United Airlines will continue flying humanitarian missions as part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) “over the next several days at least”, the carrier says. The airline and other US carriers have deployed jets under the US government’s CRAF programme in support of evacuations from Afghanistan. United says on 24 August that one Boeing 777-300 with 340 military personnel, civilians and Afghan evacuees landed at Washington’s Dulles International airport from Ramstein Air Base in Germany on 23 August. “We’ve had more than 8,000 United employees come forward looking to assist with these missions just over the last few days,” United says. These include pilots, flight attendants, technicians, employees who speak Dari, Farsi and Pashtu – languages native to Afghanistan and the region. This is only the third time in history that civil carriers have been asked to assist on a military evacuation operation. <br/>
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Swiss has become the latest carrier to say that Covid-19 vaccinations will be mandatory for its air crew, citing the disruption to its hub network that could otherwise be caused by complications around rostering. From mid-November, the Lufthansa Group airline’s “entire flying personnel” will need to be vaccinated, “for operational reasons and under a duty of care to employees”, the Zurich-headquartered airline says. “We must initiate this action now if we are to continue to maintain our global route network and fulfil our obligations towards our employees,” says Swiss CE Dieter Vranckx. The operator points to the “increased complexity” of managing the rostering of crew amid Covid-related entry requirements for many of its destinations, adding that having unvaccinated pilots and cabin attendants would make it ”impossible to ensure continued robust and reliable flight operations in the longer term” and would create “two crew categories” that would require “unequal treatment”. It particularly highlights Hong Kong, which is says has become its first destination to “demand proof of Covid-19 vaccination” for crews, with immediate effect. <br/>
Major Japanese airline All Nippon Airways said Tuesday that it would reduce the number of flights on 12 domestic routes due to declining travel demand amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic. Some of the ANA flights to be axed, mainly those to major tourist destinations, will be transferred to low-cost carrier Peach Aviation as part of the efforts to meet a possible rise in travel demand after the COVID-19 crisis is contained. The two airlines are under the wing of ANA Holdings Inc. The changes are included in ANA’s revised flight plans for the second half of fiscal 2021, which runs through March next year. Daily round-trip flights will be reduced to three from the initially planned four for the route between Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and Toyama Kitokito Airport and to eight from nine for the route connecting Haneda and Hiroshima Airport. The number will fall from four to two between Kansai International Airport in Osaka Prefecture and New Chitose Airport near Sapporo, and from one to fewer than one between New Chitose and Naha Airport and between Naha and Sendai International Airport. Meanwhile, services will be expanded on three routes, including the Haneda-New Chitose route, which is set to see round-trip flights increase to 17 from 16 per day. The revised flight plans will be effective from Oct. 31 this year to March 26, 2022, in principle.<br/>