Global airline industry body IATA said international passenger traffic plunged 89% in February compared to the same month last year as COVID-19 infections climbed once more, and there was no sign of an aviation recovery yet. “International passenger traffic was down almost 89% and is showing no signs of recovery in the current environment,” IATA’s new DG Willie Walsh said Wednesday. <br/>
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Travel restrictions that require proof of Covid-19 vaccines or negative tests should be lifted once the pandemic is under control, the new head of the IATA said Wednesday. “These are measures that may be necessary as temporary arrangements while we go through this crisis, but once we’re through it, we want to see these restrictions permanently removed so people can get back to traveling as they experienced back in 2019,” Willie Walsh said in his first press briefing as IATA’s DG. In the interim, Walsh said travelers need access to digital health certificates to make travel easier. Airlines, hotel companies and others in the tourism industry have urged government authorities to work toward lifting travel restrictions, such as a more than yearlong entry ban on most noncitizens from Europe into the US and vice versa. They also called for government officials to set standards for digital health passports as more people are vaccinated.<br/>
The Biden administration is in extended discussions with US airlines and other travel industry groups to provide technical guidance for vaccine passports that could be used to ramp up international air travel safely, industry officials said. The administration has repeatedly made clear it will not require any businesses or Americans to use a digital COVID-19 health credential, however. It will also publish guidelines for the public. The key question, airline and travel industry officials say, is whether the US government will set standards or guidelines to assure foreign governments that data in US traveler digital passports is accurate. There are thousands of different US entities giving COVID-19 vaccines, including drugstores, hospitals and mass vaccination sites. Airline officials say privately that even if the United States does not mandate a COVID-19 digital record, other countries may require it or require all air passengers to be vaccinated.<br/>
While forward reservations for summer are stuck at 32% of 2019 levels in North America, and half of that in Europe and Asia, accelerating vaccine campaigns and an improved health-care picture mean demand can still pick up, Willie Walsh, DG of the IATA, said in his first address in the role. “We should remain optimistic that the second half of this year will be more positive than we’ve seen so far,” said Walsh. “The expectation of the vaccine roll-out accelerating is one of the reasons why we can be optimistic that things will start to improve.” Forward bookings for the May-to-September time frame are at just 15% of 2019 levels for Europe and 14% for Asia, with North American demand looking slightly healthier, according to figures released Wednesday by IATA. The usual surge in bookings for summer has given way to caution, as passengers wait for clarity on vaccinations and travel restrictions. Walsh said that international traffic was down almost 89% in February and is showing no signs of recovery in the current environment. But he added that when government restrictions are relaxed or removed there is strong pent-up demand.<br/>
The US NTSB long-running quest to have video cameras installed in aircraft cockpits continues, with the agency again recommending that regulators require the recorders. The safety investigation agency made the recommendation in its 2021-2022 list of “most-wanted” transportation safety improvements, released on 6 April. The NTSB recommends that the FAA require new and in-service commercial jets be equipped with a “crash-protected cockpit image recording system”. US regulations require airliners have flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders, but not video- or image-capturing devices. The NTSB has for more than a decade been urging the FAA to make image recorders mandatory. “Such video would have been extremely helpful in determining flight crew actions in recent crashes in Texas, Indonesia and Ethiopia,” says the NTSB.<br/>
Brazil on Wednesday auctioned 22 airports, raising 3.3b reais ($593.11m), with the largest group of airports won by infrastructure company CCR , part of a wave of privatizations that the government is pushing. “We had an extraordinary result in this auction, despite the fact that the COVID pandemic strongly affected all airports”, said Brazil’s Infrastructure Minister Tarcisio de Freitas after the auction ended. Brazil is auctioning airports as the air travel industry undergoes one of its worst crisis in history. The pandemic brought air travel to a standstill last year and while it has been recovering in developed countries like the US, flight demand in Brazil has been weakened recently by a brutal second wave.<br/>
Airlines will fight attempts by suppliers and airports, including Heathrow, to cover pandemic losses by raising charges, the new head of industry body IATA said on Wednesday, as he promised "strong and aggressive" resistance to such moves. "Some of these guys just act as monopoly suppliers," said Willie Walsh, the IAG veteran who took over this month as director general of the International Air Transport Association, representing almost 300 airlines globally. "We can work on their behalf to resist the efforts of some suppliers to increase costs, which is total madness in this environment," said Walsh - faulting air traffic controllers for missing cost-cutting opportunities during the COVID-19 crisis. On Wednesday, he singled out price increases sought by the London airport for criticism. "It's the likes of airports like Heathrow who have clearly demonstrated that they want to try to recover lost revenues," Walsh said, also accusing it of seeking to pass on the costs of a politically fraught attempt to add a third runway. "We expect the regulator in the UK to take a stand - particularly where it's trying to recover money spent on the development of a third runway that wasn't really supported by the industry," he said.<br/>
