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For decades, commercial airline travel has gotten progressively safer. But one cause of deaths has stubbornly persisted: pilots who intentionally crash in murder-suicides. Preliminary evidence suggests the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Corp. jet in March may be the latest such tragedy, a person familiar with the investigation said. If confirmed, that would make it the fourth since 2013, bringing deaths in those crashes to 554. So as aircraft become more reliable and pilots grow less susceptible to errors, fatalities caused by murder-suicides are becoming an increasingly large share of the total. While intentional acts traditionally aren’t included in air-crash statistics, they would be the second-largest category of deaths worldwide if they were, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. By comparison, 1,745 people died as a result of pilot error, mechanical failures or other causes on Western-built jets from 2012 through 2021. “It’s scary,” said Malcolm Brenner, a former human-behavior investigator with the US National Transportation Safety Board who worked on the probe of the 1999 EgyptAir Flight 990 crash, which was found to be an intentional act. “It is a major cause of concern. It’s one the industry needs to address.” So far, however, these rare but deadly acts have defied simple solutions. While improving mental-health care is a priority, those who have chosen to kill themselves and scores of others at the same time on jetliners mostly didn’t reveal any clues beforehand to coworkers, friends or family. Story has more.<br/>

Ottawa’s suspension of randomized COVID-19 testing at customs marks a major shift toward clearing clogged terminals, but more measures are needed to end airport gridlock, industry groups say. Wait times and tarmac delays for arriving flights at large airports improved immediately after the move went into effect Saturday, according to the Canadian Airports Council and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority. “We’re very encouraged by the news. It’s a big step forward in addressing the delay issues,” council head Monette Pasher said Monday. “But there’s still a lot more work to do, as there were still gate holds, albeit for shorter periods of time. In our business we never want to see people waiting on the tarmac.”<br/>On Friday, Ottawa announced it would pause COVID-19 tests of inbound international passengers selected at random, and that mandatory rapid tests for unvaccinated arrivals will happen off-site starting July 1. The airports council and other industry groups are now calling for an end to vaccine mandates for passengers and aviation, security and customs employees, saying that hundreds more workers could be back on the job amid a labour crunch. The government continues to bar most unvaccinated foreigners from entry and requires unvaccinated Canadians to quarantine for 14 days when they return. After laying off security personnel during pandemic, Ottawa said the country’s airport security agency has hired 865 screening officers since April, with more to come as Canada’s four largest airports gird for a 50 per cent rise in traveller numbers within weeks.<br/>As of June 1, those hubs were processing an average of 56,000 inbound passengers from abroad each day _ more than half of them at Toronto’s Pearson airport, where scenes of endless queues and traveller frustration played out all spring. The figure will hit 80,000 within weeks, the airports council forecasts.<br/>

Summer vacation is only getting started, but so far pent-up demand for travel after two years of pandemic restrictions is more than offsetting soaring costs related to a surge in the price of jet fuel and a battered airline industry that still is struggling to put as many planes in the air as it was a few years ago. “We observe that consumers are ready to accept price hikes,” Annick Guérard, CE of holiday airline Transat, said in a press release on June 9, adding that the company she runs would have made money in its most recent quarter if not for the spike in fuel prices. The average international airfare from Canada is now $960, up 15% compared with 2019, according to data collected by Hopper, the Montreal-based company behind the travel app of the same name. Soaring fuel costs, industry labour shortages, and fewer seats are among the factors contributing to the rise in prices, said Haley Berg, Hopper’s lead economist. “We know demand has surged since the beginning of the year, given borders have opened, many Canadians are looking to travel again,” Berg said. “So, you have a gap of more people who want to travel than seats that are available to be booked.” Evidence that travellers are willing to absorb higher prices is good news for industries that depend on travel and tourism, which have been among the slowest to recover form the COVID recession. For example, employment in the accommodation and food services industry — hotels and restaurants, essentially — was still below pre-pandemic levels in May, according to Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey, published June 10. Transat’s share price is about 75 per cent lower than it was at the start of 2020, reflecting the near impossibility of turning a profit in the airline industry over the past couple of years.<br/>

