The airline industry’s global trade group will propose eliminating carbon emissions on a net basis by 2050, as pressure builds to improve the climate goals of a segment that’s come under increasing criticism for its use of fossil fuels. The IATA will ask carriers to adopt the target at its annual meeting in Boston in October, Willie Walsh, its director general, said Thursday. While airlines including BA owner IAG, Delta and United have all made net-zero commitments, IATA hasn’t updated its own goal since 2009. At that time, airlines pledged to cut CO2 output 50% by mid-century, compared with 2005 levels. But emissions have surged since then, driven by a boom in air travel cut short only last year by the coronavirus pandemic. “I’m very confident that the industry will align with the changed goals,” Walsh said. “But we do have to go through the formal process.” Aviation has come under a harsher spotlight as automakers and the power industry make strides toward cutting emissions in line with goals set by the Paris Agreement. Before the pandemic, so-called flight-shaming prompted movements to limit air travel and switch to trains, for example.<br/>
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The leadership transition at Southwest shows that grabbing the top job at US carriers is still an insider’s game. Southwest anointed Bob Jordan, a 33-year company veteran, to succeed CEO Gary Kelly next year. That means that all but one of the nine CEO appointments at US airlines since 2016 have gone to insiders. And the list of winners doesn’t include any women or people from racial minorities. The record points to a dissonance at the highest level of an industry trying to shed its image as an old boys’ club. Airlines have been among the loudest corporate voices touting their diversity efforts amid a national discussion of sexual harassment and systemic racism. But when board directors choose CEOs, experience within the company trumps rhetoric about opening the door to newcomers with fresh perspectives that might elude the old guard. “The board didn’t consider ever going outside the company because the candidates we have who are ready for CEO responsibilities are right there within the company,” Kelly said Wednesday. “They know the company, they know the culture, they know the industry. We did not consider bringing in someone new.” Experts from centers of innovation such as Silicon Valley’s tech giants and centers of disruption like Detroit’s fast-electrifying automakers need not apply. And while Kelly pointed to women and minorities who are already in senior leadership roles at the Dallas-based airline, he said more progress needs to be made readying the next-generation of leaders. “We absolutely need to get more candidates in the future who are women, who are racially diverse.”<br/>
With federal agencies trying to crack down on passengers who are violently acting out on commercial flights, officials now say travelers are attacking -- and even biting -- those staffing airport security checkpoints. In new details, the TSA laid out two attacks on Transportation Security Officers during June, the latest of 69 reported incidents of travelers physically assaulting TSA employees since the start of the pandemic. The TSA says police in Denver are investigating a passenger who they say bit two security workers earlier this month. During another incident in Louisville, Kentucky, the TSA says two of its workers were assaulted as a passenger tried to "breach the exit lane." The TSA says the passengers in both incidents face civil fines of up to $13,910 "for each violation of TSA security requirements." The announcement comes as a more vaccinated public is rushing back to travel. More than 2.1m people passed through security at airports nationwide on Sunday, the highest number since March 7, 2020. "What is an exciting return to travel for some may be a more difficult experience for others, which can lead to unexpected, and unacceptable, behaviors," said TSA Acting Administrator Darby LaJoye.<br/>
An FAA advisory committee recommended this week that the agency replace words and phrases like “airman” and “man-made” with gender-neutral terms like “aircrew” and “manufactured” as part of an effort to set a more inclusive tone. The recommendations were part of a report released on Wednesday, drafted by the agency’s Drone Advisory Committee to refresh the language used in the drone industry, but with the hope that the wider aviation world might also adopt the terms. The updated language would help reduce intentional or unintentional bias while reflecting a “more modern recognition that gender can be nonbinary,” the report says. The committee convened a task force made up of members representing labor, airports, local government and aviation to replace gender-specific language in the drone industry that might serve as a model for the rest of aviation.<br/>“As it grows and matures, the drone industry has an opportunity to use and embrace gender-neutral language that defines it as an industry that is respectful, welcoming and brings value to the receiver,” the committee wrote. The set of recommendations is part of a broader initiative to bring more women into aviation, said Trish Gilbert, co-chair of the task force and executive vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. When Gilbert started working as an air traffic controller in 1989, only 16% of people who worked in her field were women. Today, that number is 16.8%. “The needle has not moved much,” she said, adding that she hoped adopting the new terms would help make aviation more inclusive to women and other underrepresented groups.<br/>
