The US CDC has started distributing free COVID-19 home test kits to international travelers, the agency said on Thursday. The CDC said it began distributing the kits on Wednesday and is giving them out at Minneapolis-St Paul, Miami and Chicago O'Hare and will soon add Dallas-Fort Worth. It plans to add four additional unidentified international airports in the coming weeks. The CDC encourages - but does not mandate - international air travelers to get a new COVID-19 test upon arriving in the United States. New rules took effect on Dec. 6 to require nearly all people flying to the United States to obtain a negative COVID-19 test within one day of travel. Under the prior rules, vaccinated international air travelers could present a negative test result obtained within three days of their day of departure. Unvaccinated travelers had to get a negative COVID-19 test within one day of departure. The tighter testing timeline "provides an added degree of public health protection as scientists continue to assess the Omicron variant," the White House said. On Nov. 29, the White House barred nearly all foreign nationals from entering the United States from eight southern African countries over fears of the spread of the Omicron variant. But it has not extended those travel restrictions to other countries where the new variant has been discovered.<br/>
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More than a dozen families of people killed in two Boeing 737 Max crashes are accusing the Justice Department of illegally leaving them in the dark when it reached a settlement with the company this year. In a court filing on Thursday, 15 families accused the department of denying them an opportunity to weigh in on a criminal investigation into Boeing under a 2004 law meant to protect victims of crime and their representatives. They are asking a federal judge to force the department to turn over documents related to that investigation and to revoke the company’s protection from further criminal prosecution on the matter. “What happened here in the waning days of the previous administration was a complete short circuit of the congressionally mandated process for the victims to be conferred with and have an opportunity to influence the outcome,” said Paul Cassell, a former federal judge who is representing the families. The 15 families who brought the motion were joined by dozens more who signed on in support of it, representing a significant share of the 346 people killed in two Max crashes, in Indonesia in 2018 and in Ethiopia in 2019. The episodes led to a global ban of the plane for nearly two years, a debacle that cost Boeing billions of dollars and prompted investigations around the world. Under the Justice Department’s settlement, which was announced in the final weeks of the Trump administration, Boeing agreed to pay $2.5b, most of it to the airlines that suffered financial losses because of the ban. A further $500m went to a fund for the families or representatives of the victims and about $250m was to be paid as a criminal penalty to the federal government. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the agency was reviewing the motion and would respond in court. Boeing declined to comment. Even at the time the deal was announced, many criticized it as inadequate. Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said it was a “slap on the wrist and is an insult to the 346 victims who died as a result of corporate greed.” The families said that the Justice Department not only left them in the dark about the settlement, but also misled them by falsely telling them that there was no criminal investigation into Boeing.<br/>
The US FAA has selected an official at a Canadian airline to head its safety division as it works to enact broad changes to the way it oversees aircraft manufacturing after the Boeing 737 Max crashes. Billy Nolen, vice president for safety, security and quality at WestJet Airlines, will head FAA’s aviation safety organization starting early in 2022, the agency said in an emailed press release. A former airline captain, Nolen also worked at the Airlines for America trade group and at Qantas. Nolen will take the job vacated by Ali Bahrami, who helped ground the Max after the second of two fatal crashes in 2019 but also became a controversial figure during probes of the plane before leaving the agency in June. Congress last year ordered FAA to make numerous changes to tighten oversight of planemakers such as Boeing. <br/>
The US FAA said Thursday it will award $2.89b to 3,075 airports under a new $1t infrastructure bill signed into law last month. Airports can use funds for runways, taxiways, safety, terminal, airport-transit connections and roadway projects. The infrastructure law provides $15b over five years and the FAA estimates there is a $43.6b backlog in airport modernization and safety projects. Atlanta's International Airport will receive $92.5m, the most of any airport, while Los Angeles International will get $79.3m and Chicago O'Hare $73.7m. During the pandemic, some airports were forced to put some projects on hold because of lower passenger volumes. Airports have received about $20b in emergency pandemic funding since March 2020 from Congress. San Francisco International Airport is set to receive $49.35m from the FAA for the current budget year. It will use the funds to completing the final phase of the Harvey Milk Terminal 1 – including the construction of a new check-in lobby, which was postponed due to COVID, and upgrading of the airport's electrical power distribution infrastructure. In total, San Francisco's airport is set to receive about $250m over five years. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the funds will shorten lines at the terminal.<br/>
