US airlines are increasingly divided over whether to require their flight attendants, pilots and other employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19. United and Hawaiian Airlines this month said their US employees, a total of some 73,000 people, must get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Alaska Airlines said it’s considering a similar mandate for its some 20,000 employees if the FDA gives one of the vaccines full approval, a step that’s expected next month. Other carriers, including Delta, American Airlines, Southwest and JetBlue have repeatedly said they are encouraging, but aren’t requiring that staff are vaccinated. Delta requires new hires to be vaccinated, however. Labor unions for pilots at those airlines say vaccines should remain voluntary for their members. After announcements from United and Hawaiian, unions at airlines that aren’t mandating vaccines said pilots reached out with concerns about what would happen if their carriers followed suit. The concerns highlight potential challenges carriers could face if they also mandate vaccinations. The carriers are all grappling with the recent surge in Covid cases in the US as the delta variant takes hold and starts to weigh on air travel demand — just as the battered industry was starting to regain its footing. More than a dozen large US companies have mandated Covid vaccines for some or all of their employees. A mandate “could put an airline at odds with their unions,” said Ben Baldanza, former CEO of Spirit Airlines. But higher cases of Covid could impact airline reliability if enough workers are out sick, at a time when they are already stretched thin. “You don’t want to touch the third rail, but you do want to make sure you have an operation,” said Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former airline executive.<br/>
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The TSA Tuesday extended a federal requirement that travelers wear masks on commercial flights, buses and trains through Jan. 18. The measure is the latest sign of persistent concerns within the federal government about the spread of Covid-19. Airlines including Southwest and Spirit have warned about a drop in bookings and higher cancellations, trends they blamed on the fast-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus. “The purpose of TSA’s mask directive is to minimize the spread of COVID-19 on public transportation,” the agency said. The current mask rules, aimed to curb the spread of the virus, were extended this spring through Sept. 13. Officials briefed airlines on Tuesday about the plan, according to people familiar with the matter. The extension covers traditionally busy periods for air travel such as the Thanksgiving and December holidays. Airline executives say most passengers comply with the mask requirements. However, the vast majority of reports of unruly travelers this year are tied to travelers who allegedly refuse to wear masks.<br/>
Evacuation flights resumed from Kabul’s international airport Tuesday after a frenzied and panic-filled day that saw thousands of Afghans swarm the tarmac, including some who fell off departing planes in desperate attempts to get out of Afghanistan. Images from Hamid Karzai International shared on social media and news outlets stunned the world, as evacuation flights took off with locals still clinging onto aircraft wheels. The crowds, who were trying to flee the country a day after Kabul fell to the Taliban, have thinned out, reports say, though the ability to leave the country remains very limited for most Afghans, who face an uncertain future. Without passports or visas — which the majority of Afghans do not have — they cannot go anywhere. The airport reopened early Tuesday local time, after U.S. forces closed it for several hours due to the chaotic security situation. Airport security and air traffic control have been taken over by the US military, according to the Pentagon, in the absence of Afghan airport security authorities. Commercial flights remain extremely limited, with some canceled. But a handful of flights are still scheduled to go to Istanbul and a few cities within Afghanistan, according to flight monitoring website FlightRadar24. Flydubai has suspended flights from Dubai to Kabul through at least Wednesday, while Emirates Airline said its Kabul flights are suspended “until further notice.” The only commercial airlines scheduled to depart are local carriers Kam Air and Ariana Afghan Airlines, according to FlightRadar24. Some in Afghanistan have described extremely high ticket prices and being turned away by airlines due to flights being overbooked.<br/>
Commercial pilots are being warned that the status of aeronautical information services for Afghanistan is unknown while air traffic services remain unavailable in the country’s airspace. NOTAMs for the Kabul flight information region state that any transit through the airspace “will be uncontrolled” and that surrounding FIRs have been notified of the situation. Aircraft planning to transit the Kabul FIR are being advised to re-route. The NOTAM adds that the airspace has been “released to the military”. “Most flights are avoiding the Kabul FIR,” says the international pilots federation IFALPA, which is being updated by a contingency co-ordination team for Afghan airspace. The airspace was already the subject of warnings and cautions from various regulators – including US, Canadian, French, German and UK authorities – owing to the presence of anti-aircraft weaponry, with commercial flights advised not to transit below 25,000-26,000ft.<br/>
US airlines carried 66.4m passengers in June, three times the June 2020 volume but still down 21% from pre-pandemic levels, the US DoT said Tuesday. The largest 21 US airlines that handle more than 90% of all US traffic carried 9.2m more passengers in June than the 57.2m passengers transported in May. The department said June domestic passengers were down 17% while international passengers were down 45%. The TSA said Tuesday that for the seven days ending Monday airline passengers screened were down 22% over the same period in 2019. Airlines for America, an industry trade group, says U.S. airlines are operating 17% fewer domestic flights over 2019 levels and 35% fewer international flights. As a result, the group says current average domestic load factors -- 89% -- are identical to prepandemic levels. The Biden administration has not lifted travel restrictions that bar much of the world from entering the United States, including most non-UScitizens who have been in China, India, Iran, South Africa, Brazil, the United Kingdom and much of Europe within the last 14 days.<br/>
