Private dramas are playing out all over the world, as thousands of people — Americans living abroad and foreigners hoping to visit the United States — grapple with the new complexities of holiday travel in the age of Covid. The spread of the Omicron variant in the last week has injected even more uncertainty into an already fraught exercise. On Thursday the Biden administration shortened the time frame for international travelers to the United States to take a Covid test within a day before departure, regardless of vaccination status. That has left would-be travelers nervously calculating whether they will get test results back in time to make their flights or worrying that their home countries could impose more stringent travel bans while they are away. The United States stopped short of imposing a mandatory seven-day quarantine on arrivals, which many travelers said would have torpedoed their plans. Nor did it upgrade its standard for an acceptable Covid screen from an antigen to a PCR test, which can take significantly longer to produce results. But the new one-day window for getting tested announced by the CDC has nevertheless added an extra layer of preflight stress.Public-health experts said there was a sound reason to shorten the time frame for test results: it would detect more infections in travelers. And since the results for antigen tests are normally available within a few hours, it should be possible to take a test and get the results within the prescribed period. “A negative test is a good idea, especially since fully vaccinated people can transmit the virus,” said Devi Sridhar, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh. But she acknowledged that the patchwork of travel restrictions and the shifting nature of the rules were exacting a toll on people.<br/>
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New rules requiring international air travelers arriving in the United States to obtain a negative COVID-19 test within one day of travel will take effect Monday at 12:01 a.m. ET (0501 GMT), U.S. officials confirmed Thursday. Under current rules, vaccinated international air travelers can present a negative test result obtained within three days of their day of departure. Unvaccinated travelers currently must get a negative COVID-19 test within one day of departure. The CDC said Thursday that beginning Monday "all air travelers, regardless of citizenship or vaccination status, will be required to show a negative pre-departure COVID-19 viral test taken the day before they board their flight to the United States." The tighter testing timeline "provides an added degree of public health protection as scientists continue to assess the Omicron variant," the White House said in a factsheet released Thursday. The CDC is expected to give airlines a three-day grace period to allow for some travelers to return to the United States with tests taken outside of the one-day window. The administration is considering whether to grant temporary exemptions for about two dozen countries where access to same-day testing is limited, but the details are still being finalized. Those exemptions could last for only about a week. On Monday, the White House said it would bar nearly all foreign nationals from entering the United States from eight southern African countries over fears of the spread of the Omicron variant, but has not extended those travel restrictions to other countries where the new variant has been discovered. The US top infectious disease official Anthony Fauci said Wednesday he viewed the restrictions on the eight countries as a "temporary measure."<br/>
Two leading House lawmakers are calling on US airlines to explain the series of flight disruptions earlier this year that occurred in spite of the government’s $50b in aid to limit industry layoffs during the Covid-19 pandemic. The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon, and the committee’s top Republican, Sam Graves of Missouri, in a letter dated Wednesday asked the industry trade group Airlines for America whether carriers had enough staffing to handle this season’s holiday traffic. The inquiry comes on the heels of a similar effort by the Senate Commerce Committee, which tentatively asked chief executives of the seven largest airlines to attend a Dec. 8 hearing. While acknowledging the challenges carriers have faced as a result of the pandemic, DeFazio and Graves said they expected airlines to “take whatever measures are available” to address staffing issues. “As you know, travelers don’t care why their flight is delayed,” DeFazio and Graves said in the letter. “They care just that it’s delayed.” <br/>
The US Senate on Thursday confirmed CB "Sully" Sullenberger to be the US representative on the Council of the ICAO, the United Nations air safety body. Sullenberger rose to fame in 2009 as a commercial pilot who safely landed an Airbus A320 on New York's Hudson River after hitting a flock of geese - known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" flight. In September, Sullenberger said Belarus should be temporarily barred from voting at the council in response to its May diversion of a Ryanair flight. One big issue at ICAO for Sullenberger, whose post carries the rank of ambassador, will be global efforts to reduce aviation emissions. Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency said it would not rewrite the first-ever standards regulating greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes finalized in the last days of former President Donald Trump's administration. Sullenberger said in September he "would underscore the administration’s commitment to meaningful action on carbon offsets, sustainable aviation fuels, and gradual direct emissions reductions." The Biden administration said it will press for ambitious new international emissions standards at the upcoming round of international negotiations in February at ICAO. Airplanes have been the largest source of transportation greenhouse gas emissions not subject to rules. In 2016, ICAO agreed on global airplane emissions standards aimed at makers of small and large planes, including Airbus and Boeing, which both endorsed the rules.<br/>
Canada's plan to require novel coronavirus tests for all but U.S. arrivals on international flights risks causing "chaos" and long lines if all passengers are expected to get tested at airports, industry groups said. The move, announced Tuesday, comes as the travel season kicks into gear and could stretch airport resources as well as testing holiday-makers' patience, they said. Daniel Gooch, president of the Canadian Airports Council, said airports cannot test all overseas arrivals on-site without long wait times. "Do we really want people waiting for hours for a test in a customs hall?" he asked by phone on Wednesday. "We want to avoid chaos. And we want to ensure that travellers who have booked trips are comfortable to travel." Canada on Tuesday said it will require people arriving internationally by air, except from the United States, to take a COVID-19 test, seeking to halt the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. read more<br/>
