The US Supreme Court declined Thursday to take up a case involving a state law that gives California-based flight crews more generous meal and rest breaks than required by federal rules. Several Virgin America flight attendants sued to be included under the law, and an appeals court in San Francisco ruled in their favor last year. Alaska Airlines, which bought Virgin America in 2016, appealed to the Supreme Court, but the justices declined to take up the matter, leaving the lower court’s ruling in place. The California law requires that workers be free from all job duties for 10 minutes every four hours and for a 30-minute meal break every five hours. Federal regulations limit flight attendants to a 14-hour work day, but they remain on duty during meal breaks. Airlines argue that if the California law stands, they will need to add crew members on some flights, which would lead to higher fares. Alaska Airlines, which is based in Seattle, said it was disappointed that the high court declined to hear its appeal. “We’re carefully evaluating how to balance California law with the federal rules that cover airline crew duties,” the airline said. The trade group Airlines for America opposes the California law and said Thursday that letting it stand “will result in a patchwork of costly and conflicting state regulations.” It said at least 19 states have laws covering meal and rest breaks.<br/>
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The Federal Communications Commission authorized SpaceX to provide Starlink satellite internet to vehicles in motion, a key step for Elon Musk’s company to further expand the service. “Authorizing a new class of [customer] terminals for SpaceX’s satellite system will expand the range of broadband capabilities to meet the growing user demands that now require connectivity while on the move, whether driving an RV across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a U.S. port, or while on a domestic or international flight,” FCC international bureau chief Tom Sullivan wrote in the authorization posted Thursday. Starlink is SpaceX’s network of satellites in low Earth orbit, designed to deliver high-speed internet anywhere on the globe. SpaceX has launched about 2,700 satellites to support the global network, with the base price of the service costing users $110 a month. As of May, SpaceX told the FCC that Starlink had more than 400,000 subscribers. SpaceX has signed early deals with commercial air carriers in preparation for this decision: It has pacts with Hawaiian Airlines and semiprivate charter provider JSX to provide Wi-Fi on planes. Up until now SpaceX has been approved to conduct a limited amount of inflight testing, seeing the aviation Wi-Fi market as “ripe for an overhaul.” <br/>
Eurocontrol has outlined three strategies to improve efficient use of electromagnetic spectrum as it ponders whether increasing spectrum demand from the mobile connectivity sector could affect aviation safety. Eurocontrol has examined the situation following the conflict caused in the USA by roll-out of ‘5G’ technology, potential interference from which has forced revision of operational procedures for various aircraft types. The US issue has focused on possible adverse effects on the aircraft radio-altimeters, data from which is used by certain flight-control systems. Radio-altimeters use the 4.2-4.4GHz frequency band, and the US allocation for 5G spectrum, covering 3.7-3.98GHz, lies close to this region. Eurocontrol says the European band allocation is more distance, at 3.4-3.8GHz, which means the situation is “not considered to be a problem requiring immediate safety mitigations” within Europe. It also points out that “higher levels” of radiated power in the USA potentially create a greater interference risk. But with spectrum bands a scarce resource, the organisation warns that aviation remains at risk from spectrum inefficiency. Loss of low-visibility approach landing capability to spectrum interference, combined with knock-on delays from diversions, could generate costs to European airlines of E180m over the course of a year and affect 1.2m passengers. “While aviation has no difficulty to innovate in other areas, current business models inherently fail at creating incentives for improving aviation spectrum efficiency,” argues Eurocontrol. It has identified improvement to adjacent band filtering as one of three strategies which could contribute to raising this efficiency. <br/>
The chaos that has plagued the European travel industry for weeks is coalescing in France as staff at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport plan to strike for the second day in a row Friday and a country-wide rail walkout looms next week. France’s civil aviation authority ordered the scrapping of 17% of flights through the hub between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. Friday after talks between unions and management at airport operator Aeroports de Paris failed to reach a wage deal. As a result, Air France-KLM, the international hub’s biggest carrier, canceled 64 flights at its French arm, while planning to keep all long-haul and nearly 90% of short and medium-haul service. The intensification of travel turmoil in France follows upheaval at other major European cities over the past weeks including in London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt due to staffing shortages and labor action. The US has also been plagued by disruptions, with Delta’s CEO Thursday apologizing to customers for an “unacceptable” level of canceled and delayed flights. As demand surges, airports and carriers in Europe have been forced to reduce flight schedules due to staffing shortfalls. French unions and airport management have been locked in negotiations over wages and working conditions, as French inflation quickened to the fastest since the euro was introduced. The next round of talks is scheduled for Friday afternoon, operator ADP said in a statement late Thursday.<br/>
