autothrottle was producing more thrust in one of the Boeing 737-500’s two engines than the other shortly before the plane carrying 62 people crashed into the Java Sea, said the person, who isn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The device had been having problems on previous flights, the person said. Issues involving the autothrottle on the 737 have led to incidents in the past and a similar malfunction on another aircraft model was a cause of a fatal crash in 1995 in Romania. Nurcahyo Utomo, the lead investigator at Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, confirmed that a malfunctioning throttle was “one of the factors that we are looking at, but I can’t say at this point that it’s a factor for the crash or there was a problem with it.” Utomo’s team is working with engineers from Boeing to review the data from the aircraft’s flight-data recorder that was retrieved from the seabed last week. Rescuers are still trying to locate the memory module of the plane’s cockpit-voice recorder, which broke apart upon impact. Unequal thrust from the engines can cause a plane to turn or even roll onto its side and descend abruptly, if it’s not handled properly. Pilots must compensate by manually setting the power or taking other actions. If the autothrottle failure proves central to the probe, it’s likely to put the focus on pilot actions and training as well as how the airline maintained the plane.<br/>
Japan’s Skymark Airlines said Wednesday it will temporarily stop accepting reservations on about 70% of its routes from Feb.15 to 28, as it is considering suspending or reducing flights during those dates due to the coronavirus pandemic. Skymark said it will decide on new flight schedules while closely watching to see when the government ends a state of emergency, declared earlier this month in the Tokyo metropolitan area and some other areas following record numbers of coronavirus infections. The Tokyo-based budget carrier, which is currently operating only domestic flights, mainly from Tokyo’s Haneda airport, plans to offer transfers and refunds to customers who have already booked their flights during the period, without requiring additional fees or charges. The carrier said it will continue to accept reservations on the remainder of its routes, including those between Haneda Airport and Sapporo. <br/>
India’s IndiGo has emerged as one of the world’s biggest airlines by capacity, aided by a swift recovery in the domestic aviation market to nearly 80% of pre-pandemic levels and the financial strength to boost market share as rivals struggle. The airline is now the world’s seventh biggest by capacity and the largest outside the United States and China, according to data firm OAG. It is a rare bright spot in a battered global aviation industry, providing a lifeline to squeezed lessors and aircraft manufacturers by paying bills on time and in full. IndiGo took 44 planes from Airbus SE last year - the most of any customer and topping Delta and China Southern - as it replaced older planes with more fuel-efficient newer models. It is also gearing up to expand its fleet further from 2023. With a 52% domestic market share in 2020 versus 47% in 2019, and profitability in sight after a loss last fiscal year, IndiGo is expanding its reach to smaller Indian cities such as Ranchi, Patna and Gorakhpur to replace a fall in business travel on larger routes like New Delhi-Mumbai, CEO Ronojoy Dutta said.<br/>