European airlines on Thursday renewed a push to relax refund rules as EU auditors and the EC started separate probes into air passenger rights and whether they were being respected. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago, carriers sought to suspend EU rules requiring refunds for cancellations. They instead issued vouchers to customers as hundreds of thousands of flights were grounded. European auditors began investigating on Wednesday to assess whether the European Commission, the EU executive, had protected the rights of air travellers or those who booked flights during the crisis. They will also assess whether EU states took passenger rights into account when granting emergency state aid to the travel and transport industry. “Our audit will check that the rights of millions of air travellers in the EU were not collateral damage in the fight to save struggling airlines,” said Annemie Turtelboom at the European Court of Auditors, who is leading the audit. However, industry body Airlines for Europe, which represents major air carriers, said on Thursday that current regulation should be changed. In April last year, 12 EU governments urged the Commission to suspend rules forcing cash-drained airlines to offer full refunds for cancelled flights instead of vouchers for future travel because of the pandemic.<br/>
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The US on Thursday agreed to a four-month suspension of retaliatory tariffs imposed on British goods such as Scotch whisky over a long-running aircraft subsidy row, with both sides pledging to use the time to resolve the dispute. The US administration under former President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Scotch whisky and other European Union food, wine and spirits, which the industry says have put its future at risk. The multi-billion dollar tit-for-tat tariff battle involving the United States, the European Union and Britain relates to a long-running row over state subsidies for planemakers Airbus and Boeing. Britain is party to the dispute as a former member of the EU and maker of key Airbus components. “The United Kingdom and the United States are undertaking a four-month tariff suspension to ease the burden on industry and take a bold, joint step towards resolving the longest running disputes at the World Trade Organization,” a joint statement said. “This will allow time to focus on negotiating a balanced settlement to the disputes, and begin seriously addressing the challenges posed by new entrants to the civil aviation market from non-market economies, such as China.”<br/>
Boeing has been working for several years with US regulators on ways to fortify engine covers for at least two of its best-selling jetliners, a redesign that was still underway when one failed last month and rained shredded metal onto a Denver suburb. The planemaker and the FAA have been studying ways to reinforce the inlet and engine cowling mounted on the front of jet turbines on at least some 777s and an older 737 family, according to people familiar with the effort and public documents. The safety review and redesign work were prompted by two 2018 incidents in which shattered fan blades destroyed the front covering of engines, said the people, who asked not to be identified while discussing the matter. That portion of an engine isn’t as heavily fortified to contain flying hunks of metal as the casing surrounding the turbine’s furnace-like core. That could be changing. The fan blades, which can be more than four feet long, are exposed to enormous pressure during flight. They are essentially the propellers that pull the plane through the air, spinning at several thousand revolutions per minute. When one breaks off it travels with such force it can seriously damage the aircraft and even cause it to crash if it isn’t contained. Story has more. <br/>
Boeing leaders were stunned by a barrage of negative articles after a 737 Max plunged into the Java Sea in October 2018, killing all aboard, according to internal communications. The messages, unveiled Thursday under court order, show that executives and board directors worried about media coverage and indications that pilots on the Lion Air flight were caught unaware by an obscure flight-control system in the Max but not earlier 737 models. Lingering production snarls and the 737’s importance as Boeing’s biggest source of sales added to the tension. “Press is terrible. Very tough. Lots of negative chatter I’m picking up. Not pleasant,” Ken Duberstein, at the time a veteran Boeing director, said in a Nov. 14 missive to then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg. Duberstein recommended that the company “address more aggressively” the emerging concerns about the Max, deliveries and Lion Air. Boeing’s board didn’t moved to gain greater oversight of quality and safety until a second Max crashed in Ethiopia in March 2019, according to a complaint filed by the New York State Common Retirement Fund and the Fire and Police Pension Association of Colorado. The second disaster, which brought the death toll from the two accidents to 346, spurred a global grounding that plunged Boeing into one of the deepest crises in its century-long history. The inaction amounts to an “epochal corporate governance catastrophe,” the New York and Colorado funds said in an amended Delaware Chancery Court complaint that was made public Feb. 5. Story has more. <br/>
The Saudi Arabia civil aviation authority said on Thursday that it has approved the landing of international flights at Prince Abdul Majeed Bin Abdulaziz Airport in Al-Ula, the state news agency reported. The authority also said the airport’s capacity has been raised from 100,000 to 400,000 passengers annually.<br/>
Brazil set a daily record for COVID-19 deaths for a second straight day on Wednesday, as a raging resurgence of the virus led Sao Paulo state to shutter businesses and the government to try to close vaccine deals with Pfizer and Janssen. With a new coronavirus variant from the Amazon spurring more infections, according to studies, 1,910 people died from the virus in the past 24 hours, according to Health Ministry data. In a year, Brazil’s death toll has nearly topped 260,000, the world’s second-worst after the United States. A sputtering vaccination campaign has also put pressure on Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello, who said on Wednesday he was close to an agreement with Pfizer Inc, effectively overcoming a dispute over liability clauses. The government said it intended to buy 100 million doses from Pfizer and 38 million from Janssen, the pharmaceutical subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. “We’ve reached a grave moment of the pandemic. The coronavirus variants are hitting us aggressively,” Pazuello said in a video posted on social media, adding that he expected the Pfizer doses to arrive in May. International fears are mounting about the P1 variant, which arose in the northern city of Manaus, and has since been identified across the world, leading to tighter regulations on Brazilian travelers. The national association of state health secretaries criticized the federal government, complaining of a piecemeal approach by each state and city, calling for a national curfew and the closure of airports.<br/>
The South Korean government has outlined broad measures to support and eventually revitalise the local aviation industry. For airlines, these are focused on capturing synergies. The retrieval of unused airport slots and allocated routes will be temporarily suspended, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) says in a Wednesday statement. “In addition, airport slots that are not in use by foreign airlines will be temporarily allocated to domestic flights of [local] airlines to expand business opportunities,” it adds. South Korea’s aviation laws require airlines to service allocated routes for at least 20 weeks per year, and utilise 80% of airport slots each season. Meanwhile, permissions for cargo operations will also be expedited, from three days currently to same-day clearance. To achieve this, airlines will conduct their own risk assessment and post-operations, submit a report detailing evidence of risk-reduction measures. This process will be actively managed by the authorities, says MOLIT.<br/>