The FAA has cleared the way to rename Las Vegas's international airport after former senior US Senate Democrat Harry Reid, but private funds must still be raised to cover changes to airport signs and other costs. The FAA said it had "finished the necessary processing steps" after the Clark County Department of Aviation requested the change in April. The request, which will change the name of McCarran International Airport to Harry Reid International Airport, has been "published in various flight charting and navigation databases," the FAA said in its letter dated Wednesday, but the county must update and submit additional regulatory documents. Las Vegas was the seventh busiest airport in the United States by passenger traffic in 2020, according to FAA statistics. Airport spokesman Joe Rajchelsaid a condition of the renaming was donations from private parties to facilitate the necessary logistics changes, which will be undertaken in three phases. "We estimate the combined cost of these phases will be approximately $7 million, all of which must come by way of private donations," Rajchel said, adding it was premature to provide a timeline for the project.<br/>
Probably nothing speaks more to the post-pandemic economic recovery in the United States than the dramatic rise in demand for leisure air travel over the past several months. Since the number of passengers began steadily increasing in March, US airlines have found themselves besieged by Americans eager to escape Covid-19 confinement and travel to beaches, mountains and theme parks or visit family and friends. Now, some flights to popular vacation spots are selling out, something airlines haven't experienced to this extent since the pandemic began, according to our own analysis. Travelers should expect airfares to continue to rise to pre-pandemic levels in the coming weeks, and likely move even higher in the months ahead. Story looks at why, including steadily increasing demand. Even in the absence of US business travelers, who normally account for a fifth of passenger trips and 30% of spending, according to US Travel Association data, some carriers find their passenger load factors — the percentage of capacity filled per flight — creeping toward or even surpassing 80%. That's not far from the US domestic load factor of 85% achieved in 2019, which was the busiest US air travel year in history, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That this is happening at a time when both business and international travel are still down around 70% from 2019 levels, according to our calculations, makes the rebound even more impressive. With vaccination rates rising, Covid-19 restrictions lifting and entertainment venues like Broadway soon reopening, we expect to see domestic demand rise even further through the end of the year. There is particular concern about travel volumes at Thanksgiving and Christmas and the ability of airlines to keep up with demand.<br/>
The European Union imposed wide-ranging economic sanctions on Belarus for the first time on Thursday, targeting its main export industries and access to finance a month after it forced a Ryanair flight to land in Minsk. The measures include banning EU businesses from importing goods or doing business with Belarusian companies in sectors including banking, petroleum products and potash, a salt used in fertiliser that is the country’s main export. The sanctions are far stricter than measures imposed in the past, which mainly consisted of blacklists of Belarusian officials and had little or no impact on the behaviour of President Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994. In the most significant measure for the Belarusian economy, the new sanctions ban EU companies from transporting potash. Belarus will now need to find other countries and ports to ship its top export via the Baltic Sea.<br/>
Britons who have received both doses of a coronavirus vaccine will be given extra freedom to travel around the world, PM Boris Johnson said, as the U.K. prepares to set out new rules on foreign trips. British officials have been weighing up allowing people who have been fully vaccinated to return to England without the need to quarantine for 10 days after visiting medium risk destinations. Johnson signaled on Thursday that the government will move ahead with the plan. “The real opportunity we all have now is to open up travel through the double jab,” Johnson said Thursday. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is due to set out the latest rules on which countries are safe to visit and those that should be avoided on Thursday. Ending quarantine rules for fully vaccinated travelers isn’t expected to come into force until August. Northern Ireland announced its own changes on Thursday evening, adding territories including Spain’s Balearic Islands, Barbados, Bermuda and Malta to its list of countries from which returning travelers don’t need to quarantine. Travel policies are often closely linked across the four UK nations. The Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Madeira and Bermuda also joined Northern Ireland’s so-called green list for travel.<br/>
India’s airline fleet is expected to contract by 15 to 20 aircraft to less than 700 in the current fiscal year through March 2022, as carriers retire more planes than they induct due to weak passenger demand, consultant CAPA said. Indian airlines are expected to induct 69 planes during the year and retire 86 aircraft, some of which could be through repossessions by lessors, CAPA said during a web conference on its outlook for the country’s aviation sector. Airlines will also be forced to ground 250-300 planes in the first half of the current fiscal year, CAPA estimates, as a surge in COVID-19 infections in the South Asian nation earlier this year roils air travel. Indian carriers are expected to lose $4.1b in the current fiscal year on top of a similar loss last year, CAPA estimates, putting renewed pressure on them to raise cash or face the risk of having to downsize, consolidate or have their planes repossessed by lessors.<br/>