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Two US senators have urged the US Transportation Department to fine airlines that delay or cancel flights because of staffing or operational issues, the latest push by lawmakers to convince regulators to get tough on the aviation industry. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Alex Padilla asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a letter released on Tuesday to take a harder line with airlines in the face of thousands of flight cancellations this summer. The department should use its authority "to impose fines designed to change airlines’ calculus about harming consumers to pad their own profits," the senators said, noting Buttigieg can order airlines and ticket agents to stop unfair or deceptive practices and may issue fines of up to $37,377 per violation. The department, Warren and Padilla added, can "take meaningful actions to hold airlines accountable for avoidable delays and cancellations." The department could issue "more concrete rules requiring airlines to offer refunds to passengers whose flights are delayed." Airlines for America said Tuesday US airlines have trimmed capacity by 16% and are "ramping up hiring initiatives and increasing communication with travelers" while addressing "a range of challenges, outside carrier control, such as inclement weather." Last month, Senate Budget Committee chair Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, urged Buttigieg "to take immediate action to substantially reduce the number of airline cancellations and delays in our country and to protect the rights of airline passengers."<br/>

The president of a union representing federal air traffic controllers said Tuesday the US FAA needs to do a better job of ensuring adequate staffing to oversee the nation's airspace. Rich Santa, who heads the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the FAA had over 15,000 total controllers in 2011, including over 11,750 fully certified controllers, but at the start of 2022 "there were more than 1,000 fewer (certified controllers) and 1,500 fewer total controllers on-board." Santa said at a speech in Washington "Unfortunately, FAA staffing is not keeping up with attrition.... There should be 1,000 more controllers, not 1,000 fewer, than we had a decade ago." Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen told Reuters last week the FAA "on track to hire 1,000 controllers this year." For 1,500 open positions, the FAA accepted 57,956 applications for review, he added. Federal air traffic controllers generally work in control towers, approach control facilities, or route centers, and are essential for coordinating aircraft traffic between the nation's airports. US airlines have placed blame for a significant part of summer travel disruptions impacting tens of thousands of flights on a lack of air traffic control staffing. The FAA said Tuesday "airlines’ data show that the vast majority of delays are not due to air traffic controller staffing. Where demand has increased, the FAA is adding additional controllers," it added, while highlighting training backlogs caused by COVID-19.<br/>

Dutch moves to cut noise and air pollution at Amsterdam Schiphol airport will signal an end to its status as a hub for price-sensitive travelers, Infrastructure Minister Mark Harbers said in an interview. A capacity cap to be imposed next year means the airport will no longer be focused on luring transfer passengers seeking the cheapest connecting flights between other cities without visiting the Netherlands, Harbers told Bloomberg. “That’s no longer what this cabinet is aiming for,” he said in The Hague. “Schiphol has raised the rates for the airlines but we are also going to raise the flight tax. Through these measures you know that Schiphol will no longer be a cheap transfer island between airports.” Schiphol, which has been one of Western Europe’s four major hub airports for decades, plans to limit flights to 440,000 a year from November 2023, according to a government announcement last month. That’s 20% below the level that No. 1 user KLM says is needed and marks one of the first instances of an airport being actively reduced in status for environmental reasons. Dutch policymakers have previously sought to make Amsterdam a global transfer hub, helping to turn both Schiphol and KLM into far bigger players than if they served the Netherlands alone. The airport is especially popular with Britons as an alternative to traveling via London Heathrow. KLM has said it was promised a 540,000 post-Covid flight cap at Schiphol in order to catch up with demand after the pandemic, but Harbers said no such pledge was given. The airline, part of Paris-based Air France-KLM, has previously warned that cutting services would risk undermining Amsterdam’s status a hub and hence reducing the number of viable destinations. <br/>

London’s Heathrow airport has warned that a limit on the number of daily flights may stay in place longer than expected as the aviation industry struggles to overcome unprecedented levels of travel disruption. John Holland-Kaye, CE of Heathrow, said a shortage of ground handling staff was the biggest issue affecting capacity at the UK’s busiest airport. He blamed airlines for not being quick enough to hire despite Heathrow raising the issue as a concern for the past nine months, and noted that the airport’s own resources were back on track. Heathrow earlier this month introduced a cap of 100,000 passengers a day until September 11, while airlines were told to stop selling tickets for summer getaways. The cap, which prompted a backlash from some carriers including Emirates, will stay in place until airlines bolster their ground handling staff. “It will not be a quick fix. It will need some real focus and effort by everyone to replace the ground handling resource that has been lost,” Holland-Kaye said. He warned that if airlines do not start to recruit then “we might find ourselves in the same position next summer.” Heathrow started bulking up its own operations in November last year, which included hiring 1,300 people in the past six months. The airport said its own resources were sufficient to cope with about 85% of the traffic seen before the pandemic in 2019 and that this was broadly in line with current demand. <br/>

