Ukraine pledged funds on Sunday to try to keep its airspace open to commercial flights, as some carriers reviewed their services to the country after the United States warned that Russia could invade at any time. Dutch airline KLM - part of Air France - said it would stop services to Ukraine and Lufthansa said it was considering suspending flights. Two third of the 298 passengers killed when Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were Dutch citizens. Ukraine's infrastructure ministry said airlines were continuing to operate "without any restrictions", and PM Denys Shmygal said the government had allocated 16.6b hryvnia ($592m) to guarantee the continuation of flights through its airspace. He said the funds would "ensure flight safety in Ukraine for insurance and leasing companies." "This decision will stabilise the situation on the market of passenger air transportation and will guarantee the return to Ukraine of our citizens who are currently abroad," he said, without specifying how the funds would be allocated. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, earlier said he saw no point closing its airspace in response to Moscow's troop build-up. Scheduling reconfigurations by individual carriers had "nothing to do with the decisions or policies of our state," he told Reuters. "The most important point is that Ukraine itself sees no point in closing the sky ... And, in my opinion, that would somewhat resemble a kind of partial blockade."<br/>
general
Some airlines have canceled or diverted flights to Ukraine amid heightened fears that an invasion by Russia is imminent despite intensive weekend talks between the Kremlin and the West. In an hourlong Saturday call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Joe Biden said that invading Ukraine would cause “widespread human suffering” and that the West was committed to diplomacy to end the crisis but “equally prepared for other scenarios,” the White House said. It offered no suggestion that the call diminished the threat of an imminent war in Europe. The two presidents spoke a day after Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned that US intelligence shows a Russian invasion could begin within days. Russia denies it intends to invade but has massed well over 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border and has sent troops to exercises in neighboring Belarus. U.S. officials say Russia’s buildup of firepower has reached the point where it could invade on short notice. KLM has canceled flights to Ukraine until further notice, the company said Saturday. Dutch sensitivity to potential danger in Ukrainian airspace is high in the wake of the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysian airliner over an area of eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed rebels. All 298 people aboard died, including 198 Dutch citizens. The Ukrainian charter airline SkyUp said Sunday that its flight from Madeira, Portugal, to Kyiv was diverted to the Moldovan capital Chisinau after the plane’s Irish lessor said it was banning flights in Ukrainian airspace.<br/>
The US DoT said Friday it was offering $69m to 127 aviation manufacturing and repair businesses under a COVID-19 relief program created by Congress in 2021. In total, the department has offered $673m nationwide in three rounds of awards. Some previously offered awards were not ultimately paid. The $3b aviation manufacturing payroll subsidy program covers up to half of eligible companies' compensation costs for up to six months. Grantees may not conduct furloughs without employee consent or lay off workers covered by subsidies during that period. The application process is now closed. It is unclear what will happen to the undistributed funds. Among the 593 awards granted are $75.5m to Spirit AeroSystems, $20.9m for Connecticut-based Hexcel Corp, $17.5m to BAE Systems Controls, $12.9m to Airbus' US arm, $15m to Learjet, a unit of Bombardier Inc , and $12.5m to Dassault Falcon Jet Corp. France's Safran, the world's third-largest aerospace supplier, was offered about $40m for various US units. The department said the awards will support 31,000 US manufacturing jobs in 43 states. US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the funding will help "keep America's aviation industry strong as it continues its robust recovery." To qualify, a company must have involuntarily furloughed or laid off at least 10% of its total workforce, or experienced a decline of at least 15% in 2020 total operating revenue.<br/>
Heathrow airport has said more than 1.3m passengers cancelled their travel plans over the Christmas and new year period because of Omicron, with hopes for a summer recovery after a weak start to the year. The airport said travel was down 56% in January compared with 2019 levels, a worse start to the year than it had forecast, as the hangover from the Omicron variant affected traveller confidence. “After a tough Christmas, Omicron has continued to bite, and this has been a weak start to the year,” said John Holland-Kaye, the chief executive of Heathrow airport. “As short-lived as the additional travel restrictions were, they ruined the travel plans of more than 1.3m passengers in the last two months.” He added that the removal of government restrictions that mean vaccinated travellers arriving in the UK no longer have to take coronavirus tests, which started from 4am on Friday, offered a “ray of hope” for the recovery of the travel industry. Despite the weaker than expected start, the airport is maintaining its forecast of 45m passengers this year, just over half of pre-pandemic levels, as it banks on a bumper summer of Britons holidaying abroad. “We are working with airlines and ground handlers to increase resources across the airport ahead of the summer peak,” the airport said. “While bookings for outbound tourism are recovering, inbound tourism and business travel remain weak due to Covid-19 levels in the UK and other countries, international testing requirements and the risk of new border closures in the event of a new variant of concern.”<br/>