Travel industry executives asked Canada's airline regulator to establish that vouchers could amount to a refund in March 2020 amid thousands of flight cancellations at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, newly released emails reveal -- days before the agency did so. March 22 correspondence disclosed under a Federal Court of Appeal order show that then-Transat CEO Jean-Marc Eustache asked the Canadian Transportation Agency to confirm that "no refunds to passengers are required," which he said would pre-empt credit card chargebacks and lawsuits. Three days later, the agency posted a statement clarifying that airlines could generally issue flight credits or vouchers to customers whose flights it had cancelled due to the pandemic, rather than reimbursing them. The letter followed an email and extended phone conversation between a Transat executive and a senior agency director on the same topic four days earlier. The Association of Canadian Travel Agencies also wrote to the regulator asking it to help them with "prevention of credit card chargebacks." The agency's statement on March 25 that flight credit rather than refunds constitutes a "reasonable approach" toward passengers left out of pocket by cancelled flights sparked public backlash and thousands of complaints to the agency. The transportation agency says it regularly holds discussions with stakeholders that fall under its regulatory mandate, such as industry and consumer protection associations, and that they do not interfere with its impartiality.<br/>
Travel firms are braced for thousands of cancellations after France curbed U.K. arrivals in a bid to slow the omicron variant of Covid-19, limiting trips at what’s usually one of the busiest times of the year. Eurostar International, which operates high-speed trains from London to Paris via the Channel Tunnel, said customers are “once again facing disruption during the Christmas travel period,” after similar upheaval last year. The French plan comes after the UK recorded 78,610 positive Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, the most since the start of the pandemic. The daily tally jumped to more than 88,000 on Thursday. The measures, which kick in at midnight on Friday, effectively ban leisure and business visits by Britons while reducing the validity of coronavirus tests to 24 hours and requiring arrivals to self-isolate for up to seven days. French citizens and their families as well as residents can return home. Among airlines, EasyJet Plc is most exposed to the U.K.-France market in the next two weeks, with 419 scheduled flights, followed by Air France on 217 and British Airways with 179, according to aviation data provider Cirium. Some 81 flights, equating to almost 14,000 seats, are scheduled for Saturday, when the restrictions begin. British Airways is keeping its operations to France under review, a spokesman said. Discount specialist EasyJet didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.<br/>
Heathrow airport will be allowed to raise landing charges next year to compensate for a collapse in passenger numbers, the UK’s aviation regulator said on Thursday, prompting an angry backlash from airlines. The Civil Aviation Authority gave the airport the green light to raise landing fees by 37% to GBP30.19 per passenger from GBP22 from January 1, which will apply for an interim period next year when a longer-term agreement will be decided. The move deepened a bitter row between Heathrow and the airlines, which have warned of higher ticket prices for passengers at an airport that already has some of the highest landing charges in the world. Fees are typically passed straight on to customers. Heathrow also criticised the decision, saying it was based on a flawed analysis with over-optimistic forecasts for passenger numbers. “Uncorrected, this risks leaving Heathrow without sufficient cash flow to support investment in improving passenger service and resilience,” the airport said. The CAA insisted the price rise achieves a balance between protecting customers and allowing Heathrow’s owners to continue to invest in the airport. Heathrow argues that unlike airlines it cannot change its prices to reflect passenger demand, with fixed costs regardless of the number of travellers. Airlines say the landing charges should be cut to stimulate demand, adding that the airport’s owners should cover the losses. Luis Gallego, CE of IAG, the biggest airline group at Heathrow, said the CAA’s ruling was “disappointing”. “After the worst crisis in aviation history, we need to attract demand to stay competitive. Hiking charges will have the opposite effect. Britain will become not more competitive, but less,” he said. Gallego has threatened to move some of its business away from Heathrow if prices are allowed to rise sharply over the long-term, although analysts said it is inconceivable IAG will give up its most lucrative slots at the airport.<br/>
Recent order wins by Airbus have strengthened the European planemaker's case for raising production of its A320-family narrowbody jets beyond a firm target of 65 a month, a senior executive said on Thursday. Asked whether deals with Qantas and Air France-KLM had reinforced Airbus' ambitions to go ahead with further increases, opposed by some suppliers and leasing firms, CCO Christian Scherer said "yes." "What we are seeing materialise in formal decisions is something that we could see coming for months now," Scherer said. "It now publicly strengthens what we kind of knew all along," he said, adding he did not want to seem over-confident. Airbus has been arguing for months that post-pandemic demand for the industry's most widely used narrowbody models will justify an increase in output to well above pre-crisis rates. Story has more.<br/>