Packed planes and more expensive tickets drove down customer satisfaction with airlines for the first time in a decade over the past year, according to a J.D. Power survey published Wednesday. “Customer satisfaction with North American airlines climbed to unprecedented highs for all of the wrong reasons during the past two years,” said Michael Taylor, travel intelligence lead at J.D. Power, in the report on North American airlines. “Fewer passengers meant more space on airplanes, less waiting in line and more attention from flight attendants. But that business model was simply not sustainable.” Air travel demand surged over the past year, along with fares, following a prolonged pandemic slump. In March, domestic US airfares were 20% higher than 2019 as Covid cases dropped and cities lifted pandemic restrictions on activities such as indoor dining and concerts, according to Adobe Analytics. The rise in ticket prices has outpaced bookings, according to Adobe. But customer satisfaction dropped among travelers across all the ticket classes — coach, premium economy and first or business class — according to the survey, which was based on responses from 7,004 passengers from March 2021 through March 2022. It was the first year-over-year decline since the 2012 survey, Taylor said. JetBlue Airways topped the rankings of first- and business-class service among North American carriers, while Southwest Airlines came in first for economy and basic economy. Story lists results.<br/>
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Canadians traveling through Toronto Pearson International Airport are facing lengthy wait times and the situation is likely to worsen in coming weeks. The airport is being hit with a double whammy of staffing shortages and longer processing times due to public health screening measures, according to Greater Toronto Airports Authority spokesperson Tori Gass. The Covid-19 measures can double or even quadruple the required processing time, she said. “We are forced to sort of hold passengers on their airplanes because of capacity issues,” Gass said. “There’s not enough space inside the terminal.” The bottlenecks are expected to worsen during the busy summer season with the number of international passengers expected to rise to around 45,000 a day from 30,000 currently, Gass said. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority has put in place additional measures to increase staffing in the coming weeks, according to the office of Canada’s Transport Minister Omar Alghabra. “As the air sector continues to recover, staffing remains an issue that the industry is working as quickly as possible to resolve,” his office said in an emailed statement.<br/>
The European Union will no longer recommend that member states require face masks on planes and in airports, two E.U. agencies announced on Wednesday, ending a guideline that had been in place for nearly two years as countries across the bloc lift Covid restrictions. “For passengers and aircrews, this is a big step forward in the normalization of air travel,” Patrick Ky, the executive director of the E.U. Aviation Safety Agency, said in a joint statement with the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. The statement said the decision was the result of the current levels of vaccination and naturally acquired immunity across the bloc, which have also prompted the lifting of restrictions in a growing number of European countries. The revised recommendations will come into effect on Monday, but rules on mask wearing might still vary depending on the airlines, the statement said, adding that carriers should require masks on flights to and from destinations where masks remain mandatory on public transport. Italy, and Germany still do so; France announced it would lift the requirement starting on Monday. In other cases, the new E.U. guidelines said airlines should still encourage passengers to wear masks but “respect others’ decision to wear or to not wear a mask.” Ky also said that passengers coughing and sneezing “should strongly consider wearing a face mask, for the reassurance of those seated nearby” and that vulnerable passengers should continue to wear masks. The announcement relaxes guidance that the E.U. agencies issued in May 2020, recommending that masks be required in airports and on aircraft in order to allow air travel to continue during the pandemic.<br/>
Boeing said Wednesday it would study an equity raise after unlocking deliveries of its 787 and returning its cash-cow 737 MAX to service in China, but flagged supply chain risks amid broader certification and industrial problems. Resuming deliveries of 787 Dreamliners and clearing inventories of its 737 Max are vital for Boeing’s ability to emerge from overlapping crises. The pandemic and the grounding of its best-selling model after fatal crashes have drained its cash and saddled Boeing with debt. China, one of the top aviation markets in the world, has been a holdout in clearing the 737 MAX to return to commercial service. Boeing sold a quarter of its jets to China before the grounding and the years-long tit-for-tat tariff war. West said China was close to clearing the 737 MAX to return to service, but progress with regulators and customers was delayed by stringent COVID protocols, not by broader trade tensions with Washington that have curbed jet orders. “With China, without China, there’s robust demand,” West said. “We still want to make sure we’re very sensitive to that part of the world,” he added. But when Boeing raises production, “it will be a function of our confidence in our supply chain, not the demand signals.” Boeing shares were flat on Wednesday afternoon against a fractionally lower Dow Jones industrial average. Boeing popped up 4% shortly after West made some optimistic comments, but then the stock pared gains. West also said Boeing’s 737 MAX production and deliveries were hit by shortages of a particular wiring connector, as the industry grapples with broader supply chain disruptions worsened by war in Ukraine. Overall he said the factory was primed to produce 31 jets monthly to plan. “It’s a reflection of a crazy supply chain world that we live in right now,” West said. “It’s fairly localized and isolated, but we have options and we’re working them hard.”<br/>