London's Gatwick Airport will reopen its south terminal next month, counting on the easing of coronavirus curbs to boost demand this summer as travellers venture out after the Omicron variant of the virus dampened new year celebrations for most. A number of airlines will return to the south terminal from March 27, said the UK's second-largest airport, which has kept the terminal shut for nearly two years as passenger numbers plummeted during the health crisis. Carriers including British Airways, Aer Lingus, Norwegian Air and low-cost carriers Vueling, Wizz Air and Ryanair will operate from the terminal, while easyJet will operate across south and north terminals. "We are going to see significant growth at the very beginning of the summer season here at Gatwick, and then progressively we will build to operate at about 90% of the 2019 levels," Gatwick CE Stewart Wingate said. The pandemic was especially hard on the travel sector as the emergence of a number of new variants has led to recurring curbs, wiping out company earnings and making it difficult for businesses to plan. A warning from Britain's biggest airport, Heathrow, of a slow start to 2022 due to the fast-spreading Omicron variant underscored some of those lingering jitters. Airlines are still hopeful that passenger numbers, particularly in international travel, will pick up as virus-related restrictions have either been completely lifted or are being gradually eased in major economies. In Britain, demand for flights has been edging back towards pre-COVID levels for the crucial summer holiday season, according to market data that also showed bookings for the period only 16% behind comparable levels in January 2019. Fully vaccinated people will no longer need to take a COVID-19 test when they land in the UK starting from Friday, making trips cheaper and relatively hassle-free.<br/>
Vietnam will remove its COVID-19 restrictions on international passenger flights with all markets starting Feb. 15, with no limitation on the number of flights, the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper reported on Sunday. The Southeast Asian country imposed tight border controls at the start of the pandemic to keep out COVID-19, with some initial success, but that dealt a blow to its burgeoning tourism sector which accounted for about 10% of gross domestic product. "Vietnam will lift restrictions on international flights starting February 15. The frequency of flights will be restored to pre-pandemic level," Tuoi Tre said, citing Dinh Viet Son, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam. Vietnam has already informed its partners about that new policy and only China has not yet agreed to resume commercial flights with Vietnam, Son was quoted as saying. Vietnam had already begun gradually resuming international flights with 15 markets from the beginning of this year while easing quarantine requirements, with vaccinated passengers now needing only three days of self-isolation. <br/>
A global travel divide is deepening as some countries ditch Covid-19 restrictions including quarantines, isolation and even mandatory testing for good, while others cling to years-old curbs. Lingering barriers to travel in Asia in particular are isolating the region and its tourism-reliant economies, just as the recovery in Europe and the US accelerates. In the UK., authorities are dumping unpopular pre-flight tests and now only require proof of vaccination as they strive to normalise international air traffic. The marquee transit hubs of Hong Kong and Singapore are being shunned as travellers seek to avoid weeks in hotel isolation on arrival or a raft of testing swabs. Airlines, which before the pandemic operated about 30,000 flights a month to the two Asian gateways, have slashed that number to just 4,514 in February, according to aviation data company Cirium. There’s little prospect of immediate change. Hong Kong — which quarantines overseas arrivals for as long as 14 days, and effectively bars flights from an array of countries deemed to be high risk — is sticking to a goal of eliminating the virus even as cases in the community surge. Last week, authorities there tightened restrictions even further, extending gathering limits to private premises for the first time. And while Singapore has struck more than two dozen agreements with other countries to set up vaccinated air-travel lanes, it still requires overseas visitors to undergo almost a week of daily coronavirus tests during their stay. Anyone attending the city’s scaled-back biennial air show this week must also test negative each day as a condition of entry. The uneven air-travel rebound is likely to continue for the rest of 2022 as countries in Europe and North and South America continue to reopen and Asian restrictions put off travelers, according to Rob Morris, Cirium’s global consultancy chief. “The two-speed recovery is very evident,” he said. “A significant level of intra-Asia traffic touches China and with borders there likely to remain closed to international arrivals through late 2022, the recovery in Asia will inevitably be slower than other regions.”<br/>
In the early days of the pandemic, when demand for air travel abruptly flatlined and international borders closed, "ghost flights" became a common phenomenon. These were empty or near-empty planes traversing the skyline as airline schedules kept to their contractual obligations to fly. The problem is that, nearly two years on, they're still haunting the skies above us. In fact, more than 100,000 "ghost flights" will sail over European skies this winter, according to recent analysis from Greenpeace. The climate damage, claims the environmental group, is "equivalent to the yearly emissions of more than 1.4m cars." The Greenpeace figures are extrapolated from a December interview with Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr in which he warned that Lufthansa Group was facing the prospect of 18,000 superfluous flights over the six-month winter season to retain its slots under European rules. On