Delta said Monday it will continue to block some seats on all flights through spring break and Easter to provide a bit more space between passengers. The airline announced Monday that it will limit capacity on flights through April 30. Delta said it will block middle seats in most cabins although groups of three or more passengers can choose to sit together. During the early days of the pandemic, several US airlines blocked middle seats, although United never did. The others that temporarily limited the number of seats for sale have since dropped the practice, at least in the main cabin, including Southwest, JetBlue, Alaska and American. A Delta official said the airline will monitor virus cases and vaccination rates as it reassess its seating policy.<br/>
sky
Passenger traffic on US airlines has dropped again to levels not seen in a couple decades, but Delta CEO Ed Bastian thinks there will be a summer surge, at least within the US. Like many others in the airline industry, Bastian favors testing international travelers for COVID-19, which he sees as a way to remove other border restrictions, but he is dead-set against testing people before domestic flights, fearing it will cause another disastrous drop in leisure travel. On the pandemic, Bastian expects a stronger federal response under new President Joe Biden that will help the travel industry. Story features interview Q and Q with Bastian about these and other issues facing airlines. <br/>
A commercial KLM airlines flight powered with synthetic fuel has carried passengers from Amsterdam to Madrid in a world first, the Dutch government and airline say. Development and deployment of synthetic and biofuel alternatives to kerosene are seen as key to longer-term efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions from aviation. The KLM aircraft used regular fuel mixed with 500 litres of synthetic kerosene produced by Royal Dutch Shell with carbon dioxide, water and renewable energy sources, along with regular fuel to power the aircraft, a statement said. The flight took place last month. "Making the aviation industry more sustainable is a challenge facing us all," Dutch Infrastructure Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen said on Monday. "Today, with this world first, we are stepping into a new chapter of our aviation."<br/>
Kenya Airways increased cargo capacity after its rival, Ethiopian Airlines, was allowed to deploy more freighters to help carry Kenyan flowers to Europe ahead of Valentine’s Day this weekend. The Kenyan airline adapted a passenger Boeing 787 Dreamliner to start carrying cargo, and help meet more flower orders. The conversion and increased flight frequencies will add as much as 40% capacity, the carrier’s CEO Allan Kilavuka said. The government, which owns 49% of Kenya Airways, allowed the carrier’s competitor to deploy additional freighters on the Nairobi-Amsterdam route to ease capacity constraints. Kenya is Europe’s biggest supplier of cut flowers, which are one of its biggest foreign-exchange earners. “As long as we have fresh produce which needs to be airlifted, we will continue licensing even foreign aircraft because what is most important is to have aircraft carrying produce from here,” Kenyan Transport Secretary James Macharia said Monday. “It is secondary whether it is Kenya Airways or any other airline.” “We still have a challenge with the freighters,” Kenya Flower Council CEO Clement Tulezi said. “We have talked to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority and they have allowed Ethiopia to come in and provide much more capacity every week because Kenya Airways could not give us everything we needed.”<br/>