Heathrow airport has reported a GBP321m adjusted pretax loss for the first half of the year after weeks of lengthy queues and flight cancellations, with passenger numbers back at near pre-pandemic levels. Britain’s busiest airport said the summer getaway had “started well”, despite recently announcing a daily cap of 100,000 passengers until early September after it struggled to cope with rebounding demand for travel. The London hub blamed a lack of ground handling staff for recent weeks of travel chaos and lengthy delays for passengers, describing this as the “constraint on Heathrow’s capacity”. The airport estimated that airlines were lacking about 30% of ground handling staff compared with before Covid, adding there had not been an increase in these workers since January. “We have been raising our concerns over lack of handler resource for nine months,” Heathrow reported in its results. It added that from late June, as passenger numbers began to soar, it had experienced a “a worrying increase in unacceptable service levels for some passengers”. These problems included “an increase in delays to get planes on to stand, bags not travelling with passengers or being delivered very late to the baggage hall, low departure punctuality and some flights being cancelled after passengers had boarded”. Heathrow said the airport was busy during peak travel times, but any queues were “well managed and kept moving”.<br/>

The boss of Heathrow Airport has hit back at criticism from Ryanair, saying it is "bizarre" to blame airports for not having enough staff. John Holland-Kaye told the BBC it was up to airlines, not airports, to provide ground handling workers. On Monday, a Ryanair executive criticised airports for not recruiting enough staff to cater for the rebound in travellers. Thousands of passengers have faced delays and cancellations recently. A shortage of staff has contributed to the disruption. Airports and airlines, which cut jobs during Covid lockdowns, have struggled to recruit workers as demand for travel has returned. Ground handling staff are responsible for a range of services at airports, including loading and unloading baggage. On Monday, Ryanair's chief financial officer said airports had not recruited enough staff to cater for the rebound in travellers, saying they "had one job to do to". Neil Sorahan said "various governments" and airports needed to be held to account for "not staffing up appropriately". Speaking to the BBC's Today programme, Mr Holland-Kaye labelled those comments as "bizarre". He added: "Airports don't provide ground handling, that's provided by the airlines themselves. So this is like accusing us of not having enough pilots."<br/>

Airline passengers are skipping queues at Heathrow by pretending to need wheelchairs after watching a video showing this on TikTok, the airport’s boss has said. John Holland-Kaye, the CE of Heathrow airport, told LBC radio that some passengers were using the wheelchair support available to try to get fast-tracked through the airport, adding that this was “the wrong thing to be doing”. He told LBC: “For passengers requiring wheelchair support we have more demand than we had before the pandemic. Why is that happening? Some of this is because people are using the wheelchair support to try to get fast-track through the airport. That is absolutely the wrong thing to be doing.” He added: “If you go on TikTok you’ll see that that is one of the travel hacks that people are recommending. Please don’t do that.” In June a TikTok user uploaded a video of themselves having pretended to have an injured ankle and been given a wheelchair while flying from Ibiza to Bristol. The video showed the user removing their shoe, and was captioned: “Faking hurting my leg to get through security faster and on to the plane.”<br/>

Asian airline operators were quiet at one of the world's biggest airshows last week, with a dearth of new deals reflecting the region's hesitant recovery from the pandemic and the industry's focus on financing existing aircraft orders, analysts say. Manufacturers and operators regularly formalize and announce orders and partnerships at the Farnborough International Airshow, in England. And this summer, the five-day event was held in the real world for the first time since before the pandemic. But despite the return of in-person meetings, the airshow was "very, very quiet" in terms of deals, said Sash Tusa, partner and analyst at Agency Partners, an independent equity research firm in London. In terms of new orders at the airshow, Asia was "absent," he said. In general, between 2014 and 2019, Airbus and Boeing together attracted orders for an average of 750 aircraft at each show, which alternates between Farnborough and Paris. This year "we're running just over a third of that level," Tusa said. Ronan Murphy, a director at Alton Aviation Consultancy, said Asia appears to have a near-term focus on "securing financing for the existing large commitments that already exist, and getting the networks reopened before Asian carriers maybe switch to thinking about new orders." Although demand and passenger numbers are recovering to pre-pandemic levels in the US and Europe, Asia lags behind. China, a key country that feeds air traffic across the region, continues to impose COVID-19 travel restrictions and lockdowns. Japan, meanwhile, is capping tourist arrivals. Story has more.<br/>

