Top executives of major US airlines will tell a Senate committee Wednesday they are ramping up hiring even as some raise concerns about a COVID-19 variant on demand, according to testimony seen by Reuters. Executives at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing will defend the $54b in COVID-19 government payroll assistance airlines received, and will say in total they plan to hire more than 30,000 workers in 2022. Lawmakers are expected to quiz executives about how carriers used pandemic-related federal aid, staffing issues and other matters. JetBlue CE Robin Hayes will say in written testimony the airline is on track to hire 4,550 new crew members in 2021 and in 2022 plans to hire an additional 5,400 crew. Alaska Air Group CE Ben Minicucci said in testimony it plans to hire more than 3,000 people. Delta Chief of Operations John Laughter's testimony says the airline is hiring more than 6,100 Airport customer service agents and more than 600 pilots. He added the airline is "prepared for, an uneven, choppy recovery even as the virus is being contained. The Omicron variant has created further uncertainty, and there is no clear consensus on when business and international travel will return." Southwest CE Gary Kelly will say "if the current demand environment holds, we should be able to pay off most of the debt we incurred during the pandemic within the next five years." United CE Scott Kirby will tell the Senate panel "it is important to remember the shocking scale of this pandemic on the globe and its deep effect on our industry. We are not completely out of the woods, and the emergence of the Omicron variant in recent weeks is a stark reminder of that."<br/>
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Pilots and airlines pressed for more steps to ensure that new 5G wireless service next month doesn’t endanger aircraft, hours after the Federal Communications Commission’s chairwoman expressed confidence the matter could be resolved swiftly. Groups including the Air Line Pilots Association and Airlines for America, an industry trade group, requested more talks that would include the FCC, the FAA and the White House. “Time is running out before millions of air travelers and the shipping public experience significant disruptions such as flight delays, flight cancellations and backups to the already-stressed supply chain,” the aviation groups said Tuesday. Earlier Tuesday, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel lauded mobile operators’ efforts to resolve the dispute. The airwaves use at issue was approved by the FCC and is seen as a key business opportunity for mobile providers eager to lure wireless customers to fast 5G services. “I have confidence in the mitigations that have been offered up by the wireless industry,” Rosenworcel said. “I also have confidence we’re going to find solutions to safely and swiftly deploy 5G services.”<br/>
San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, which owns and operates San Diego International Airport, has broken ground on the $3.4b New Terminal 1 (New T1) project at the airport. This project will replace the old Terminal 1, upgrade the airfield, enhance road connectivity to the airport. Additionally, it includes the construction of a new facility for the Airport Authority administration. Terminals and roadways, airside improvements and a new administration building are the three components of New T1. The work is anticipated to create 15,000 to 20,000 jobs during the construction phase. Initially, the focus will be on constructing the administration building, which is expected to open in late 2023. For this project, the Airport Authority has appointed Sundt Construction company, with HOK serving as the lead architect. The first phase of the terminal and roadways component will see the creation of 19 gates, outdoor check-in pavilions, a five-storey parking plaza, an elevated departures roadway, as well as an on-airport arrivals roadway and is expected to open in mid-2025.<br/>
Three people were killed early on Tuesday morning in two explosions at the airport in the Colombian border city of Cucuta, police and security officials said. Cucuta is the capital of Norte de Santander, a province along the border with Venezuela that has become the new epicenter of Colombia’s long internal conflict as security forces battle drug gangs and rebels amid increasing coca production. “Criminals entered the Camilo Daza airport where they detonated an explosive artifact between the runway and the fence,” Cucuta police commander Colonel Giovanni Madarriaga said in a video. “Because of this (explosion) there were human remains.” Several minutes later police assessing the area found a suitcase, Madarriaga added. “As they approached, with all security precautions, it exploded,” he said. The two dead policemen, William Bareno Ardila and David Reyes Jimenez, had both been recognized for their work to remove landmines, the police said in messages to journalists. The police are collecting evidence to identify the perpetrators, Madarriaga added.<br/>
The omicron variant of Covid-19 is scrambling the European Union’s plans to simplify its travel rules, particularly as some countries move ahead with new unilateral restrictions. EU governments are split over a plan to shift the rules to base them on a person’s vaccination status rather than on case levels in a particular country, with some countries asking for a delay to better understand the impact of the new variant, according to an diplomat familiar with talks. One of the EU’s largest members suggested pushing off discussions until January, the official said. As those talks continue, Italy announced Tuesday it would require Covid tests for all visitors, including vaccinated people from other EU countries, starting on Thursday. The change is likely to frustrate some EU countries and further harm the airline and travel industries. A senior EU official acknowledged that Italy’s decision undercuts the objectives of the digital Covid certificate the EU introduced to facilitate travel inside the bloc. “These individual decisions of the states will decrease the trust of the people that there will be equal conditions everywhere in Europe,” EU vice president for values Vera Jourova said Tuesday, adding the move will be discussed when EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday. She added that member states insisted on a “back door” to impose additional unilateral restrictions on travel as long as it’s based on the epidemiological situation.<br/>
