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Monroe Regional Airport is losing one of its three major carriers. United Airlines announced that it will end service from the airport early in 2022, the City of Monroe confirmed in a news release. “United Airlines said the decision comes in the shadow of a post-pandemic world that saw a drop in air travel,” the statement said. “United Airlines’ leadership have reviewed their operational capabilities and concluded they needed to reduce their capacity across their network.” United had three scheduled flights daily leaving the airport, all to Houston, The News-Star reported. It also pulled service from 10 other markets: Kalamazoo/Battle Creek, Michigan; College Station, Texas; Columbia, Missouri; Mosinee, Wisconsin; Evansville, Indiana; Killeen/Fort Hood, Texas; Lansing, Michigan; Pierre, South Dakota; Twin Falls, Idaho; and Watertown, South Dakota. The airport’s remaining carriers — American and Delta — fly to Dallas and Atlanta, respectively. Monroe Mayor Friday Ellis said he is sad to see United Airlines go, but the Monroe Regional Airport will continue providing service to passengers.<br/>

Canadian investigators are probing a loss of thrust on an Air Canada Airbus A220-300 during approach to New York, to which the crew responded with a go-around. The aircraft had been descending for runway 31 at New York’s LaGuardia airport, following a service from Toronto on 8 November. But at around 2,000ft the crew received a ‘one engine’ flight-management system indication and the aircraft yawed. The crew carried out a missed approach and ran a checklist. Transportation Safety Board of Canada says the right-hand Pratt & Whitney PW1500G engine “rolled back” to 30% of N1 and was “unresponsive” to throttle movement. The crew shut down the engine and declared an emergency, diverting to Newark. It flew from Newark to Toronto the following day and appears since to have returned to operations.<br/>

Air Canada has partnered with clean energy firm Carbon Engineering (CE) to explore the potential of the latter’s Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology in decarbonising the aviation industry. They have signed a memorandum of understanding in this regard. Both these firms aim to identify potential collaboration activities in sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), permanent CO₂ removal and innovation. Air Canada will also look out for opportunities to buy SAF using CE’s solutions. The DAC technology, which collects carbon directly out of the atmosphere, can be utilised to facilitate decarbonisation in two approaches. It can eliminate huge amounts of carbon permanently from the atmosphere when used with geologic storage, offering an instrument to remove any carbon emission at any time and from any place. DAC, through incorporation with CE’s AIR TO FUELS technology, can be utilised for generating ‘ultra-low’ carbon transportation fuels, unifying atmospheric carbon and clean hydrogen.<br/>

Singapore Airlines said Thursday market conditions were improving after it reported a narrower Q2 loss due to cost-cutting efforts, record cargo revenue and an improvement in passenger numbers from a low base. The net loss of S$427.6m ($315.6m) for the three months to Sept. 30 was down from a record S$2.34 billion loss a year earlier, when COVID restrictions hammered air travel and the airline took large impairment charges on older planes. It posted a net profit of S$94.5m in the September quarter of 2019. Revenue doubled in the second quarter to S$1.53b due to strong cargo demand and a four-fold rise in passenger numbers from a very low base. The airline said monthly operating cashflows were near breakeven levels and it expected passenger capacity to reach 43% of pre-pandemic levels by December, serving half of its previous destinations. In September, passenger capacity reached around 32% of pre-pandemic levels, though on average it filled only 20% of the seats on its planes. Singapore has recently opened vaccinated travel lanes without quarantine with more than a dozen countries including Britain, the United States, Germany, Australia and South Korea. Neighbouring Malaysia will be added to the list from Nov. 29, allowing for more flights between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, one of the world's busiest international routes before the pandemic. The airline will restart Singapore-London flights on its flagship Airbus A380 super-jumbos on Nov. 18 and will fly them to Sydney from Dec. 1. SIA, like Hong Kong-based rival Cathay Pacific, has no domestic market and has been hard-hit by border closures. Singapore has capped daily arrivals for the vaccinated travel lanes, meaning the allowable traffic is in the single-digit percentages of pre-pandemic passenger numbers. But it is an encouraging sign for travel in the Asia-Pacific region, which had had some of the world's toughest border controls during the pandemic. <br/>

Japan's biggest airline, ANA Holdings, has asked the government to ease curbs on overseas visitors, and seeks a revival of domestic tourism subsidies to spur travel as pandemic infections fall, its CE said Thursday. Coronavirus immigration curbs in Japan have led to a drop of about 95% in the number of passengers on international flights, but daily infections have dropped to fewer than 200 this month, from an August peak of more than 20,000. "When we are able to make money we should be allowed to," said Shinya Katanozaka, CE of the carrier that has had seven consecutive quarters of losses. "It will give us the strength to weather things in the future." Last December, as COVID-19 infections began to rise, Japan halted a programme of subsidies for hotels and travel tickets that had helped ANA and rival Japan Airlines Co. boost passenger numbers on domestic flights. The government could resume travel subsidies as soon as next month and ease entry limits for overseas visitors to 3,500 a day, Katanozaka said.<br/>