Decades after being unshackled from government control, many of Europe’s largest airlines are being forced back into the arms of states by the pandemic. With air travel still showing no signs of recovery in the region, the carriers may have to contend with their saviors as powerful shareholders for some time to come. Air France-KLM on Tuesday became the latest to get a E4b bailout that will see the French government reemerge as its biggest shareholder with a stake of up to 30%. The flag bearer joins Lufthansa, Alitalia, Sweden’s SAS and TAP Air Portugal to see a bigger state presence following aid sought to cope with one of the industry’s worst crises. Airlines have been among the hardest hit by Covid-19, which decimated air travel. Even before the latest setbacks, the IATA said carriers would need as much as $80b more in government money this year. The concern in Europe now is that demands from the shareholding states may skew the industry in ways that would have an impact on everything from cost cuts to route decisions and ticket prices. “While bailing out airlines in the context of the Covid-19 crisis is certainly a legitimate emergency measure, the suspicion is that this might serve as an excuse to return to state-owned carriers serving political agendas, at least for some governments,” said Sascha Albers, a professor of international management at the University of Antwerp.<br/>
Boeing expects India’s air passenger traffic to double from pre-pandemic levels by 2030 even as any imminent travel recovery looks to be thwarted by a second Covid wave in the South Asian nation. “Although the Covid-19 pandemic sharply reduced Indian air travel last year, the country’s domestic passenger traffic is recovering more rapidly than in most other countries and regions, recently reaching 76% of pre-pandemic levels,” the jet manufacturer said Wednesday. “While Covid-19 remains a near-term challenge, the country’s passenger traffic is forecast to outpace global growth.” An aggressive second wave of coronavirus infections in India has shuttered businesses once again and sent some cities back into lockdown. And airlines and tourism operators may face a prolonged recovery due to the nation’s slow vaccine roll out, which at this rate will take 2.4 years to cover 75% of the population with a two-dose jab. According to Boeing’s 2020-2039 commercial market outlook, domestic demand will be the first to bounce back to 2019 levels through 2021, while international traffic will recover by 2023. A growing economy and expanding middle class in India, home to world’s third-largest air-passenger market, will aid the aviation recovery and fuel demand for more than 2,200 new jets worth nearly $320b over the next 20 years, Boeing said.<br/>
London airports will not need to expand until at least the 2030s after the industry was hammered by Covid, according to bosses at Gatwick - casting fresh doubt over the future of a third runway at rival Heathrow. In a filing for bond investors, Gatwick said that extra capacity will not be needed for many years following a near-total collapse in passenger travel triggered by Covid restrictions. The admission will add to speculation that plans to expand Heathrow are facing a long delay. Passenger numbers at Britain's biggest airport have fallen to their lowest level since 1966. Gatwick has also suffered, losing its third biggest airline Norwegian during the crisis, while British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have pulled flights from the Sussex airport. A prospectus published by Gatwick ahead of a GBP450m bond raising said: “At least for the rest of this decade, London’s airports will be relying on their existing physical capacity to meet expected increasing demand.”<br/>
Europe’s Airbus accelerated jet deliveries in March, putting it within reach of matching or even eclipsing last year’s first-quarter total, which was only partially affected by the coronavirus crisis, tracking estimates showed on Wednesday. The planemaker delivered 122 aircraft in the first three months of 2020, with deliveries coming almost to a halt after France and other nations imposed health lockdowns in mid-March. Airbus declined to comment on this year’s performance. It is expected to update delivery data on Thursday, ahead of quarterly earnings on April 29. Any final delivery data is subject to last-minute changes due to internal auditing.<br/>
The French government will continue giving strong support to the air transport industry throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Wednesday. “We will continue to support massively and durably the French air transport sector, the small- and medium-sized companies that work in the industry, the aerospace industry, Airbus, and the entire French industry ” Le Maire told the French Senate. On Tuesday, France announced plans to contribute to a E4b recapitalisation of Air France-KLM and more than double its stake in the airline to nearly 30%. Under the EU-approved terms, Air France will give up 18 Paris-Orly take-off and landing slots to competitors, amounting to 4% of its current portfolio at the airport. Le Maire said the government would make sure that no company practicing “social dumping” - cutting staff pay and benefits as much as possible - would get access to these slots. He also said the government will support the industry while trying to decarbonise air travel, notably by supporting projects for a zero-carbon hydrogen-fueled airplane.<br/>