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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday that "we need to take a look at" placing unruly passengers on a federal no-fly list as pressure mounts on the Biden administration to continue to address rising violence on airplanes. "I think we need to take a look at it. Look, the airlines are often doing their own internal no-fly list. Some of them have spoken about maybe coordinating on that, and we're looking at these policy recommendations as well," Buttigieg said. This comes as Delta CEO Ed Bastian sent a letter last week to US Attorney General Merrick Garland reiterating his call for the Justice Department to prosecute unruly passengers and place them on a no-fly list. Buttigieg has previously expressed openness to a federal no-fly list for violent airplane passengers, telling CNN in late October that it "should be on the table." The existing federal no-fly list is used to prevent terrorism. Asked Monday about the challenges of potentially implementing a federal no-fly list for unruly passengers, Buttigieg said, "Obviously, there are enormous implications in terms of civil liberties, in terms of how you administer something like that. I mean even when it was over terrorism, it was not a simple thing to set up. "So none of these things can be done lightly. But I think all of these things need to be looked at, at a moment like this," he added.<br/>

Regulators are taking steps to shield US aviation-industry engineers from the kind of company pressure that was revealed in investigations of the design flaw on the Boeing 737 Max linked to two fatal crashes. The FAA Monday proposed new policies that would shield employees at Boeing and other planemakers who act on behalf of the federal government to review safety, including would-be whistle-blowers. “New draft guidance calls for manufacturers to monitor, report and investigate all allegations of interference and to report the results to the FAA,” the agency said in a statement. “It also establishes a clear path for these employees to speak freely with FAA certification officials at any time.” The proposal addresses one of the most controversial issues to emerge from the Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people: it was Boeing’s own engineers who approved the final design of the system on the jet that led to the crashes, not FAA employees. Boeing said that it supports efforts to improve transparency and independence in the arrangement and will work with the agency to ensure those personnel “can perform their vital roles without interference through open communication and a supportive environment.”<br/>

Morocco reopened its airspace on Monday in a bid to breathe life into its crisis-hit tourism sector, two months after it cancelled commercial flights over coronavirus fears. The North African kingdom's latest move was welcomed by tourism businesses who have suffered two lost years due to the pandemic, as well as by Moroccans stranded abroad. Passengers heading to the kingdom will still need to show proof of vaccination against the Covid-19 illness and a negative PCR test within the past 48 hours, the government said. On arrival, they will undergo further rapid tests and some will be chosen at random for another PCR test, it said. It also warned tourists of "the possibility of an additional test at their hotel or place of residence 48 hours after their entry into the country", with positive cases obliged to self-isolate. Morocco's vital tourism sector has been battered by the pandemic and ensuing travel restrictions, with a 71% drop in arrivals in 2021 compared to 2019 and some E8b in losses.<br/>

Indonesia will tighten social restrictions in Jakarta and Bali, as well as in two other cities on Java island, in a bid to contain a spike in coronavirus infections, a senior cabinet minister said on Monday. Separately, the transport ministry clarified that overseas tourists would still be able to enter the country through the capital Jakarta, after the ministry indicated otherwise in a statement issued on Sunday. It earlier said foreign tourists and Indonesians returning from holidays abroad would be temporarily banned from flying into Jakarta, as a further precaution against COVID-19. The new statement said tourists with the right paperwork could arrive through Jakarta and Bali airports, as well as via Batam and Tanjung Pinang in the Riau Islands near Singapore. The Southeast Asian country has seen a jump in cases driven by the Omicron variant, with more than 36,000 infections reported on Sunday and the bed occupancy rate at hospitals in the capital reaching 63%, up from 45% in January. Senior cabinet minister Luhut Pandjaitan, who oversees the pandemic response in Java and Bali, announced tightened social restrictions in greater Jakarta, Bali, as well as in the city of Bandung in West Java and Yogyakarta in Central Java.<br/>

Environmentalists and some European nations are set to clash with the United States over a possible comeback of supersonic travel, saying efforts to set noise guidelines by the middle of the decade could weaken efforts to fight climate change. Nearly two decades after the last flight of Anglo-French Concorde, a panel of United Nations aviation experts is meeting from Monday and will consider updating a decades-old supersonic noise standard by 2025, according to meeting papers seen by Reuters. The US-backed push by aerospace companies is supported by US-based Boom, which has vowed to launch a quieter and less polluting form of supersonic travel than the sleek but noisy Concorde, which ferried the rich and famous across the Atlantic. Even though it co-developed the only commercial jet to break the sound barrier in the 1960s, France has teamed up with Norway and Sweden to try to delay procedural work on future supersonic jetliners to focus on emissions rules for subsonic flight. All three countries have made climate action a political priority and want U.N. experts to focus on the source of the current industry emissions, people close to the International Civil Aviation Organization discussions said. Montreal-based ICAO sets standards on everything from runway markings to crash investigations, which its 193 member states typically translate into regulatory requirements. Planemakers need those standards “well in advance” to ensure they meet official expectations, said Dan Carnelly, vice-president at the International Coordinating Council of Aerospace Industries Associations, an international aerospace lobby.<br/>