The European Union imposed sanctions on state-owned Belarusian airline Belavia on Thursday, accusing the company of flying in migrants as a tactic to destabilise European states, in a new round of punitive measures coordinated with the United States. Reuters reported the planned sanctions on Nov. 10 and they were approved last month. They came into effect on Thursday after publication in the EU's official journal. Britain and Canada also imposed new sanctions on Belarus on Thursday. EU governments blacklisted 17 individuals and 11 entities, targeting judges and top Belarusian officials. Those sanctions are in the form of asset freezes and travel bans. The sanctions on Belavia mean EU companies can no longer lease planes to the Belarusian airline, EU officials have said. It was not immediately clear if Belavia would have to return the 17 aircraft leased through aircraft companies in Ireland.<br/>
Plans to allow one million more passengers through the UK's fifth busiest airport have been approved by councillors. London Luton Airport would be able to handle 19 million people a year, up from 18 million, the local council, which owns the airport, said. Amendments to the current noise contours were also approved. Opponents said the airport was already failing to meet conditions and this would mean even more flights and noise. Earlier this year, the council's company London Luton Airport Ltd, which owns the airport, became Luton Rising to avoid confusion with London Luton Airport Operations, a separate private consortium which runs the airport day to day. Luton Borough Council said the planning application had come from the airport operator following a consultation and not Luton Rising, and the council's development management committee had granted planning permission "subject to conditions and a legal agreement". The decision had taken into account the authority's "local plan and national planning policy and guidance, and other material considerations", it added. The authority also said the application did not affect [Luton Rising's] long term proposals to increase capacity of the airport to 32 million per year, which would be determined by government, not the council.<br/>
Asia-Pacific countries have almost entirely missed out on the global recovery of air travel, with flights still down more than 90% compared with pre-pandemic levels, new figures show. The region is the only part of the world to see practically no improvement in air travel during the past year, with traffic up just 0.3 percentage point in October compared to September. The IATA released the figures on Thursday as it warned that a raft of travel bans to halt the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant threatened to derail the fragile recovery of global aviation. Travel in the Asia-Pacific was down 93.1% in October 2021 compared to October 2019 — almost unchanged from the 92.8% decline recorded for September 2021 compared to two years previously, according to the trade organisation. By comparison, Middle Eastern airlines saw demand rise by almost 7 percentage points, with traffic in October down 60.3% compared to before the pandemic. European carriers saw demand rise by nearly 6 percentage points, with traffic down only 50.6% compared to October 2019. Latin American airlines reported an increase of more than 6 percentage points, with October traffic down 55.1%. North American carriers experienced a 57% drop in traffic compared to 2019, improving from a 61.4% decline in September. African airlines’ traffic was down 60.2% in October, compared to 62.1% over the same period in 2019.<br/>
Chinese aviation regulators on Thursday instructed airlines to make the changes needed to fly Boeing’s 737 Max planes again, indicating China could lift its more than 2½ year grounding of the aircraft. China was the first of dozens of countries, including the U.S., to ground the Boeing 737 Max in March 2019 shortly after the second of two fatal crashes in five months, which together killed 346 people. The FAA cleared the planes to fly in November 2020 after Boeing made software and other changes. “After conducting sufficient assessment, CAAC considers the corrective actions are adequate to address this unsafe condition,” the Civil Aviation Administration of China said in an airworthiness directive, posted on its website. Shares of the aircraft manufacturer were up more than 5% in afternoon trading, while Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselages, was trading more than 6% higher. “The CAAC’s decision is an important milestone toward safely returning the 737 MAX to service in China,” Boeing said. “Boeing continues to work with regulators and our customers to return the airplane to service worldwide.” Boeing’s CEO, Dave Calhoun, told analysts on a quarterly call in October that the company expected China to lift the grounding by the end of the year and that deliveries of the planes in that country would likely resume in Q1 2022. CFO Brian West said on the Oct. 27 call that about one-third of the roughly 370 Max planes Boeing has in inventory are for Chinese airlines. More than 180 countries have now lifted bans on the Max but Indonesia, where the first of the two crashes took place, and Russia have still not signed off.<br/>
China's aviation regulator said on Friday that there is still a huge amount of testing to be done for the home-grown narrowbody C919 aircraft to be certified, raising doubt over planemaker COMAC's year-end target. So far, the C919, China's attempt to rival Airbus SE and Boeing Co, has completed only 34 certification tests out of 276 planned, Yang Zhenmei, a Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) official, told reporters. Reuters in September reported COMAC has found it harder to meet certification and production targets for the C919 amid tough US export rules, according to three people with knowledge of the programme. China Eastern Airlines said in August it expected to receive its first C919 by the end of the year, but that would require the model to be certified. COMAC is years behind its initial certification schedule and it did not take the C919 to China's biggest air show in Zhuhai in September. C919 Chief Designer Wu Guanghui last month recommended CAAC continue to focus on certification as a priority for next year and asked it to step up resources to help with the delivery and commercial operations of the plane.<br/>