Stock market debuts and debt sales are accelerating for airlines, fuelled by an improving outlook for companies expecting a big lift from the reopening of the world’s major economies. BA owner IAG was set to raise E1.2b in the bond markets on Thursday, just a day after US carrier Sun Country Airlines soared in its Wall Street debut. The fundraisings come as investors seek to tap into the “reopening trade” in which companies that lagged behind during the height of the pandemic are likely to lead the way as countries lift curbs on social activity. It is part of a larger rotation from some of the pandemic’s big winners such as video conferencing provider Zoom and home-fitness equipment maker Peloton to those companies that can expect a boost out of an accelerating Covid-19 vaccine rollout and the US government stimulus package. “That’s in anticipation of the economy reopening, people travelling again, so you’ve got a confluence of favourable macro factors,” said Paul Abrahimzadeh, co-head of North American equity capital markets at Citigroup.<br/>
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The US airline industry hit a dubious milestone this week: For the first time since the pandemic began, air travel is up from a year ago. That's a positive sign for battered airlines and a potentially worrying sign to health experts. But it's also an incredibly low hurdle to clear. About 1.1m people passed through US airport screening on Wednesday, according to the TSA, up from the 954,000 who were screened same day last year. That increase is still a heavily depressed level, as it's only 52% of the traffic the same day in pre-pandemic 2019. "We'll have to see what the uptick really is," said Nick Calio, CEO of Airlines for America, the US industry's trade group. "Right now it's looking like it's going to be better. But you have to keep it in context." For airlines just to break even, Calio said, they need at least 70% of normal traffic.<br/>
A US FAA decision to bring in-house final checks on four Boeing Co 787 jets is the latest signal of the agency’s tougher scrutiny of the embattled US airplane manufacturer. The FAA said late Wednesday it was taking “a number of corrective actions” to address multiple production issues on the advanced carbon-composite twin-aisle aircraft. These include structural integrity flaws and potential safety hazards, it said. “One of the actions is retaining the authority to issue (Airworthiness Certificates) for four specific aircraft,” it said. “We can extend the AC retention to other aircraft if we see the need.” The FAA told Boeing of its decision in a January letter. The move comes as the planemaker has faced tougher scrutiny in the wake of two crashes involving its 737 MAX jet that killed 346 people, triggering a 20-month safety ban that US regulators lifted last November.<br/>
A Canadian agency on Thursday called for changes to global rules governing air accident investigations, following criticism over shortcomings in Iran’s final report on the downing of a Ukrainian jetliner that killed 176, including many Canadians. It plans to pursue discussions at the UN’s aviation agency “in the coming weeks and months” to assure independence in cases where state militaries are involved in bringing down airliners, Kathy Fox, chair of Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB), said Thursday. Iran’s civil aviation body on Wednesday blamed misalignment of a missile launcher’s radar and an error by an Iranian air defence operator for the downing of the aircraft in January 2020. While the TSB called the scenario a “plausible explanation for what happened,” the independent agency said the report lacked evidence. Ukraine called it a cynical attempt to cover up the true reasons for the crash. While the rules governing air accident probes, known throughout the industry by their legal name “Annex 13,” work well, Fox said “this most recent event and investigation demonstrates that it has limitations.”<br/>
Canadian safety officials said today that Iran's investigation of the destruction of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 failed to support its claim that the passenger jet was shot down due to human error. In its final report released yesterday, Iran's civil aviation authority concluded the Boeing 737-800 passenger plane was shot down accidentally in January 2020 after being "misidentified" by an air defence unit as a "hostile target." Kathy Fox, chair of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said the report offers no detailed explanation or evidence regarding the underlying factors that led the air defence unit to launch two surface-to-air-missiles at the plane shortly after it took off from Tehran's main airport in the early hours of Jan. 8. "To date, Iran has provided no evidence to support this scenario, but it is a plausible explanation of what happened," Fox told a press conference Thursday. "In short, the report says what happened but it doesn't answer the why."<br/>
Nearly 16 years after the world's largest passenger airliner first took to the skies, the last ever Airbus A380 superjumbo has completed its first flight. At lunchtime on Wednesday, the final A380 to be assembled took off from Airbus' Jean-Luc Lagardere plant, a purpose-built facility at Toulouse-Blagnac Airport in southern France. Student pilot Virgile Prodault shared a video on Twitter of the craft performing a low pass and a "wing wave" -- a traditional dip of the wings for a new craft to say goodbye to the airport where it was made. Its destination on this test flight was the Airbus manufacturing plant at Hamburg-Finkenwerder Airport in Germany. This is where the cabin will be fitted out and the aircraft painted, Airbus media relations manager Anne Galabert said last year. It will be wearing the livery of the customer airline, Emirates. Putting together an A380 is a gargantuan task, with 1,500 companies involved in manufacturing all the individual parts, from rivets to bolts, to seats and engines. Four million individual parts needed to be flown, driven and shipped from 30 different countries. <br/>
Airbus and Rolls-Royce are participating in a study to examine in-flight emissions from commercial aircraft powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel. The study involves monitoring emissions from an Airbus A350-900, both on the ground and in the air. Sustainable fuel will be supplied by Neste and the study will include German aerospace research centre DLR. Airbus has already carried out an initial flight check in Toulouse to ensure the fuel is compatible with the A350’s systems and its Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines. It will commence flight-emissions tests in April. Airbus says a DLR Dassault Falcon 20-E chase aircraft will conduct emissions measurements. Airbus new energy programme manager Steven Le Moing says the collaboration will provide insight into how turbine engines function using 100% sustainable fuel, with a view to certification. “[It will also] identify the potential emissions reductions and environmental benefits of using such fuels in flight on a commercial aircraft,” he adds. The work will be carried out using the initial A350 flight-test aircraft MSN1.<br/>
Twenty-six Algerians returning home from the UK have been stuck in transit at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris for the past three weeks. The group, which includes two young girls and a 75-year-old woman, flew from Heathrow Airport on 26 February. In Paris they were told by Air Algeria they could not continue their journey, reportedly because of Covid measures. They have since been living rough in the transit area of Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle. The Algerian embassy in Paris said that the airline had informed everyone ahead of the flight that their tickets had been cancelled after the UK-Kent Covid variant was detected in Algeria on 25 February. According to one of the passengers, some members of the group have British passports while others are UK residents or have a valid UK visa. One woman's visa had expired, he said, and another was being sent back to Algeria as an illegal immigrant. They all had urgent reasons to fly back, with some visiting sick relatives. Story has more.<br/>
Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, is notorious for its traffic congestion, which is often cited as one of the worst in the world. With people typically spending a minimum of two hours on the road, getting to Soekarno-Hatta International airport located on the outskirts of the city can be even more challenging. This problem is exactly what Denon Prawiraatmadja, CEO of aviation company Whitesky Aviation, tries to tackle by launching a service for people to use his chopper to fly to or from the airport. “It is more about accessibility, that's the main thing. One of the main benefits of using this helicopter service is access to the airport,” said Prawiraatmadja. With Helicity, customers can fly from the airport to their designated destination in the Greater Jakarta area and vice versa in about 15 minutes between 6am and 6pm daily. It also caters for people who live in West Java province such as Bandung and Cirebon. To use the service, one must book at least a day in advance on its app and be willing to pay around 8m to 20m rupiah (US$555 to US$1,387), depending on the distance. Story has more.<br/>