Airlines that once touted globe-spanning destinations, promising adventure, luxury or both, are now leaning on a simpler sales pitch: reliability. Flight delays and cancellations spiked at several points over the last year, costing US carriers more than $100m combined and disrupting travel plans of hundreds of thousands of customers. Even some crews have been forced to sleep at airports, a rare last resort for an industry that’s used to accommodating thousands of pilots and flight attendants on the road each day. As the peak travel season gets underway, the industry risks a repeat of those headaches, and airlines are hoping to get ahead of the problems. Their efforts include massive hiring, better technology for staff and customers, earlier planning for storms, and for some carriers, conservative scheduling or cuts to their spring and summer schedules altogether. One of airlines’ biggest challenges in what’s shaping up to be a monster travel season is how to handle routine disruptions like bad weather, whether that means delaying flights or canceling outright before passengers arrive at the airport. When planes are packed, airlines have fewer options to move passengers to alternate flights, setting up a game of musical chairs in the sky — with luggage. Airlines don’t charge passengers to rebook and big network carriers scrapped standard economy date-change fees to spur bookings during the coronavirus pandemic. But travelers could pay the price if they are forced to buy a new, last-minute ticket on another airline to make it to big events like a wedding or keep other travel plans. Story has more.<br/>
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Russia still does not control the skies over Ukraine. That is the conclusion of senior US defence officials, who say the Russian military is attempting to improve the performance of its forces as the war enters a new phase. In the opening operations of the invasion, focused largely around Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, the Russian air force was noted for its lack of large-scale operations and the hesitancy of pilots to fly effective air support missions over Ukraine. That trend appears to be continuing, at least in part, as Russian leaders shift the focus of their campaign to the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas. In a background briefing in Washington on 28 April, a senior US defence official says that the Russian air effort, including cruise missiles and fixed wing jets, is largely focused around Mariupol, the Miami-sized port city already devastated by Russian bombardment. The official adds that the continued targeting of Mariupol is an indicator that Russia does not believe it has fully secured the area around the city. “They are continuing to pound Mariupol with strikes, both air strikes and missile strikes,” they said. “You don’t do that if you think it belongs to you.” The official also notes that almost all of those strikes are coming from inside Russia.<br/>
A Russian missile strike on Saturday knocked out the newly-constructed runway at the main airport in the Ukrainian city of Odesa, a strategic Black Sea port, military and civilian officials said. "The Odesa airport runway was destroyed. We will, of course, rebuild it. But Odesa will never forget Russia's behaviour towards it," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a late night address. Odesa regional governor Maksym Marchenko said Russia had used a Bastion missile, launched from Crimea. "Thank God no one was hurt. Anti-sabotage measures are being carried out in the region," he said in a video posted online. Odesa mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov said it had taken 10 years to design and build the new runway, which was formally opened last July. "Thanks to the new runway we were expecting a colossal influx of tourists from all over the world. Instead, we got a rocket strike," he said on Facebook.<br/>
For a time this spring, Heathrow’s CE John Holland-Kaye was mucking in on the frontline, stacking X-ray trays at security to help keep queues moving at the short-staffed airport. Like the rest of the travel industry, the west London airport has roared back to life following two desperate years as border restrictions stifled business. But Holland-Kaye is already into his next fight in a job that involves leading one of the most controversial businesses in UK aviation. Britain’s busiest airport — which has suffered £4bn of losses since the start of 2020 — has caused a serious rift in the travel industry by pushing for a 90 per cent rise in the landing fees it charges, enraging airlines that have also suffered billions of dollars in losses and run up huge debts during the crisis. The antipathy deepened this week when Holland-Kaye unveiled a downbeat assessment of the industry’s recovery, and warned the surge in demand for travel this spring and summer was merely a “bubble” that could be popped this winter. This view contrasts with a burst of positive commentary coming from other parts of the industry. British Airways’ owner IAG has said a “strong and sustained” recovery is under way. Holland-Kaye’s comments have fuelled accusations from airlines that he is deliberately talking down the recovery to persuade the UK regulator to allow Heathrow to hike its fees, which are charged on a per passenger basis.<br/>
Hong Kong will shorten mandatory hotel quarantine for passenger flight crews to three days from seven, while cargo crews will be exempt, modest steps at unwinding coronavirus curbs that have turned the city into one of the world's most isolated places. The changes, which take effect in May, give the global financial hub's aviation trade and logistics industries "much needed survival space", the government said Friday. Hong Kong said it was also lifting an outbound travel alert on overseas countries from May, more than two years after it was first implemented in March 2020. "The epidemic situations in overseas countries/territories with frequent traffic with Hong Kong have generally been on a downward trend...The risk of travelling overseas has lowered relatively," the government said. Hong Kong has some of the world's strictest COVID-19 rules. Non-residents will be allowed to enter the city for the first time in more than two years from May, the government announced on April 22. It has also slightly adjusted rules for airlines that carry infected COVID-19 patients, with the threshold for suspending incoming flights rising to five infected passengers from three currently. A ban on individual airline routes will be shortened to five days from seven from May.<br/>
Southeast Asia is finally, tentatively throwing off the shackles of Covid and reopening for travel, with airlines filling an increasing number of seats as holiday-starved masses arrange overseas vacations for the first time in two years. While the region lags other places such as North America and Europe that reopened sooner, the upward momentum gathered pace in April. Ticket bookings are rising as popular tourist destinations like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia allow quarantine-free entry for vaccinated travelers again. “April has been a very important month for Southeast Asia,” said Gary Bowerman, director of travel and tourism research firm Check-in Asia. “The optimism is back, people are now thinking and talking about traveling the way they weren’t before. Just look at the search volumes that are happening.” Google searches related to travel to Singapore have jumped, particularly from neighboring Malaysia, as well as Indonesia, India and Australia, according to data tracked by economists at Maybank Investment Bank Bhd. Searches rose about 20% since the last week of March. Air-passenger traffic to Singapore reached 400,000, or 31% of pre-Covid levels, in the week ending April 17 after most travel restrictions for fully-vaccinated people were lifted at the start of the month, according to the country’s civil aviation authority. <br/>
The number of international visitors to Cambodia hit 159,546 in Q1 this year, marking a 125.03% increase from 70,901 on a yearly basis, of which 54.51% entered the Kingdom by air, according to the Ministry of Tourism. The increase comes as the country opens up and dials back Covid-19-related restrictions, and observers are optimistic that tourism gains will extend into the rest of this year, on the back of the recent removal of rapid and PCR coronavirus tests for fully-vaccinated arrivals. The ministry reported that in the January-March period, 86,976 visitors entered Cambodia through its three international airports, up by 159.4% year-on-year, and 72,570 arrived either overland or via waterways, up by 94.2% on a yearly basis. Vietnam emerged as the top source of tourists at 46,303, up by 1,188.9%, followed by Thailand (39,615; up 12.2%) and China – the only major market to register a year-on-year drop, at 59.1 % to 9,753, the ministry said. Next up were the US (8,820; up 876.7%) and Indonesia (8,578; up 268%), with significant numbers arriving from France, South Korea, Malaysia, and the UK. Cambodia Association of Travel Agents president Chhay Sivlin suggested that the general uptrend in international tourism metrics was primarily buoyed by the encouraging rise in Covid-19 vaccination rates and accompanying low transmission rates, which she said have convinced a fair share of foreign visitors and investors to make a trip to the Kingdom this year.<br/>