Two US House panels will vote Wednesday on a plan to provide about $57b in assistance to transportation sectors and workers as part of a $1.9t COVID-19 relief plan. The $1.9t COVID-19 relief proposal calls for $30 for public transit agencies, $14b for passenger airlines, $8b to US airports and concessionaires, $1b for airline contractors, $1.5b to Amtrak and $3b for a temporary payroll support program for aerospace manufacturing, the legislation says. “This plan takes another critical step toward preventing essential systems from collapsing under the weight of the pandemic and will help to keep millions of Americans out of unemployment lines,” said Representative Peter DeFazio, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that will vote on most of the provisions. <br/>
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For investors betting on air travel’s comeback, the municipal-bond-market is ready for you. A rental car facility at the airport in one of America’s biggest boomtowns is selling bonds, the first such debt offering of its kind since the pandemic began. The Austin, Texas facility refinanced about $147m of bonds to help ease debt service payments -- giving it more than enough breathing room to stay afloat until the pandemic is over. “Now there’s more of a consensus that this part of the economy has made it through a challenging time,” said Daniel Solender, director of tax-free fixed income for Lord, Abbett & Co., which is looking at the Austin deal. “Now there’s an end in sight. Definitely optimism.” Final pricing for the Austin deal came in with yields between 50 basis points and 160 basis points above Treasuries, reflecting stronger demand for the earlier-maturity debt and weaker demand for securities with the longest due dates, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s compared with preliminary pricing wires reflecting spreads between 55 basis points and 130 basis points.<br/>
Anyone arriving in England and found to have lied about a recent visit to a country on the British government's travel ban list faces up to 10 years in prison under new tough coronavirus border policies announced Tuesday. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that from Monday, residents of the UK and Ireland arriving in England from the places on the government's "red list" will have to purchase a “quarantine package” that costs 1,750 pounds ($2,400) per person and covers accommodation, virus testing and other items. Individuals not abiding by the rules, including those arriving from a red list country without a hotel booked, also could be subject to a series of fines, he said. “I make no apologies for the strength of these measures because we’re dealing with one of the strongest threats to our public health that we’ve faced as a nation,” Hancock told lawmakers. “People who flout these rules are putting us all at risk." At present, there are 33 countries, including South Africa, Portugal and all of South America, from where travel to England is effectively banned largely because of concerns over new variants of the coronavirus. However, British and Irish citizens, as well as all other UK residents, are permitted to enter provided they self-isolate for 10 days after their arrival. From Monday, they won't be able to quarantine themselves at home, unlike those arriving from countries not on the “red list.” Instead, they will have to buy — through a dedicated online portal — a package that included accommodation, food, beverages and PCR testing for so-called “variant surveillance” on days two and eight of their quarantine period.<br/>
Britain’s strict travel measures could stay in place until the government can be sure that vaccines work against new variants of the coronavirus, or booster shots have been given later this year, health minister Matt Hancock said Tuesday. That would deal a further blow to stricken airlines and travel companies, which are counting on a travel recovery this summer to help them survive after months without revenues due to lockdown holiday bans. Asked how long new border measures would be in place, Hancock said that more information was needed on the success of the vaccines.<br/>
Regional airports have warned they face financial disaster after being frozen out of the Government’s hotel quarantine plans. Ministers have suggested that arrivals from 33 “red list” countries will be directed towards Heathrow, Gatwick and Birmingham airports before entering a 10-day quarantine at hotels - delivering a hammer blow to smaller airports by seriously limiting their ability to serve international travellers. Andrew Bell, CE of owner of Bournemouth, Exeter and Norwich airports, said Chancellor Rishi Sunak should extend the taxpayer-funded furlough scheme beyond April so that mothballed travel hubs can keep employing thousands of staff. He also called for support more focused on the industry. Bell said: “Regional airports, especially, are battling to survive with almost zero revenue and a high cost base. Aviation-specific financial support is urgently needed to ensure we can get through the year and at the very least an extension of furlough into the autumn to ensure that we are still standing at the end of the pandemic.” Matt Hancock, Health Secretary, justified focusing on just three airports by saying they account for the “vast majority” of arrivals Covid hotspots.<br/>
Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) says it has closed an unnamed test centre in the capital, Abuja, that was issuing fake Covid-19 certificates to travellers. Chikwe Ihekweazu, the director general of the NCDC, said they had found evidence that the lab was collecting samples and money from unsuspecting travellers, but failing to test them. Instead, they issued certificates claiming they had tested negative for the virus, enabling them to travel. Ihekweazu added during the organisation’s weekly briefing on Monday that a full list of accredited labs was available on the NCDC’s website and encouraged members of the public to only get tested at those centres. He said that they were working on a platform where every lab in Nigeria could publish their test results which could then be easily verified by airlines or other countries wishing to check whether a result was genuine.<br/>
