Amid months of mass flight cancellations and delays, the Department of Transportation has launched a customer service dashboard to help vacationers ahead of the travel-heavy Labor Day weekend. Starting Thursday, travelers will be able to check the dashboard and see what kinds of guarantees, refunds or compensation the major domestic airlines offer in case of flight delays or cancellations. It’s designed to allow travelers to shop around and favor those airlines that offer the best compensation. The dashboard is part of an extended pressure campaign from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has publicly challenged the major carriers to improve service and transparency after a summer marred by cancellations and flight delays. As summer travel returned to nearly pre-coronavirus pandemic levels, airlines struggled to keep pace, with mass cancellations being blamed on staffing shortages, particularly among pilots. “Passengers deserve transparency and clarity on what to expect from an airline when there is a cancelation or disruption,” Buttigieg said in a statement Wednesday. The new tool, he said, will help travelers to “easily understand their rights, compare airline practices, and make informed decisions.” The dashboard compares all the major domestic airlines’ policies on issues such as which offer meals for delays of more than three hours and which offer to rebook flights on the same or different airlines at no additional charge. It focuses on what it calls “controllable” cancellations or delays — meaning those caused by mechanical issues, staffing shortages or delays in cleaning, fueling or baggage handling. Delays or cancellations caused by weather or security concerns do not count. The Department of Transportation is hoping that the dashboard will encourage competition among airlines to offer the most transparency and the best protections for customers.<br/>
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The Transportation Department said Thursday the largest US airlines had made "significant changes" to customer service plans with nearly all agreeing to offer passengers meals and overnight stays for delays within their control. Reuters first reported Wednesday many of the changes to the customer service plans that came after Secretary Pete Buttigieg told airlines on Aug. 19 that he would publish a "dashboard" comparing customer protections airlines were committing to offer ahead of the busy US Labor Day travel weekend. USDOT said the changes came after Buttigieg's urging -- and 9 of the 10 largest US airlines made "significant changes to their plans to improve services provided to passengers." The 10 largest carriers account for 96% of domestic flights. Airlines have canceled or delayed tens of thousands of flights this summer as they cut flights and struggled to ramp up staffing as demand returned from historic lows that resulted from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.Buttigieg said in the first six months, roughly 24% of US airlines domestic flights were delayed and 3.2% were canceled. <br/>
European safety regulators are backing a postponement of requirements for aircraft to carry equipment to transmit position information autonomously if the flight is in distress, citing the impact of the pandemic on deliveries. Under ICAO standards this equipment – known as an emergency locator transmitter and distress tracker – will be required on aircraft with a maximum take-off weight exceeding 27t whose certificates of airworthiness are issued from 1 January 2023. Such transmitters will provide location information at least once every 60s if the aircraft encounters an emergency. The intention is to support search-and-rescue and investigation authorities in locating the aircraft in the event of an accident, particularly in remote areas or oceans. But aircraft manufacturers have sought to push back the implementation deadline. According to a formal opinion from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, discussions with aircraft industry representatives indicate airframers are “facing significant delays” in certification owing to the time required to fit aircraft with the necessary equipment. EASA says the pandemic has affected the planned deliveries of 700-1,000 aircraft this year which had been designed and manufactured without the equipment installed. These aircraft have been in long-term storage and will be delivered after the January 2023 deadline. “Among those aircraft, many are destined for European Union operators,” says EASA, pointing out that the European regulations go further than those specified by ICAO and contain certain performance objectives. Fitting aircraft with equipment that meets both ICAO and EASA requirements means a “significantly higher” workload in terms of design and certification, it adds. EASA also says the effort to set up communications infrastructure for transmitting location signals through the satellite-based COSPAS/SARSAT search-and-rescue network is experiencing delays.<br/>
Hong Kong International Airport has conducted a trial run of a major surge in passenger arrivals, in one of the clearest signs yet the finance hub could soon further relax Covid curbs. Authorities replicated 1,000 passengers -- about three to four planeloads -- arriving within a 30-minute timeframe at the hub Thursday to stress test the “ability of the current quarantine and testing processes,” according to a government statement. The airport is designed to handle 6,200 arrivals per hour normally, according to the city’s aviation regulator. Passengers of different ages, with incomplete documents and who tested positive were all included in the exercise, which went “smoothly,” according to the statement. The volume of passengers simulated was about double that handled in current peak hours, the government said. Arrivals at Hong Kong airport have to submit to both RAT and PCR Covid tests, and show a range of documents to comply with the government’s pandemic entry requirements, as well as go through normal immigration and customs procedures. The practice run for increased traffic suggests the government could be preparing to relax border curbs. Hong Kong CE John Lee is targeting scrapping hotel quarantine before a series of key November events, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. He pledged to bring “maximum connectivity” between the isolated financial hub and the rest of the world at a news briefing Thursday. Since taking office on July 1, Lee has faced pressure from the international business community to reopen borders, still constrained by three-day isolation for arrivals. The city’s economy is set to contract for the third time in four years, as pandemic policies weigh on growth. <br/>
