general

Demand for air travel is on the rise ahead of the holidays. So are the costs. Jet fuel hasn’t been this expensive since 2014. Airlines also racing to hire thousands of employees to meet growing demand: pilots, flight attendants, reservations agents, baggage handlers and many others, competing in a tight labor market that would have seemed impossible in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. And, airlines have run through much of the $54b in government payroll aid that helped cover their labor bills during the crisis. The rise in costs is threatening the industry’s attempt to return to profitability after losing a record $35b last year when the pandemic snapped a decade of profits. For passengers, the combination of returning demand and higher costs could mean more expensive ticket prices ahead. Delta last month said higher jet fuel prices would weigh on its bottom line in the fourth quarter. Frontier Airlines on Wednesday forecast a loss on an adjusted basis for the fourth quarter due to higher fuel costs. Benchmark US jet fuel was $2.27 a gallon on Nov. 10, up 25% from three months earlier. The rise in fuel prices is “definitely delaying the earnings recovery,” said Savanthi Syth, an airline analyst at Raymond James. “If it’s a slow burn, airlines can handle it. This move up in this short of a period is not good.” Airlines eager to cash in on a return to demand have tried to balance — with varying degrees of success — how much they can fly with their current staffing levels. Overall, US carriers will fly about 6% less in November and December compared with 2019, before the pandemic, according to aviation data and consulting firm Cirium. Low-cost airlines like Frontier and Spirit are exceptions, with more capacity scheduled than they did two years ago.<br/>

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Monday it will not rewrite the first-ever standards regulating greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes finalized in the last days of former President Donald Trump's administration. President Joe Biden had directed the EPA in January to consider whether to rewrite the airplane emissions rules, which face a legal challenge from 12 states and three environmental groups that say the rules do not go far enough. Instead, the Biden administration said on Monday, it will press for ambitious new international emissions standards at the upcoming round of international negotiations in February at the UN ICAO. Joe Goffman, the acting head of the EPA Air and Radiation office, said Monday, that it was important to work with the international community and to move quickly on the next round of emissions talks. "We could have really achieved a Pyrrhic victory by tightening the rule and then finding the aviation industry avoided complying by certifying their engines via other governments," Goffman said. Liz Jones, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued, said "the Biden administration has taken climate hypocrisy and delay to new heights.... The EPA twiddled its thumbs for nine months before deciding it would rather defend a do-nothing rule than set any meaningful limits on aircraft emissions." The states said in February the regulation's greenhouse gas emission standards "by EPA’s own analysis, will fail to reduce the emissions of any aircraft, and will prompt no action at all by manufacturers to reduce aircraft emissions." They argue the EPA should have considered that "minority and low-income communities are disproportionately located near airports and exposed to greater criteria and hazardous air pollutants from aircraft takeoff and landing emissions, which more stringent greenhouse gas emission standards could have reduced."<br/>

The EU will act with further sanctions, including against airlines, to tackle Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's "perfidious" treatment of migrants, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday are expected to decide further sanctions against Belarus and against the airlines that are flying migrants from the Middle East to Minsk in order to take them to the EU's eastern border. "We are also trying to help the countries of origin," she told a conference in Munich. "Russian President Vladimir Putin has influence over Lukashenko and he needs to use this influence. "Coming days will be decisive."<br/>

The owners of Budapest Airport have entered into a due diligence process with the Hungarian government, its majority shareholder said on Monday, potentially the first step towards a sale of the asset to the state. PM Viktor Orban, a nationalist often at loggerheads with the European Commission, has said for months that he wants to see the airport in domestic hands, but its owners had so far expressed no interest in selling it. Local media reported late last month that Hungary had offered E4.44b for the airport, a figure which neither its biggest shareholder AviAlliance GmbH, formerly Hochtief AirPort GmbH, nor the government confirmed. But AviAlliance confirmed on Monday that a consortium led by the Hungarian government had submitted a revised non-binding offer to buy the airport. “The Hungarian government has accepted our terms and conditions for starting formal negotiations. Therefore we have decided to enter into a due diligence process,” AviAlliance said. “While this is potentially the first step towards the sale of the airport, we want to emphasise that the outcome of such a process is not predetermined.” <br/>

