Global airline industry body IATA warned that the outlook for airlines had weakened since its December forecasts, and due to tightening travel restrictions it now expected the industry to still be bleeding cash by Q4 this year. IATA raised its forecast for total airline cash burn for 2021 to between $75b to $95b, up from the $48b it had forecasted in December.<br/>
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IATA warned that the outlook for airlines has been weakened recently by tightening coronavirus restrictions but said it was preparing for a travel recovery later this year and would launch a digital travel pass in March. IATA said the sector would continue to bleed cash this year and raised its forecast for total annual airline cash burn to between $75b and $95b, up from the $48b it had forecast in December but still well short of roughly $150b last year. Despite mounting losses the industry focus is on how travel can restart at scale when borders are finally reopened and huge pent-up demand is released. “We need to plan for the recovery,” IATA DG Alexandre de Juniac said Wednesday. “We will need a way to digitally manage health credentials and we need a secure global standard to record test results and vaccinations.” IATA said its travel pass, which will formally launch at the end of March, will help to facilitate travel by putting COVID-19 test results and vaccine certificates in one digital format, speeding up check-in processes.<br/>
A government watchdog said the FAA needs to improve its oversight of new aircraft in a report released Wednesday, a review prompted by two deadly crashes of Boeing’s 737 Max. The Transportation Department’s inspector general said “weaknesses” in the FAA’s certification processes hurt the effectiveness of its oversight of the planes. Crashes of two, nearly new Max airplanes less than five months apart, in 2018 and 2019, prompted a worldwide grounding of the jets and reviews of development and certification flaws. The FAA lifted its ban of the jetliners, Boeing’s best-selling aircraft, in November. The inspector general’s report cited problems in understanding a flight control system — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation Program, or MCAS, which was implicated in both crashes that together killed 346 people. The FAA “did not have a complete understanding of Boeing’s safety assessments performed on MCAS until after the first accident,” the report said. The 59-page report made 14 recommendations to FAA’s oversight and ability to spot risks, after noting that “FAA’s current oversight structure and processes can effectively identify future high-risk safety concerns” from manufacturers tasked with performing some certification-related tasks.<br/>
Two senior US lawmakers Wednesday said the FAA has failed to turn over a report to Congress on airline engine safety required under a 2018 law. Sam Graves, the top Republican on the House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Garret Graves, the senior Republican on the aviation subcommittee, cited Saturday’s engine failure on a United Boeing 777-200 plane in urging the FAA to quickly submit the required report. Without the report, they wrote FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, it was impossible for anyone “to know whether the best practices and recommendations to improve airline engine safety could have helped to prevent the engine mishaps that have taken place since the October 2019 safety review.” The letter cited other recent engine failures, including a December failure in Japan and the 2018 Southwest Flight 1380 failure of a CFM56-7B turbofan engine that led to the death of passenger after shrapnel shattered a window. The FAA said this week that after the Japanese incident it had been considering stepping up required inspections.<br/>
The CE of major US airlines are set to meet virtually with two key White House advisers on Friday about efforts to reduce carbon emissions and use renewable fuels, five people briefed on the matter said. The CEOs of American Airlines, United, Delta and Southwest are among those who have been invited to meet with White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy and economic adviser Brian Deese to discuss environmental issues related to air travel, including using greener fuels to power air travel. The White House and a spokeswoman for a group representing the airlines declined to comment. McCarthy said earlier this month she had started discussions with the utility and automobile sectors about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. She said the talks were part of a broad effort by the Biden administration to engage every federal agency to decarbonize the US power sector by 2035 and the whole economy by 2050.<br/>
Passports, social security cards, residence permits and other federal identification documents may soon offer a third gender option: X. Already, at least a dozen states and Washington, D.C., have amended their laws to offer an X gender designation on some identifying documents, including driver’s licenses and birth certificates. But federal rules have not changed much since 2010, when the current policy for changing one’s sex marker on a passport was implemented. That application has always required medical certification and is only available for those who have transitioned from one gender to another; the State Department, which issues passports, asks applicants to select either male or female. President Biden has promised to change that, and the American Civil Liberties Union is pushing him to take action soon. The organization has been talking with White House officials about adding a gender neutral option to all federal identification documents and records, and allowing people to affirm their own gender without a court order or medical certificate. <br/>