Boeing expects more orders for its planes from Indian airlines as they boost their capacity to keep pace with rising demand in the world's fastest-growing major aviation market, an executive said on Thursday. Airlines in India are expected to increase their capacity by at least 25% over the next year as post-pandemic air travel demand rebounds quickly, and long-term growth to settle at 7% annually, outpacing other top high-growth markets, Boeing said. The planemaker expects South Asian airlines to order a total of 2,345 aircraft over the next 20 years. "I certainly expect more widebody orders and I expect more narrowbody orders from India," Salil Gupte, president of Boeing India told reporters in New Delhi. Indian skies are dominated by low-cost carriers including IndiGo, SpiceJet and AirAsia India, with the majority of them operating Airbus narrowbody planes. Boeing however dominates the country's widebody market where fare wars and high costs have led to casualties among full-service carriers, including Kingfisher Airlines in 2012 and Jet Airways in 2019. India's newest budget carrier Akasa Air, Tata Sons-owned Air India and the Jalan-Kalrock consortium at Jet Airways are giving Boeing hope of clawing back share in the market, with new and potential orders for more planes.<br/>
The advice from climate experts comes as a major new international report shows last year again broke climate records, with the highest ever recorded greenhouse gases. Despite that, international travel has been taking off. Auckland International Airport has reported travel is back to just over 50% of pre-pandemic levels. Air New Zealand expected to be back to 90% of all of its flights by 2025. Overseas estimates are the world's set to reach pre-pandemic levels of air travel in just two years, by 2024. But our renewed enthusiasm for air travel worried climate change experts like Sustainable Energy Professor Ralph Sims. "The question is do we need to do that travel like we did in the past. I know people that have been to Melbourne for the weekend just to go shopping. It's quite nice to go to Melbourne but there is a cost to that and a cost to the environment," Sims said. Recent findings from an Otago University study surprised even the researchers - revealing long-haul emissions had increased between 2007 to 2017 and short-haul emissions had remained the same - despite talk of planes getting more efficient. Instead, researchers found planes were less efficient. "This apparent decrease in the efficiency of aeroplanes servicing New Zealand, across 21 airlines, seems to be due to operational factors such as seating density," leader of the research team Dr Inga Smith said. Sims said alternatives and biofuels were in the works but were still years away, especially where commercial international travel was concerned. "Small electric planes are nearly here now so they might be able to buzz up and down New Zealand but from an international point of view we will be producing greenhouse gas emissions for many years to come," he said.<br/>
Boeing expects the 737 MAX 7 will be certified by the end of the year and the larger MAX 10 in the first half of 2023, a company executive said on Thursday. The planemaker faces a year-end deadline from US lawmakers for both or will need to meet new cockpit alerting requirements unless waived. "The MAX 7, that'd be the first one to come in. The MAX 10 will be right behind that," John Dyson, product marketing specialist at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, told reporters before providing more specific dates to Reuters after a briefing. Major customer Ryanair Tuesday said that Boeing appeared to have accepted it would not be able to certify the MAX 10 by the year end, but it remained possible that US lawmakers could give it more time. Dyson said Boeing was in talks with lawmakers and regulators about extending the deadline to ensure that all planes in the MAX family would have the same crew alerting system. The regulatory issues could force Boeing to cancel the MAX 10 if the deadline is not extended, Boeing CE Dave Calhoun said in July. The 2022 deadline was mandated by Congress as part of broader regulatory reforms at the US FAA after fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people.<br/>
In nonfatal accidents, turbulence is the leading cause of injuries to flight attendants and passengers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, and it's one of the most common airline accident types today, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board. It costs US airlines -- due to injuries, delays and damages -- up to $500m per year, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "There is a scale for measuring how strong turbulence is," says Paul Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in the UK. "There's light turbulence, which is a bit of strain against your seat belt, but food service can continue and you can probably walk around the cabin, maybe with some difficulty. "Then there's moderate turbulence, a definite strain against seat belts, anything that's not secured will be dislodged, and walking is difficult; flight attendants are usually instructed to take their seats. "The worst kind is severe turbulence: this is stronger than gravity, so it can pin you to your seat and if you're not wearing your seat belt you'll be tossed around inside the cabin. This is the kind of turbulence that causes serious Injuries -- it's been known to break bones, for example." About 65,000 aircraft suffer moderate turbulence every year in the US, and about 5,500 run into severe turbulence. These numbers, however, might be destined to grow. Williams believes that climate change is modifying turbulence, and started studying the subject in 2013. "We ran some computer simulations and found that severe turbulence could double or triple in the coming decades," he says. The findings, which were later confirmed by observations, highlight a type of turbulence called "clear air turbulence," which isn't connected to any visual clues such as storms or clouds. Unlike regular turbulence, it hits suddenly and is hard to avoid.<br/>