Singapore has begun the arduous task of reestablishing itself as Asia’s international aviation hub, throwing its borders open to five more countries as it presses on with plans to reopen and live with Covid. The city-state will allow quarantine-free travel for fully-vaccinated people from countries including India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia it said Monday as it looks to safely move past the pandemic that has kept its 5.7m residents home for more than a year. Inoculated visitors from Indonesia and India will be able to enter Singapore from Nov. 29, while those from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar will be welcome from Dec. 6 without having to quarantine, the Ministry of Health said Monday. Unvaccinated children age 12 and under can accompany eligible adults. Singapore plans to start the arrangement with Indonesia with two designated flights between Singapore and Jakarta everyday, and will increase that to four, Transport Minister S. Iswaran said. It’s aiming for two daily flights each from Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai, he said. Both countries were among the top five markets for passenger arrivals at Singapore’s Changi Airport in 2019. The southeast Asian nation started gradually reopening its borders to general travel in September when it kicked off a vaccinated travel lane with Germany and Brunei. The city-state, home to the world’s best airport for eight years until 2020, has ditched its Covid-Zero policy and pivoted to an approach of living with the virus. Infection rates are likely to increase as the travel lanes open and the country continues to ease its Covid curbs, a risk officials said they were willing to take given the rising number of vaccinations that have been administered. An average of about 2,700 new infections are being diagnosed each day, a slight decrease from recent weeks as the current outbreak ebbs. <br/>

Airbus has officially launched a freighter version of its A350 twin-engine aircraft, a sign that the airframer believes cargo demand will continue to grow and an acknowledgement that it is playing catch-up in this lucrative market with archrival Boeing. Lessor Air Lease Corp. (ALC) is one of the new freighter’s first customers, announcing an order for seven A350Fs at the Dubai Airshow. That order is part of the leasing giant’s 111-aircraft order Airbus order, which includes aircraft up and down Airbus’ product line. “We had the vision to be first adopters of the A321 and are convinced we have made the right choice again on the A220 and A350F, responding to what we see the market will need in the period of recovery ahead,” ALC Executive Chairman Steven Udvar-Hazy said. Airbus admitted in its Q2 earnings call that Boeing dominated the air freighter sector. The airframer has a lineup that includes the 747-8F, 767F, and the 777F, while Airbus’ offerings were much more limited. At the time, Udvar-Hazy recommended that Boeing double down on the sector and capitalize on its advantage against Airbus. “Boeing needs to focus on that,” he said at the time. Airbus in July announced the initial research and development on the A350F had begun, but with the announcement this week in Dubai, the manufacturer has officially launched the program. Airbus did not specify an entry-into-service date for the new aircraft. The A350F is expected to have a maximum structural take-off weight of 109 tons and is capable of flying fully-laden for 4,700 nautical miles — or Hong Kong to Moscow. The aircraft can reach 6,000 nautical miles — Hong Kong to Paris, for example —with its maximum volumetric weight of 92 tons, Airbus said. “ALC’s endorsement confirms the global enthusiasm we see for this quantum leap in the freighter space and we applaud its insightfulness in selecting it and in beating everyone to the finish line for the first A350F order announcement,” said Christian Scherer, Airbus chief commercial officer. “It has seen the formidable value the A350F brings to the cargo market.”<br/>

US company Air Lease Corporation (ALC) has signed a letter of intent to purchase 111 Airbus aircraft, the European plane-maker said Monday during a major air show in Dubai. "The agreement is for 25 A220-300s, 55 A321neos, 20 A321XLRs, four A330neos and includes seven A350Fs," Airbus said, adding that the order will be finalised in the coming months. The accord includes the first of the new long-haul A350F cargo aircraft set to come into service in 2025. The announcement came a day after Airbus said it took a mega-order for 255 single-aisle A321 aircraft from Wizz Air, Frontier, Volaris and JetSMART -- all from US company Indigo Partners. Prior to the Dubai Airshow, Airbus had taken orders for 292 aircraft since the start of the year, most of them single-aisle planes. "After lengthy and detailed consultations with several dozen of our strategic airline customers around the world, we are focusing this comprehensive order on the most desirable and in-demand aircraft types, covering the A220, A321neo, A330neo and A350 families," said Steven Udvar-Hazy, executive chairman of Air Lease Corporation, according to the statement.<br/>