The shareholders of Budapest Airport have stopped the due diligence process over the possible sale of the airport to the Hungarian government, its majority shareholder told Reuters on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear what triggered the abrupt halt just a month after owners of the airport, a fast-growing, medium-sized hub that benefited from a boom in low-cost travel before the pandemic, agreed to start the process. The biggest shareholder with 55.44% is AviAlliance GmbH, formerly Hochtief AirPort GmbH, owned by Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments). “The shareholders of Budapest Airport have agreed to stop the due diligence process and to remain in dialogue with the Hungarian Government,” AviAlliance said. “AviAlliance is a committed long-term investor, whose interest is the sustainable development of Budapest Airport and the region,” it said. It did not say why the transaction was stopped.<br/>
The British government will remove all 11 countries from its COVID-19 travel red list from Wednesday because there is now community transmission of Omicron in Britain, Health Secretary Sajid Javid told parliament. The new Omicron variant was first detected in southern Africa and Hong Kong. The British government added 11 African countries to its red list from late November, meaning that only UK citizens or residents arriving from those nations were allowed in and then had to quarantine in a hotel. "Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is now less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad," Javid said. "We will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4 a.m. tomorrow morning." The 11 countries which will be removed are Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Britain has registered more than 4,700 cases of Omicron, with 10 people hospitalised, and one person has died after contracting the variant. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday Britain was facing a "huge spike" in Omicron cases. Travel companies had urged the government to reduce restrictions as soon as possible. London's Heathrow Airport said last week it was seeing high levels of business travellers cancelling due to concerns over restrictions. Britain will still require all inbound travellers to take either a PCR or a rapid lateral flow test a maximum of 48 hours before departure, a measure Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said would be reviewed in the first week of January.<br/>
Major Chinese manufacturing province Zhejiang is fighting its first COVID-19 cluster this year, with tens of thousands of citizens in quarantine and virus-hit areas suspending business operations, cutting flights and cancelling events. The province reported 74 locally transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms on Dec. 12, official data showed on Monday, almost double the previous day's 38 cases, lifting to 173 the total since the province started to report cases for the latest outbreak. The outbreak in three Zhejiang cities - Ningbo, Shaoxing and Hangzhou - was developing at a "relatively rapid" speed, while the situation nationwide was largely stable, National Health Commission official Wu Liangyou said on Saturday. Before the current outbreak, Zhejiang - home to a legion of small and medium-sized enterprises, many of which are exporters - reported only one local case in 2021. Flights leaving Ningbo Lishe International Airport to Shenzhen city were suspended from Sunday, while flights to Beijing were cancelled from Dec. 6. Only one daily flight from Hangzhou to China's capital is allowed. More than 50,000 people in Zhejiang have been quarantined at centralised facilities and nearly half a million people's health condition were monitored, a province health official said on Monday. The coastal province has a population of 64.6m. Zhejiang has ordered travel agencies to suspend organising tourism trips linking the province and other areas and has also halted province-level sports events.<br/>
A former chief technical pilot for Boeing charged with fraud for deceiving federal regulators evaluating the company's 737 MAX jet says a FAA official called him a "scapegoat" for two fatal crashes. Lawyers for Mark Forkner said the FAA official with personal knowledge of the 737-MAX contacted the government and said Forkner "is a 'scapegoat' and should 'not be charged.'" The court filing on Monday did not disclose the official's name. Boeing did not respond to a request for comment. The FAA did not immediately comment. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Northern Texas, where the case is being heard, declined to comment. The filing also included parts of a PowerPoint from an unnamed FAA employee that defense lawyers said contain new disclosures about a key system known as MCAS that should have been disclosed by Boeing’s engineering team. The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) is a software feature designed to automatically push the airplane’s nose down in certain conditions. It was tied to two crashes of the 737 MAX in Indonesia and Ethiopia over a five-month period in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people and led to the FAA's grounding the plane for 20 months, an action lifted in November 2020. The filing said Boeing engineers did not disclose key details of MCAS to Forkner or the FAA - including that MCAS could activate when it was not intended after a single faulty sensor. The PowerPoint said the 737 MAX crashes "were caused by a failure of the engineering processes" and argued the focus on training and the Forkner criminal charges "is not only incorrect and misguided, it is detracting from the real lessons." Excerpts of the presentation made public said it was to address a "potential miscarriage of justice."<br/>
Boeing said Tuesday that it handed over 34 airplanes to carriers in November, while adding 109 jets to its 737 MAX order tally. The delivery tally - closely scrutinized by investors as deliveries generate much-needed cash during the coronavirus crisis - compares with 27 planes in October, and seven in the year ago period when Boeing was in the throes of the 737 MAX safety crises. Again in November, Boeing failed to deliver its advanced carbon-composite 787 Dreamliner, which remains mired in inspections and retrofits likely to keep the jets sidelined until April 2022. Of the 34 aircraft delivered last month, 28 were 737 MAX planes - 10 of which were for European low-cost carrier Ryanair. Boeing also turned over one P-8 maritime patrol aircraft to Norway, Boeing said. The remaining jets were larger widebodies: one 767 apiece for FedEx and United Parcel Service, one 747-8 for the Egyptian defense ministry, and two 767 tankers for the US Air Force, Boeing said. This year through November, Boeing has delivered 302 aircraft, more than twice the 118 aircraft it delivered in the first 11 months of 2020. Boeing had 91 orders for aircraft in November, after cancellations and instances where a buyer converted an order for one type of aircraft to another. It had 109 gross orders, all of which were for its 737 MAX jetliner, which returned to service in late 2020 after a near two-year safety ban. That includes an order for 72 MAX jets from India's Akasa Air, a deal valued at nearly $9b at list prices that could help the US planemaker regain lost ground in one of the world's most promising markets.<br/>