Almost three-quarters of aviation workers fear they will be unable to support their families when jobkeeper wage subsidies end in March, according to a new union survey. The survey of 560 aviation workers by the Australian Services Union (ASU) paints a dire picture of the threat of job cuts to those in the sector hardest hit by Covid-19, in which 88% of workers have been stood down and 30% are still not getting any hours. The aviation sector has already lost at least 11,000 jobs, with a further 2,500 ground-handling and cleaning jobs outsourced at Qantas. While the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has boasted that 450,000 businesses and 2 million workers have “graduated” off the jobkeeper wage subsidy – the story is different in the aviation sector because international travel remains banned and domestic travel has been hugely disrupted by periodic border closures. With 80,000 people working in the sector and 78% of those surveyed still receiving jobkeeper, the ASU report points to tens of thousands of jobs at risk when wage subsidies expire at the end of March. Jayne Hrdlicka, the CE of Virgin Australia, which has 6,600 employees on jobkeeper after cutting 3,000 jobs, has warned of further cuts if jobkeeper isn’t replaced. The ASU survey found that 82% of aviation workers did not feel their job was secure and 72% were worried about being unable to financially support their family without the jobkeeper payment.<br/>
New Zealand will first administer COVID-19 vaccines to quarantine personnel, front line health workers and airline staff, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said, as the government formally approved its use on Wednesday. New Zealand’s medicines regulator last week provisionally approved the use of the COVID-19 vaccine jointly developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc and Germany’s BioNTech. “Now we’ve reached the crucial stage of approval for the first vaccine, we are in a much better position to start having a conversation with New Zealanders about how we plan to proceed,” Hipkins said. Authorities expect the Pfizer vaccine to arrive in the country by end-March but they had expressed concerns about export curbs.<br/>
Boeing directors, including current CEO David Calhoun, lied about the company’s oversight of its 737 Max 8 airliner and participated in a misleading public-relations campaign following two fatal crashes involving the plane, shareholders claim. The board ignored red flags about the 737 Max, didn’t develop its own tools to evaluate safety and didn’t properly hold former chief executive officer Dennis Muilenburg accountable for launching a lobbying and public-relations effort to push back against criticism of the plane’s design flaws, according to recently unsealed court filings. “Prior to the grounding of the 737 Max, the board failed to undertake its own evaluation of the safety of keeping the 737 Max aloft,” investors said in an amended Delaware Chancery Court complaint that was made public Feb. 5. The board then “compounded its lack of oversight by publicly lying about it.” The unsealed filings, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, are part of a derivative suit first filed in 2019 by Boeing shareholders after Lion Air and Ethiopian Air 737 Max crashes claimed a total of 346 lives. Unlike in shareholder class actions, judgments or settlements in derivative suits are usually paid back to the company from liability insurance policies for its directors and officers. The amended complaint makes public for the first time details about Boeing’s internal handling of the 737 Max debacle, which led to a two-year grounding of the planes. Delaware Chancery Court Judge Morgan Zurn agreed to make the suit’s details public after concluding the “public interest” in the board’s handling of the 737 Max fiasco “favors disclosure.” Story has more.<br/>
Boeing delivered 26 aircraft in January, boosted by the clearing of the 737 MAX jet to fly again after a 20-month ban as it also won four new orders for its 747-8 freighters.<br/>MAX deliveries are seen as central to Boeing’s financial recovery in 2021 after a sharp slump in demand for its bigger, more profitable wide-body jets due to the coronavirus crisis added to the company’s woes last year. Boeing, which books revenue after actual deliveries, said it handed over 21 737 MAX jets last month, along with one P8 military plane and four wide-body aircraft other than the 787 Dreamliner that had no deliveries for the third straight month. The overall figure compared to 39 aircraft in December and was double the 13 planes delivered in January of last year, as Boeing struggled with the MAX’s grounding. In January two years ago, the company delivered 46 planes. Following January’s deliveries, Boeing is now estimated to have a total of about 400 737 MAX jets in storage, down from about 450 at the end of November, when the US regulator gave a green light to start the jet’s shipments.<br/>
Restructuring ground handler Swissport International has appointed Warwick Brady, currently head of the recently rebranded Stobart Group, as its new CE, enabling Christoph Mueller to take up the chairman role with the Swiss firm. Former Aer Lingus and Malaysia Airlines chief Mueller was installed as chairman of Swissport when investors completed a financial restructuring of the company in December, but has also been serving as interim CE since January. He will step down from the acting CE role when Brady joins in the spring. Brady is CE of Esken, the UK aviation and infrastructure specialist which recently rebranded from Stobart Group. He previously served for eight years as EasyJet COO. ”With his industry experience and a proven track record in organisational transformation, digitalisation and operational turnarounds, Warwick is the ideal chief executive to steer Swissport safely, and drive it with real ambition, as the world and the aviation sector emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic,” says David Siegel, Swissport’s interim chairman.<br/>