The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) has called for action to be taken to “rebuild the resilience” of the sector, as an uptick in travel demand clashes with looming operational challenges. AAPA director general Subhas Menon notes that while Asia Pacific “has not experienced the widespread chaos observed in other parts of the world”, there are “signs of strain” among carriers, as a result of manpower shortages. “In the short term, hiring and retention incentives are being offered, but more needs to be done to rebuild the resilience of the industry for the future,” says Menon, who made these comments as AAPA released traffic results for June. For the month, carriers in the region reported strong growth in travel demand, with international passenger numbers increasing more than six-fold year on year to 9 million. Traffic increased six-fold, far outpacing the two-fold rise in capacity, notes the AAPA. Consequently, passenger load factors in June hit a new pandemic high, at 76.9%. Menon hails the significant improvement in passenger traffic, stating: “The region’s airlines are resuming flights to more destinations, as economies reopen for business and international travel. This is a welcome change that was a long time coming.” Still, he warns that traffic in the first half of 2022 is “still well below pre-Covid-19 levels”. “Meanwhile, escalating fuel prices and cost inflation are risks to the nascent recovery and return to profitability just as the industry is emerging from its worst crisis,” adds Menon. As for cargo, AAPA data indicates a slowdown in demand, as a result of inflation, as well as a decline in exports and supply chain constraints. Freight-tonne kilometres for the month fell 4% year on year, though capacity rose 5.7%, led by a rise in bellyhold space.<br/>

All international air routes operated by Korea's seven regional international airports have come back into service for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the airport operator said Tuesday. With the reopening of the route linking Cheongju International Airport in Korea's central region to Vietnam's Da Lat on Tuesday, all seven of the country's international airports were normally operating all of their international air routes, according to the Korea Airports. It marks the first reopening of those air flight routes since February 2020, when international flights were suspended or scaled down due to COVID-19. The other international airports are the Gimpo, Yangyang, Daegu, Muan, Gimhae and Jeju international airports. Starting with Daegu International Airport's reopening of its route to Vietnam's Da Nang on May 28, those regional airports have been resuming their international flights on the back of the receding pandemic, including the Gimhae-Fukuoka route on May 31 and the Gimpo-Haneda line on June 29.<br/>

Regulators are directing US operators of Boeing Co. 777 widebody jets to repair aircraft to address concerns about potential fuel-tank explosions, according to a filing Monday. A proposed airworthiness directive from the US Federal Aviation Administration calls for operators to inspect the jets and install Teflon sleeves and cap fasteners to certain parts of the center, left and right main fuel tanks, according to the filing. The order would apply to 282 aircraft, the FAA said. The action follows a Boeing service bulletin issued in August and expands a similar FAA directive from 2017 to address a larger number of 777 models, from the -200 to popular -300ER series. It’s intended “to prevent arcing inside the main and center fuel tanks in the event of a fault current or lightning strike, which in combination with flammable fuel vapors, could result in a fuel tank explosion and consequent loss of the airplane,” the filing said. The FAA estimates it will take about 90 hours per plane to conduct the inspections and repairs at a total cost of $14m for the US fleet of the twin-aisle jets. Airlines would have 60 days after the directive takes effect to adopt the new inspection program and as long as 60 months to make the repairs. Boeing’s shares dipped less than 1% to $156.70 at 1:15 p.m. in New York. Through the close of Friday’s trading, the stock had declined 21% this year.<br/>

The use of air freight soared during the coronavirus pandemic, as shippers leapfrogged over bottlenecks plaguing surface transport networks to get their goods to free-spending consumers. Yet even as those bottlenecks start to ease, demand for planes to move cargo is still growing. The trend is squeezing shippers’ bottom lines, lifting the fortunes of airlines and boosting the most carbon-intensive form of freight transport. Global air passenger traffic is forecast to be about a fifth lower than 2019 levels in 2022, according to the IATA. Yet air cargo volumes will be 11.7% higher than in 2019, and 4% more than in 2021, the airline trade group estimates. How long reliance on costly air shipments lasts has become “a multimillion-dollar question”, said Todd Ingledew, chief financial officer of luxury brand Aritzia. The Canadian company forecasts its profit margins will be as much as three percentage points lower this year than last due to higher costs from expedited air freight from overseas manufacturing sites, he told analysts earlier this month. Levi Strauss, the jeans manufacturer, said higher air freight costs “to support delivery of seasonal merchandise” took 0.8 percentage points off its gross profit margin in the latest quarter, while Lululemon Athletica’s margin guidance for its current quarter included 1.5 percentage points of “pressure from air freight costs due to port congestion and capacity constraints”. Air freight is much more carbon-intensive than shipping by sea. In 2019, ships moved nearly 350 times more cargo than planes but accounted for only five times more carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Transport Forum. But air freight is faster and has proven more reliable than alternatives as ports have been backlogged, truck drivers have been scarce and warehouses have filled up during the pandemic. Demand lept ahead of last year’s holiday season as retailers scrambled to stock shelves.<br/>