Russian investigators have confirmed that three test crew members were lost in the crash of a prototype Ilyushin Il-112V military transport as it was conducting a flight between two airfields in Moscow. The twin-turboprop was operating a test flight from Kubinka to Zhukovsky, according to the federal Investigative Committee, which has opened a routine criminal probe into the 17 August accident. It came down in a forest belt near Zhukovsky, apparently after an in-flight fire affecting its starboard engine. At least two test pilots and a test-flight engineer were on board. Eyewitnesses and witnesses of the incident are being sought, while closed-circuit TV camera footage is being gathered, says the committee. “Detailed examination of the crash site is being carried out, as well as other investigative actions aimed at clarifying the causes and circumstances of the accident,” it adds. United Aircraft’s Voronezh-based airframer VASO, which produced the Il-112V, says the chief pilot of the Ilyushin division, Nikolai Kuimov, was among those lost.<br/>
China's civil aviation regulator has announced the suspension of a Philippine Airlines flight and a Cambodia Airways flight after passengers tested positive for Covid-19. The suspension of flight PR314 from Manila to Tianjin and flight KR961 from Phnom Penh to Chengdu will last for two weeks, starting from Aug 23, after five passengers tested positive on each flight on Aug. 4, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said Tuesday. The CAAC said that neither airline is allowed to transfer the original quota of the flights to other routes. According to the CAAC policy, flight suspensions will last two weeks if the number of passengers testing positive for Covid-19 reaches five. Both Cambodia and Philippines are grappling with Covid-19 issues and cases in the both countries have been soaring and hitting record numbers.<br/>
Some airlines and airports have started to plan for a future where severe weather jolts flight schedules more frequently, as climate change increases the likelihood of extreme heat and big storms. This month, storms forced the cancellation of more than 300 flights at both Chicago’s O’Hare airport and Dallas/Fort Worth airport in Texas. In July, eight flights in Denver were cancelled and another 300 delayed due to smoke from forest fires burning in the US Pacific Northwest. Extreme heat affected take-offs in Las Vegas and Colorado earlier this summer. The disruptions are in line with a trend: weather-related flight cancellations and delays have increased over the past two decades in the US and Europe, regulatory data shows. While it is difficult to link any individual storm or heatwave to climate change, scientific studies have found they will become more frequent or intense as Earth grows warmer. The ICAO, the UN standard-setting body, found in a 2019 poll of member states that three-quarters of respondents said the airline industry already was experiencing some impact from climate change. “It is something that is absolutely on our minds, as far as how we’re going to be able to continue to run the flight schedule, especially with the growth that we have planned for the future,” said David Kensick, managing director of global operations at United. “With climate change, we are seeing some of that weather that’s hard to predict, so we need to be better at dealing with it.” Airlines contribute about 2% of global carbon-dioxide emissions globally, though counting other substances spewed from aircraft, some studies indicate their climate impact is bigger. The potential impacts of climate change on the industry are far-reaching. In the short term, intense weather conditions present an operational headache. Forced flight diversions and cancellations add costs to an industry that haemorrhaged billions of dollars during the pandemic. In the longer term, airlines believe changing wind patterns will alter flight routes and fuel consumption. Story has more.<br/>
Travel to the Cook Islands from New Zealand has been suspended for at least 72 hours following the community case of COVID-19 in Auckland on Tuesday. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has also moved the country to alert level 2, as all of Aotearoa is moved into alert level 4 for at least three days.The Cook Island government said the pause on international arrivals will allow Te Marae Ora Ministry of Health to test passengers who arrived after August 11. It also means domestic travel to the Pa Enua from Rarotonga is suspended for 72 hours. Passengers can return to New Zealand from Rarotonga. "While the epidemiological variance and transmission link for the community case in New Zealand is still being investigated, we must act swiftly here to minimise exposure risk for the Cook Islands so we remain safe," Brown said. The Cook Islands Cabinet will meet again on Wednesday to consider any updated information received and the country's next steps. Air New Zealand told Newshub it would continue to operate services from Rarotonga to bring people home.<br/>
Boom Supersonic, an aerospace startup, hopes to resurrect faster-than-the-speed-of-sound commercial air travel across the Atlantic, not seen since the SST Concorde flown by British Airways and Air France in the 1970s. The Boom Overture is expected to fly 65 passengers from New York to London in just over three-and-one-half hours, Newark to Frankfurt in four hours and, eventually, San Francisco to Tokyo in six hours. “You know our ultimate goal is high speed flight for everybody,” said Blake Scholl, CE and founder of Boom. “To make the fastest flight also the most affordable ... that is what we are going to see happen here. Supersonic flight is going to displace subsonic flight as the best way for everyone to travel over long distances.” Boom is building a 1/3 scale prototype of the aircraft and hopes to begin test flights next year. It also plans to break ground for a factory for the Overture in 2022, with planes rolling off the assembly line in 2025, followed by the first passenger flights in 2029. Scholl said the plane will run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel, built from carbon that as been removed from the atmosphere. <br/>