As coronavirus policies and masking rules around the world faded away in recent months, one major mandate remained in place: Travelers flying to the United States had to provide a negative test result before boarding their plane. As of Sunday morning, that, too, will be gone. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that it was going to lift the requirement on Sunday at 12:01 a.m. after officials determined that the widespread adoption of vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 no longer make it necessary. In an agency release explaining her decision, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the CDC director, also cited booster shots and the milder Omicron variant, which she said had “generally caused less severe disease among those who are infected.” The decision was met with joy in the travel industry, which for months has been lobbying the administration hard to get rid of the testing rule. “It’s a Friday miracle,” said Marc Casto, chairman of the board of the American Society of Travel Advisors, a trade group. “It’s huge. It’s monumental.” The hard-hit travel industry is already in the middle of a comeback, but Casto said he believed dropping the mandate would lead to double-digit percentage increases in the number of people flying and staying in hotels abroad. American travelers had held off on overseas vacation plans because of the mandate, worried that they would be stuck in foreign countries if they discovered they were infected and would be forced to pay thousands of dollars in hotel fees and other expenses, he said. Conversely, international travelers to the United States faced the uncertainty of testing positive before their trips began. (International travelers to the United States will still be required to be fully vaccinated.)<br/>
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Singapore’s Changi Airport will reopen two of its terminals that were shuttered due to Covid-19 as travel springs back faster than expected. Terminal 4 will reopen in September and departure operations in the southern wing of Terminal 2 will restart from October, Changi Airport Group (Singapore) Pte said in a statement Friday. The added capacity will allow the airport to better cope with an influx of passengers in the northern hemisphere winter. Singapore is welcoming travelers again after it removed all quarantine and testing rules for fully-vaccinated people in early April. Singapore Airlines Ltd. aims to be operating at 67% of its pre-Covid capacity by September. While Terminals 1 and 3 have been operating during Covid, Terminals 2 and 4 were shut. One of Terminal 2’s halls was reopened in late May. With passenger traffic reaching 48% of pre-pandemic levels in the first week of June, more airlines are asking for flights, according to Changi’s statement. “This growth trajectory will continue, the momentum will be sustained,” Singapore Transport Minister S. Iswaran said at a briefing at the airport Friday. The reopening of the terminals will bring annual operating capacity to as high as 70m passengers, he added. Last month, he said passenger traffic at Changi was already near 50% of what it was before the pandemic, a target the government previously only expected to reach later in 2022. Singapore has also resumed plans for construction of a fifth terminal, with building work expected to start in two to three years.<br/>
In its quest to roar back after the turmoil of the pandemic, Brazilian aerospace and defence group Embraer is imagining a not so far-off future of flying taxis and electric planes. But as it strives to double revenues over five years, the world’s third-largest commercial plane maker has pinned its hopes on a more prosaic prediction: that the recovery in air travel will involve greater use of the smaller passenger jets that are its niche. After two years of upheaval for the global aviation industry, Embraer is due to return to the black in 2022, according to CE Francisco Gomes Neto. “We expect to deliver a net profit at the end of the year. This is an important step,” he said at Embraer’s headquarters in the city of São José dos Campos. “Our plan is big growth . . . [it] follows the resumption of domestic flights, which is where our planes fit in.” A share price surge of 45% made the company the best performer on the local Bovespa index in 2021. After axing 2,500 jobs during the pandemic, an efficiency drive and debt reduction helped it swing back into positive free cash flow. As it ramps up production, the group has recently announced 1,000 new vacancies. But to convince investors, especially after a sharp fall in the stock this year, it must overcome scepticism about its ability to expand further in a civil aircraft sector dominated by Boeing and Airbus. Doubts over the future shape and direction of an enterprise considered the crown jewel of Brazilian industry were compounded by the acrimonious collapse of a planned tie-up with Boeing. Not long after airports shuttered early in the pandemic, the US titan terminated a joint venture agreement that would have given it an 80% stake in Embraer’s commercial aircraft operations for $4.2b. <br/>
The aviation regulator has warned UK airports they will face enforcement action if they keep failing disabled and less mobile passengers. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has demanded airports set out improvements by next week and said it will use enforcement powers, which include court orders, if failures continue. The regulatory threat comes after a series of incidents in which wheelchair users were abandoned on aircraft or offered no help despite having booked assistance. They included Daryl Tavernor, 33, who has spinal muscular atrophy, and was left on a plane at Manchester airport for more than two hours before phoning the police to help get him through border control. He said the ordeal felt like being held hostage in his own country. Manchester airport eventually apologised to Tavernor but did not take responsibility for his treatment. A disabled woman was left stranded on a plane for more than an hour and a half at Gatwick airport last week. Victoria Brignell, from west London, was told she would have to wait on the plane from Malta for 50 minutes, despite her wheelchair arriving “promptly”. Victoria Brignell, who praised BA staff but said UK airports needed ‘to get their act together’. However, Wilson James, a firm contracted to help disabled passengers, did not arrive to assist her. The firm and Gatwick both apologised and said they were investigating the incident. Last month, the BBC’s security editor, Frank Gardner, expressed his frustration at being left on a plane “again” when Heathrow airport failed to deliver his wheelchair.<br/>
A volcano in the Philippines spewed a huge column of ash into the sky on Sunday, blanketing a region still recovering from last week's eruption. The blast from Bulusan volcano lasted 18 minutes, the Philippine seismological agency said, impairing road visibility and forcing airlines to cancel flights. On June 5, Mount Bulusan sent a grey plume shooting up at least one kilometre (0.6 miles) and covered 10 villages with ash. Residents of Juban town in Sorsogon province, still reeling from last week's eruption, were woken up Sunday by the volcano's thundering. "I thought it was just raining, but when I looked outside there was ash everywhere," resident Antonio Habitan told AFP. "Our river was once clear but now it is ash-coloured." No casualties were reported, but the seismological agency raised the alert level to one on the five-level system, indicating "low-level unrest". "We still can't say that it is over. It's still possible that this eruption could be followed by another one, that's why we need to be careful with the Bulusan volcano," agency head Renato Solidum told local radio station DZBB. Emergency workers were deployed to clean ash-laden roads and guide drivers struggling to see oncoming vehicles. Five flights in the area were cancelled.<br/>