Toronto airport has become the first in North America to introduce a system intended to optimise spacing of aircraft on approach, based on time intervals, accounting for several factors including weather conditions. Air navigation service Nav Canada transitioned to the ‘Intelligent Approach’ system – initially introduced at London Heathrow – on 28 May. Introduction of the system has been conducted in co-operation with UK air traffic control specialist NATS and the US-based technology organisation Leidos. Instead of using set distance intervals for arrivals, NATS says the tool calculates dynamically the optimum time interval between aircraft, based on their type and the weather conditions – enabling landing rates to be maintained even in strong headwinds. The air traffic controller’s display screen uses graphics to illustrate the situation and ensure consistency of aircraft spacing. NATS says the tactical tool will provide Toronto airport – which has five runways – with extra capacity and will help reduce delays, notably during high wind conditions. It says the Heathrow system, implemented in 2015, has cut headwind-related delays by 62%. “It has never been more important for airports to make the very best of their existing infrastructure,” says NATS strategy and commercial director Guy Adams. <br/>

Long lines of passengers forced to wait hours at Lisbon airport are unlikely to ease into the main summer tourist season despite plans to almost double border control staff, the union chief for Portugal's border and immigration service SEF warned Monday. On Sunday, passengers waited for more than three hours in arrivals at the capital's airport, according to airport management company ANA, which in a statement blamed the SEF for insufficient numbers of staff and border checkpoints. SEF union chief Acacio Pereira said that Lisbon airport was "an old facility", unable to handle the leap in passengers numbers after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. He accused ANA of poorly managing the distribution of Lisbon-bound flights, having channeled 60 through the airport on Sunday in a short period of time. Border staff checked more than 100,000 people at Portuguese airports on Saturday and Sunday, half of them in Lisbon, he said, adding that the SEF "has a duty to guarantee the country's security".<br/>

Australian pension fund IFM Global Infrastrucuture Fund will make a mandatory takeover offer for Vienna Airport AG after increasing its stake in the pandemic-hit airport operator to more than 40%, it said on Monday. IFM GIF, a long-time investor, said on Monday it would offer 33 euros ($34.51) per share but added that it was not seeking a majority and that it did not expect the City of Vienna, the province of Lower Austria or the Employee Trust to sell their share. The Austrian capital and the adjoining province hold 20% each, employees hold another 10% of Vienna Airport’s 84m shares. “Despite the difficult economic situation for the aviation industry, we believe in the strong fundamentals of Flughafen Wien and in Austria as a place to invest,” IFM Investors executive director infrastructure, Werner Kerschl, said. Vienna Airport shares soared as much as 25% but at 32,80 euros they remained below the offer price. A spokesperson for the airport operator said the group would comment on the offer in the coming weeks.<br/>

London's Heathrow Airport said on Monday that May was its busiest month since March 2020 as it dealt with 5.3m passengers, 79% of 2019 levels. Cancelled flights, long queues and staff shortages at UK airports disrupted the travel plans of British holidaymakers during the Jubilee half-term break. However, Heathrow said its check-in generally worked well in May, with more passengers checking-in online, while 90% of passengers went through security in less than ten minutes. It said no more flights were cancelled at short notice than on any normal day and Border Force performed well. Heathrow did caution that while it rebuilds capacity from the pandemic, resources remains tight, in line with other airports in the UK and Europe. "We are working closely with airlines and handlers to match supply and demand," it said. "This has made the difference at Heathrow in being able to get passengers away over Easter and the Jubilee half term and is now being adopted by other major hubs in Europe."<br/>

Heathrow has insisted its check-in process “generally worked well” in May” despite chaos at UK airports during the half-term holidays, after recording its busiest month since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The UK’s biggest airport said on Monday that with more air travellers checking in online, 90% of passengers went through security in less than 10 minutes in May. Heathrow said no more flights were cancelled at short notice than on a typical day and Border Force “performed well” during the month. Holidaymakers getting away during the jubilee half-term break faced long queues and cancelled flights as the aviation industry struggled to cope with staff shortages and passenger numbers climbing back towards pre-pandemic levels. Other airports including Gatwick and Manchester appeared to experience the worst disruption. But Heathrow customers complained they had to queue for hours at passport control from the weekend before the half-term holiday. Heathrow said it had worked with Border Force to minimise queueing times after an influx of passengers into the Terminal 3 immigration hall. Heathrow said resources remained “tight” but it was working to “match supply and demand” which had made the difference over Easter and the half-term holidays. The Heathrow CE, John Holland-Kaye, said: “I’m immensely proud of the way my team has worked with airlines and other partners to ensure passengers got away during the jubilee half-term. We continue to make good progress with our plans to ramp up capacity and are working closely with airlines and government to keep supply and demand in balance as we grow, so that passengers can travel through Heathrow this summer with confidence.”<br/>

