Aviation insurers are unwilling to insure commercial flights into Afghanistan because of the risk of attacks after US troops left the country, making it hard to deliver aid or evacuate people, industry sources said. Afghanistan's new Taliban rulers took control of the airport in Kabul on Tuesday after a massive airlift of more than 123,000 people by the United States and its allies ended. read more Bruce Carman, chief underwriting officer at Hive Aero, said his firm had been able to offer insurance cover for evacuation flights last week, but "no one can fly there right now". Shortly before the final pullout of US forces on Monday, an executive with an airline involved in the evacuation flights said it was already hard to find insurers willing to quote for Afghanistan. Lack of air traffic control services, rocket attacks and reports of hostilities around the airport make insuring flights to the Afghan capital exceptionally risky, sources said. Afghanistan's airspace was "released to the military" in mid-August and the aviation authority advised airlines to avoid its air corridors.<br/>
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The TSA said it screened 1.345m airline passengers on Tuesday, the lowest daily number since May 11 at a time of spiking COVID-19 cases in the United States. TSA said Tuesday’s figure was down about 33% over the same day in 2019 when 2.04m traveled. Southwest and other airlines in recent weeks have warned that the spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 had hit bookings and increased cancellations. Labor Day in the United States, which is Sept. 6 this year, marks the tradition end of the busy summer travel season. Airlines have been hammered by a lack of business travel and low demand for international trips. The US government still has COVID-19 travel restrictions that bar much of the world’s population from the United States. More major US companies are pushing for return to work dates and continuing to sharply limit business travel in the face of the Delta variant. Airlines for America, a trade group, said that through late August, US domestic airline passenger traffic was 20% below pre-pandemic levels, while international air travel was down 43%. The group added that US airlines are still operating 13% fewer domestic flights than before the pandemic began 18 months ago, and 34% fewer international flights. The airline group said average airfares in August were 29% below pre-pandemic levels “due primarily to dearth of business and long-haul international travel.”<br/>
A 24-year-old Illinois woman submitted a fake COVID-19 vaccination card to visit Hawaii with a glaring spelling error that led to her arrest: Moderna was spelled "Maderna," according to court documents. In order to bypass Hawaii's 10-day traveler quarantine, she uploaded a vaccination card to the state's Safe Travels program and arrived in Honolulu Aug. 23 on a Southwest flight, the documents said. "Airport screeners found suspicious errors ... such as Moderna was spelled wrong and that her home was in Illinois but her shot was taken at Delaware," Wilson Lau, a special agent with the Hawaii attorney general's investigation division, wrote in an email to a Delaware official who confirmed there was no record vaccination record for the woman under her name and birth date. The email is included in documents filed in court. She was charged with two misdemeanor counts of violating Hawaii's emergency rules to control the spread of COVID-19. She had been in custody on US$2,000 bail until a judge released her at a hearing Wednesday and scheduled another hearing in three weeks, according the public defender's office. <br/>
The number of flights operated in European airspace exceeded Eurocontrol’s best-case scenario for the second month running in August. At 71% of pre-crisis levels, flights were two percentage points ahead of the best-case scenario, which was forecast by the European air traffic manager on 1 June. Eurocontrol director general Eamonn Brennan describes the data as “a good outcome”, adding that he hopes “it continues to improve”. The best-case – or “optimistic” – scenario was based on countries relaxing restrictions sooner than expected, prompting traffic to rise much more steeply in the June-July period. Its base-case scenario was that flights would reach 57% of pre-crisis levels during August. In the week ending 29 August, Eurocontrol data shows that Ryanair was by far the busiest airline, with its average of 2,318 flights per day just 12% down on pre-crisis levels. Turkish Airlines was next in the list, operating 1,322 flights per day, followed by EasyJet (1,186), Air France (899) and Lufthansa mainline (812).<br/>
John Menzies, the aviation services group, said the recovery in international travel was gaining pace on Wednesday as it struck a cautiously optimistic note. But the UK group said volumes for its ground services and fuelling business remained muted and were unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels for another two years. The cautious optimism was in contrast to the bullish predictions 24 hours earlier of Ryanair CE Michael O’Leary, who expects his low-cost carrier to return to pre-pandemic passenger numbers this winter. Volumes for ground services at Menzies were 62% lower in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2019, while fuelling services dropped 45%. However, air cargo services were more resilient, with volumes handled for the period 9% above 2019 levels. John Geddes, corporate affairs director at the FTSE 250 group, said the company, which provides cargo handling services, refuelling and aircraft maintenance at more than 200 airports around the world, was generally “very positive” but that “you’ve got to be realistic as well”. “We are still looking at a business that is 60 per cent down on volumes from 2019. We see that returning and it is just a question when that returns.” Geddes said volumes in the UK in particular remained “very, very low”. The company, along with other UK air services groups, is continuing to lobby ministers for further support.<br/>
The US FAA said Wednesday it is investigating a deviation in the descent of the flight of the Virgin Galactic rocket plane that carried British billionaire Richard Branson to the edge of space on July 11. The New Yorker magazine earlier reported that the regulator was investigating an off-course descent. An FAA spokesman told Reuters the vehicle “deviated from its Air Traffic Control clearance as it returned to Spaceport America. The FAA investigation is ongoing.” Virgin Galactic acknowledged in a statement to Reuters that “the flight’s ultimate trajectory deviated from our initial plan” but added it “did not fly outside of the lateral confines of the protected airspace.” The company said “the flight did drop below the altitude of the airspace ... “for a short distance and time (1 minute and 41 seconds) before re-entering restricted airspace.” It added that “at no time did the ship travel above any population centers or cause a hazard to the public.” The company said it is “working in partnership with the FAA to address the airspace for future flights.” Virgin Galactic said that “when the vehicle encountered high altitude winds which changed the trajectory, the pilots and systems monitored the trajectory to ensure it remained within mission parameters.”<br/>
China's biggest air show will put its homegrown civil and military aviation technology on display next month, the mayor of host city Zhuhai said on Tuesday, though the closely watched C919 narrowbody jet is not among the listed aerial exhibitions. The biennial China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition from Sept. 28 to Oct. 3 had been scheduled to take place in the southern city of Zhuhai was postponed from its original date of last November because of the pandemic. With few foreign attendees expected in person due to strict quarantine rules, the show will include a virtual component and local military and aerospace firms have ramped up their presence significantly, Zhuhai Mayor Huang Zhihao told reporters. On the civil side, foreign companies including Boeing, Airbus, Rolls-Royce Holdings, CFM International, Honeywell International and Embraer will attend via their domestic subsidiaries. Boeing, which has been trying to get Chinese approval to return its 737 MAX to the skies after a two-year grounding will have a booth 65% larger than last time, Huang said.<br/>