Spain expects tourist arrivals to reach 90% of pre-pandemic volumes during the summer season, as northern Europeans shrug off concerns over inflation pressures and book even more trips than in 2019, a senior tourism official said on Thursday. "Inflation is so far not dampening peak summer season demand," said the Secretary of State for Tourism, Fernando Valdes. He was confident the tourism industry in one of the world's most visited countries will have a high season comparable to some strong years before the COVID-19 pandemic. "It is a solid recovery in difficult conditions," he said. Spanish 12-month inflation rose to 10.2% in June, topping 10% for the first time since April 1985, according to preliminary data from the National Statistics Institute. At the same time, bookings for July and August have already reached 90% of 2019 levels, according to data from market-intelligence firm ForwardKeys. Confirmed reservations from Sweden were nearly 79% higher than in the summer before the pandemic. Danish bookings were 46% higher, and more Germans and Britons will be travelling to Spain in the coming months than in 2019. The number of tourists from the United States was just 4% lower.<br/>
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that Turkey had offered to operate Kabul airport in Afghanistan with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and was awaiting the Taliban's response to the proposal. He was speaking at a news conference at the end of a NATO summit in Madrid.<br/>
UK ministers have unveiled a 22-point plan to help tackle the airport staffing crisis after a day of further cancellations at Heathrow raised anxiety over the industry’s ability to cope this summer. The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, said the government had set out how it was backing aviation, and it was now up to airlines and airports to set realistic schedules. Labour accused Shapps of going “missing in action” during months of turmoil since chaotic scenes at Easter, with easyJet and British Airways now having pre-emptively cancelled thousands of flights to try to ward off last-minute cancellations. On Thursday, thousands more passengers had their travel plans upset after Heathrow ordered airlines to cancel flights because it could not handle the numbers due to travel. The UK’s busiest airport made a rare “schedule intervention” on Wednesday evening, leading to 30 flights being scrapped during the Thursday morning peak. Some passengers did not find out their flights were cancelled until they arrived at Heathrow. A spokesperson for Heathrow said the airport asked airlines to remove 30 flights from the morning peak as it was expecting more passengers than it had capacity to serve. About 13% more passengers were due to fly this Thursday than a week ago, according to the spokesperson, after a surge in late bookings. He said there were enough staff in all areas across the airport to guarantee smooth journeys for the number of passengers in the morning peak, and the decision was taken to avoid unsafe queues. Most of the cancelled flights were on British Airways services. The airport has yet to recruit many of the additional 1,000 staff it sought for this summer, and passengers using Heathrow in recent weeks have experienced long queues.<br/>
Pratt & Whitney and Embraer have completed the first flight test on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) with an E195-E2 regional jet. The aircraft performed a 70min flight from Vero Beach airport in Florida, with one PW1900G engine running on 100% SAF. It follows two days of ground testing at Fort Lauderdale airport, says P&W. For the test flight, both companies made use of used 100% vegetable oil-based HEFA-SPK (hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids synthetic paraffinic kerosene) fuel acquired from USA-based World Energy. P&W engines and Embraer aircraft can operate with SAF blended up to 50%. Work is ongoing to allow PW1100G-family engines to be able to operate at 100% SAF. Embraer Commercial Aviation vice-president, strategy and sustainability, Rodrigo Silva e Souza says the E2’s emissions can be slashed by 85% against previous generation aircraft, if full-SAF is used. He says: “Replacement of older aircraft by new generation products and scaling up SAF production are the two most effective actions commercial aviation can take now to achieve a significant reduction in emissions. “This test demonstrates that the E2 is ready for 100% SAF certification and operation once the industry finalises standards.” P&W in March announced it was teaming up with Air BP on the use of 100% SAF for engine testing and research. Under that agreement, both parties intend to work together to explore a “viable supply” of full-SAF for engine and propulsion tests through 2024. In the same month, P&W completed on-ground testing using 100% SAF on its GTF Advantage-configured PW1100G engines.<br/>