Heathrow’s head called on the government to use digital health apps to help restart international travel on Wednesday after the airport capped a disastrous year for aviation with a GBP2b loss. With passenger numbers collapsing to levels not seen since the 1970s, the UK should lead the world in establishing common standards to revive mass travel, said John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow CE. Cumbersome paperwork should be replaced by digital certification to show passengers have been tested or vaccinated against coronavirus before they travel to speed up check-in times, he said. “We need to focus on standardising and automating all checks that are required. Rather than having a 20 minute check-in time, we can get back to having a few seconds.” The head of the UK’s busiest airport said it is “too soon to say” whether proof of vaccination might be needed for travel to some countries when millions of people begin flying again. The UK government is reviewing whether vaccine passports could help unlock the economy, although ministers have expressed concern over discriminating against those who cannot be inoculated. The prospects for travel are beginning to brighten after prime minister Boris Johnson this week said non-essential international travel might be able to resume from May 17, subject to a review.<br/>
Israeli authorities are investigating claims that passengers on an El Al flight from New York, which was later discovered to be carrying 11 travelers infected with the coronavirus, had provided fake test results before boarding the plane. A woman on the plane claimed that she heard ultra-Orthodox passengers boasting that they had used fake coronavirus tests to get on the flight, Hebrew media reported. Other passengers said that during the flight ultra-Orthodox passengers did not wear masks at times and that the cabin crew did little to encourage them to cover up. According to regulations, all passengers on the Sunday flight were required to present a negative test result before being allowed on the plane. On arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, passengers were again tested. Two days later, dozens of passengers were notified by the Health Ministry that 11 of those on board were found to be infected with the coronavirus and that they must enter quarantine. Reports did not specify which passengers on the plane were identified as having the virus.<br/>
Russia plans to begin manufacturing the first domestic medium-range passenger jet since the Soviet era next year, after US sanctions delayed the project by as much as 18 months. “We had to create our own production and currently we have created the material and we have made up our own wing using our material,” Rostec State Corp. CEO Sergey Chemezov said. American companies had supplied a subsidiary of Rostec -- Russia’s main defense contractor -- with wing composite components up until the US imposed measures against the unit in 2018. Chemezov, who served with Vladimir Putin in the KGB in East Germany, has been blacklisted by the US since 2014 in response to the Ukraine crisis. The new US administration hasn’t shown a tendency to ease the sanctions, according to Chemezov. The jetliner, known as MS-21, flew its maiden flight in December with Russian-built Aviadvigatel PD-14 engines, and is currently undergoing certification tests. The first post-Soviet Russian airliner, the Sukhoi Superjet, was developed as a competitor to shorter-range regional jets from foreign manufacturers such as Canada’s Bombardier and Brazil’s Embraer. It was involved in two fatal accidents in its first decade of use and has been criticized by commercial operators for frequent groundings because of technical faults and maintenance issues.<br/>
Seven airlines in Thailand have formed an association to deal with the pandemic and pave the way for vaccine passport cooperation. Bangkok Airways president Puttipong Prasarttong-Osoth said the Airlines Association of Thailand (AAT) has set a long-term goal of elevating the aviation industry in Thailand. However, the short-term priority is the soft loan request the Finance Ministry is considering. "The domestic market seemed to improve after the lockdown relaxation was implemented nationwide, but it's still a far cry from the numbers seen prior to the latest outbreak," said Puttipong. "It may take some time to get back to 100%." The founding members of AAT are Bangkok Airways, Thai AirAsia, Thai AirAsia X, Thai Smile Airways, Nok Air, Thai Lion Air and Thai Vietjet. The group submitted the soft loan proposal to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha in late August last year, but there has still been no response from the government. Puttipong, acting as the initial president of AAT, said after the group's first meeting on Tuesday executives representing each of the founding member airlines also discussed the national reopening plan and the readiness of airlines to take part in the plan. "The vaccine passport is an important agenda item we'll push forward with the government," he said. "Airlines are ready to support border reopening."<br/>
Global business jet deliveries declined 20.4% to 644 aircraft in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic weighed on production earlier in the year, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) said Wednesday. While business jet makers like General Dynamics Corp’s Gulfstream, Bombardier Inc and Textron saw a rebound in deliveries during the last three months of 2020, the industry does not expect a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels this year. Business aviation has recovered faster from the pandemic than commercial airlines, helped by demand from first-time buyers, leisure travel, and wealthy individuals who are looking for private aircraft during COVID-19 because they seat fewer passengers. “Behaviors are changing. The buyers are no longer asking the questions that they would have normally asked about the aircraft in terms of performance,” said Mike Amalfitano, chief executive of Embraer’s executive jets division, during an online briefing on the GAMA data. “They’re focused on how clean it is. They’re focused on the air quality.” Travel and manufacturing restrictions weighed on industry deliveries, while corporate demand has remained sluggish. However, Tony Lefebvre, COO at Signature Flight Support, said he is seeing “green shoots” of demand for corporate travel as the COVID-19 vaccine is rolled out globally. “We are starting to see the return of business flying,” he told the briefing.<br/>