Qatar's civil aviation regulator said on Monday it expected Hamad International Airport, the base of Qatar Airways, to handle between 34m and 36m passengers this year, roughly double the number served by the airport last year. The projection assumes the recovery in travel from the pandemic continues with nations further easing restrictions. An estimated 3.5m to 4.1m passengers will arrive, depart and transit Qatar in November, while 3.6m to 4.7m are expected in December, the regulator also said on Twitter. During the World Cup, which runs from mid-November to mid-December, several Middle East carriers will operate dozens of flights to and from Doha on match days, while Qatar will also use its old Doha International Airport for flights in addition to the newer Hamad International Airport. Hamad International, which only handles international flights, served 17.7m passengers in 2021, and 38.8m in 2019, the year before the pandemic began.<br/>

Seletar Airport has reopened to commercial flights for the first time in more than two years, in another step towards normality for the aviation sector. The first flight marking the reopening, Malaysian carrier Firefly's FY3124, landed at the airport at around 8.50am on Monday (June 13). Fifty-nine passengers were on board the 72-seater turboprop plane. Firefly will operate four flights daily for a start - two flights in each direction between Singapore and Subang. It stopped operating flights to Singapore on March 16, 2020, after the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Before the pandemic, it had operated six flights in each direction daily between Seletar Airport and Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport. Firefly CE Philip See said that the airline will look to increase the number of flights plying the route by the end of this year if demand picks up. Prior to the pandemic, about 50 to 60% of the seats were filled on flights on this route. See said the relatively smaller size of both airports, which results in faster immigration clearance and boarding compared with large airports, offers an important air travel alternative to both leisure and business travellers.<br/>

Renewable and low-carbon hydrogen is crucial in curbing emissions, but it will only account for 5% of the global final energy mix by 2050, falling short what is needed to meet climate goals, global energy consultancy DNV said on Monday. To meet the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees by 2050, hydrogen would need to reach 13%, according to its calculations, the Norway-based risk management expert said when presenting its first standalone hydrogen outlook paper. The company runs its own independent model of the world's energy system and has been publishing an annual Energy Transition Outlook since 2017. The global share of 5% translates into more than 200 million tonnes of hydrogen, with 60% of that pure hydrogen and compounds like ammonia and synthetic fuels accounting for another fifth each, DNV now forecast. An increased hydrogen uptake to meet net-zero targets would require stronger policy mandates, increased demand-side incentives and higher carbon prices, it added. DNV projected Europe's focus on energy transition would bring hydrogen's share in its energy mix to 11% by 2050. Found only in compound form, hydrogen takes a great deal of energy to harness, which makes it expensive and inefficient compared to using electricity directly. But replacing fossil fuels with electricity is hard for sectors such as aviation, shipping, and high-heat industrial processes and "green hydrogen" made with renewable energy, or low-carbon one, can help them reduce their carbon footprint.<br/>

Industrywide demand for airplanes is strong and will continue to improve as airlines work to replace aging fleets, buy more efficient models and continue to see passenger growth, Boeing CE Dave Calhoun said on Monday. "Demand for airplanes is as robust as I've ever seen it. I think it will get more robust," Calhoun told Reuters and another news outlet on the sidelines of an event at Boeing's new headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The demand for airplanes "is more than a bubble," he added. Calhoun described the decision to move the headquarters to Arlington from Chicago, announced last month, as "not a momentary thing. It wasn't an auction." Calhoun, speaking to reporters after an event Monday to herald the HQ announcement, said Boeing did not consider relocating its headquarters back to Seattle, where it had been based until its move to Chicago in 2001. "It was a simple consolidation of footprints," he said. Boeing, a major US defense contractor, also plans to develop a research and technology hub in the Arlington area, home to the Pentagon and across the Potomac River from the US capital. "Our biggest customer in the world is right across the way -- the Pentagon is the biggest in the world," Calhoun said. "This is just a smart spot." Boeing's new headquarters is in an Arlington office it has had since 2014 where it has significant unused space, and which sits just blocks from Amazon.com's second headquarters, known as HQ2, which is under construction. "This innovation campus really got jelled when Amazon came here," Calhoun said. The Chicago headquarters - a 36-floor, $200m riverfront skyscraper - has been at the crossroads of a cost-cutting campaign for Boeing, which has shed real estate, including its commercial airplane headquarters in Seattle.<br/>