More than 500 tonnes of medical supplies including surgical equipment and severe malnutrition kits due to be delivered to Afghanistan this week are stuck because of Kabul airport restrictions, the WHO said on Monday. Aid agencies say it is critical that medical and food supplies reach some 300,000 people displaced in Afghanistan over the past two months amid advances by Islamist Taliban insurgents that culminated in their capture of Kabul on Aug. 15. Nearly 18.5m people - half the population - rely on aid and the humanitarian needs are expected to grow due to drought. read more But the closure of Kabul airport to commercial flights has held up deliveries, WHO regional emergency director Dr. Richard Brennan said. "While the eyes of the world now are on the people being evacuated and the planes leaving, we need to get supplies in to help those who are left behind," Brennan said. He said the WHO was calling for empty planes to divert to its warehouse in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to collect the supplies on their way to pick up evacuees from Afghanistan. The United States has enlisted six commercial airlines to help move Afghan evacuees, however Washington and NATO coalition partners have so far indicated that they cannot bring supplies on incoming evacuation planes due to "operational constraints and security concerns", Brennan said. "The US is using these commercial airlines only for evacuation," he said, adding that the WHO was exploring various options and reaching out to other governments. "We have been advised to explore options at other airports such as Kandahar, Jalalabad and Bagram air bases. We do not yet have aircraft to fly even to those bases."<br/>
general
The US military said Monday that no American or NATO coalition forces were injured after a brief firefight broke out at one gate into Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport where troops are assisting with emergency evacuations of Western citizens and at-risk Afghan nationals. Navy Capt. William Urban, a spokesman for US Central Command, the combatant command that oversees American military operations in the region, said the incident “appeared to begin when an unknown hostile actor fired upon Afghan security forces.” The violence comes as the Biden administration grapples with a torrent of criticism over the fallout of its pullout from Afghanistan. President Joe Biden said Sunday that the US military has evacuated 28,000 people from Afghanistan since Aug. 14, but many thousands of Americans still remain there. The US has a “long way to go and a lot could still go wrong,” he told press from the White House, adding that, “The evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful no matter when it started, when we began.”<br/>
Future control of Kabul airport has been a topic of discussion with the Taliban, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday. Asked at a regular news briefing what discussions had taken place with the Taliban and others about taking over the airport, which is currently under the control of US troops ahead of an evacuation deadline of Aug. 31, Price said: “I can acknowledge that this has been a topic of discussion with the Taliban. It has been a topic of discussion with our allies; it has a topic of discussion with many of our partners,” Price said. “There is actually agreement between and among all these actors, of course between United States and our partners and allies, but also with the Taliban, that all of our interests would serve with a functioning airport.” <br/>
Oman will allow anyone holding a COVID-19 vaccine certificate to travel to the country from Sept. 1, the civil aviation authority said on Twitter on Monday. The authority said it had dropped a list of countries from which arrivals were banned due to the pandemic.<br/>
Billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit, a small satellite launch service provider, is going public through a merger with a blank-check vehicle that values it at about $3.2b. The deal with NextGen Acquisition Corp. II, announced on Monday, includes $100m in funding from Boeing, AE Industrial Partners and others in the form of private investment in public equity, or PIPE. Virgin Orbit and rivals Firefly and Rocket Lab are among firms building miniaturized launch systems to capitalize on an expected boom in demand for compact satellites. They offer a unique "air-launch" method of sending satellites to orbit. "We can turn any runway across the globe, from an airport into a spaceport, because we fly a (Boeing) 747," said CEOr Dan Hart, a former executive of the US planemaker.<br/>
United Aircraft has suspended flight-testing of the Ilyushin Il-114-300 following the fatal accident involving a prototype of the military Il-112V. Russian investigators have established a committee to look into the Il-112V crash, outside Moscow on 17 August, although it has yet to reach any preliminary findings. But the Il-114-300 is powered by the Klimov TV7-117ST-01 engine, which is closely related to the TV7-117ST fitted to the twin-engined military transport. Video images of the accident appear to indicate a fire in the Il-112V’s starboard engine before the aircraft banked to the right and rolled into a steep dive. “It is necessary to conduct a thorough investigation of the Il-112V accident, especially an analysis of hard evidence from the flight-data recorder,” says United Aircraft, which is part of the state corporation Rostec. “It is because of this that the flight-test programme for the Il-114, which has a similar powerplant, is temporarily suspended. The accident investigation committee has just commenced its work. It is too early to draw any conclusions at this point.”<br/>
India’s GMR Group has announced plans to invest around $2.7b for the expansion of its current airports and the development of new aerodromes. The company is currently operating four airports, namely Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, Bidar Airport at Karnataka and Mactan Cebu International Airport in the Philippines. In the group’s latest annual report, GMR Group chairman Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao said: “GMR Group has set benchmarks for the development of world-class airport infrastructure.” In June 2020, the group signed a concession agreement for a Greenfield Bhogapuram International Airport in Andhra Pradesh, and development works are currently in progress. The company also stated that Greenfield Airports at Mopa, Goa; and Crete International Airport in Greece are under construction.<br/>
Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong says his country will continue to look at ways to restore international air travel as coronavirus vaccination rates rise globally, including discussions with the USA. Lee made the remarks in a joint press conference with US vice president Kamala Harris, who is in the region to visit Singapore and Vietnam. Lee commented on the city-state’s travel opening plans in response to a question from a US journalist, who noted that quarantines for travellers from the USA have impacted US businesses, which have an extensive presence in the Southeast Asian nation. “As we have brought [Covid-19] infections under control, it’s easier for us to open up,” says Lee. “We have been very tight on our borders for some time, because it was necessary, and we had to get our situation in Singapore secured through vaccinations and infection control.” Singapore is among the most vaccinated nations in the world, with 78% of the total population having received a full regimen of Covid-19 vaccine. This has allowed the country to look at quarantine free travel to some regions, providing testing and procedures are in place.<br/>
The number of passengers passing through six airports operated by the Airports of Thailand dropped by 21m in the first seven months of this year, it said, with the IATA expecting the slump to persist through next year. The figures, which were released by the AoT on Monday, showed a huge decline in passenger numbers across its airports when compared to the previous year's figures. In total, 8.6m passengers passed through six international airports under its management, namely Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Hat Yai and Phuket, between January and July this year -- down 71.5% compared to the same period last year. Out of the 8.6m figure, only 551,000 were passengers on international flights -- a 96% drop compared to the same period last year -- while the rest were domestic passengers. Don Mueang airport saw the most passengers this year with about 3m passing through its gates between January-July this year, representing a drop of about 67% from last year.<br/>