A top executive at Boeing has underlined the importance that cargo now plays in the aerospace industry, nearly two years after travel came to a near standstill due to the coronavirus pandemic. “The freighter markets are on fire right now. That’s where we see real growth,” Stan Deal, executive vice president of Boeing, said at the Dubai Air Show on Sunday. The company has announced plans to add three conversion lines for its 737-800BCF across North America and Europe. These are facilities that convert aircraft to freighters and they’ll be located at KF Aerospace in Canada and London Gatwick. Deal’s comments come a day after Boeing said it was in advanced talks to sell a cargo version of its future 777X jetliner. Ihssane Mounir, senior vice president of commercial sales and marketing at Boeing, said Saturday that it was “in pretty advanced discussions with a number of customers.” “The [777X freighter] looks good from a design standpoint and a requirements standpoint.” Before the pandemic, a significant volume of cargo was transported in the belly of passenger planes. But after those planes were grounded as a result of travel restrictions, the industry instead focused on dedicated cargo planes. Many airlines have seen robust volumes for cargo amid the pandemic. Indeed, Emirates Airline’s latest half-year earnings reported a 39% increase in cargo volumes, bringing them almost to 2019 levels. More broadly, Deal added on Sunday that Boeing was expecting more orders before the year end. “Well we’ve had a good year so far. We’ve booked about 309 new orders net this year, 720 gross. That’s a pretty good start. And those discussions are continuing at this air show. It’s not over, we expect more orders before the year end. And that will position well into 2022,” he said. Boeing had booked orders above 700 for the years between 2014 and 2018.<br/>

The IATA announced Monday that it hired Marie Owens Thomsen to serve as its chief economist effective January 4, 2022. She replaces Brian Pearce, who retired from IATA earlier this year after serving as the organization’s chief economist since 2014. One of Owens Thomsen’s biggest responsibilites at IATA is to lead the aviation industry toward hitting its ambitious target of net zero emissions by 2050. The organization approved a resolution last month at its annual general meeting in an effort to match the goal established by the Paris Agreement for global warming not to exceed 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius). Owens Thomsen joins IATA from Swiss bank Lombard Odier, where she’s served as head of global trends and sustainability since last year. She also has worked in various roles for, among other companies, Merrill Lynch, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and HSBC. “I am joining IATA to contribute to the aviation sector which has been a formidable long-term driver of economic growth. I’ll do this with a research approach that identifies causal factors for critical issues and their high-priority solutions,” Owens Thomsen said. “This is important as aviation begins the recovery from Covid and continues the journey to net zero emissions. I look forward to a future where aviation can flourish within a sustainable global economy.”<br/>

A fully fueled Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner can fly roughly 8,000 miles while ferrying 300 or so passengers and their luggage. A battery with the energy equivalent to that fuel would weigh about 6.6m pounds. That’s why — despite environmental advantages — we don’t have battery-powered electric airliners. But aviation companies working to make cleaner aircraft are exploring the use of hydrogen, the world’s most abundant element, to power both electric and combustion engines — and to make air travel more eco-friendly. Hydrogen-powered planes are already aloft, although mostly as small, experimental aircraft. Yet those planes are helping to pave the way for net-zero carbon aviation by 2050, the goal set by many government and environmental groups. But hydrogen isn’t without controversy: For now, it’s expensive, not always green, and some say dangerous. “There are three ways of using hydrogen as fuel onboard an aircraft,” said Amanda Simpson, who leads green initiatives for the aircraft manufacturer Airbus. Hydrogen can be a source of power for batterylike fuel cells, in hybrid aircraft, or as combustible fuel. Alternative-fuel technologies are well established in the automotive world, of course. Cars that burn alternative fuels — remember diesels converted to burn used French-fry oil? — have been around since the earliest days of horseless carriages. Story has much more.<br/>