the basis that Lufthansa's air traffic accounts for 17% of the European market, Greenpeace reckons the total number of Europe's ghost flights would generate 2.1m tonnes of CO2. The analysis has triggered a torrent of outrage. Campaigner Greta Thunberg asserted that "Brussels Airlines [part of the Lufthansa group] makes 3,000 unnecessary flights to maintain airport slots." In the UK, a petition was launched, appealing to the government to ground unoccupied flights. Lufthansa, meanwhile, says it's doing its best to fill all its aircraft, but was struggling to balance Covid chaos with the need to hold onto its slots. "Unnecessary flights are not empty or 'ghost' flights," a spokesman for the airline told CNN. "They are scheduled flights that are poorly booked due to the pandemic. Despite poor demand, Lufthansa Group Airlines must operate these flights to continue securing takeoff and landing rights at hubs and major EU airports." Lufthansa says that the emergence of the Omicron variant is the reason its projections for the season ahead were so far short of the reality. The crisis "led to significantly increased travel restrictions and cases of illness in the general population and among employees," says its spokesperson. "This unexpectedly not only reduced the prior trend of recovery, but also triggered a significant slump in demand."<br/>
Sustainable aviation fuel’s main challenge relates to volume rather than airlines’ desire to use it, and consumers will be willing to pay the extra costs associated with its uptake, the director general of the IATA said Friday. “I think quantity is the main issue at the moment,” Willie Walsh said. “We used about 100 million liters of sustainable aviation fuel in 2021 — that’s a very small amount compared to the total fuel required for the industry.” Looking ahead, Walsh said airlines had ordered 14 billion liters of SAF. “I think that addresses the issue of whether airlines will buy the product,” he said. Walsh noted this was happening even though the price of SAF was “about two and a half times the price of jet kerosene. When you factor in the cost of carbon, you’re looking at maybe … twice the price of kerosene.” While there appears to be some demand for SAF, meeting it is another question entirely and its road to dominance in the sector looks to be a long one. With “appropriate government policy support,” IATA says it expects to see SAF production hit 7.9b liters by 2025, which would meet just 2% of the overall fuel requirement. By the middle of the century, the trade association says production would jump to 449b liters, or 65% of the sector’s needs. The environmental footprint of aviation is considerable, with the World Wildlife Fund describing it as “one of the fastest-growing sources of the greenhouse gas emissions driving global climate change.” The WWF also says air travel is “currently the most carbon intensive activity an individual can make.”<br/>
The clear blue skies of the first lockdown are being crisscrossed by contrails once again. These white lines are caused by ice crystals that form on the huge numbers of tiny, ultrafine particles that come from aircraft engines. Ultrafine particles are far smaller than the wavelength of light, but contrails are a rare example of them being made visible. Ultrafine particles are not just a problem in the skies above us. Airports are a large source, and my latest research has been searching for these tiny particles close to Gatwick. They were not hard to find. The number of ultrafine particles 500 metres downwind of the airport was greater than those at the kerb of London’s busiest roads. They mostly came from aircraft during takeoff and landing, but traffic, car parks and a large catering facility used to cook airline food all added to the problem. In 2021, the Dutch Health Council and the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted the growing evidence that ultrafine particles are damaging our health. This includes 75 studies; mostly relating to lung inflammation, blood pressure and heart problems, along with risks to foetal growth. However, technical differences between the studies meant that the WHO has not set a standard. We are yet to understand the spread of ultrafine particles from Gatwick, but we do know they can travel a long way. Ultrafine particles from aircraft have been found across the Los Angeles suburbs. We have found ultrafine particles from Heathrow across large areas of west London, and they can be detected more than 12 miles away in the city centre. It is a similar situation in several European cities, meaning millions of people are exposed.<br/>
The Asia-Pacific aviation industry's slow recovery from the pandemic amid government restrictions will cast a shadow over the Singapore Airshow next week, despite signs of improvement as concerns over the Omicron variant recede. The biennial event has bookended the pandemic, with the 2020 edition disrupted by the virus emerging from China and the latest show coming as the industry attempts to plot a way out of what became its biggest and most costly crisis. International passenger travel in the region was down 93% from pre-pandemic levels last year, leaving airlines heavily reliant on freight for revenue, and the Chinese outbound tourism market remains closed. But there are signs of a rebound this year, Skyscanner booking data shows, as countries such as Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Australia reopen to more vaccinated tourists without quarantine. The head of Finnair, which specialises in serving Asia from its Nordic hub, expressed optimism about a return towards normal business later this year. read more Military demand is also picking up as regional economies recover from pandemic-induced slumps and countries look to bolster their capabilities, as highlighted by Indonesia's $8.1b order for 42 Rafale fighter jets on Thursday. Airbus, Boeing and Lockheed Martin will send senior executives to the Singapore Airshow from Feb. 15-18, using it as an opportunity for now rare face-to-face meetings with customers.<br/>