general

The rocky summer travel season ended on a high note during Labor Day weekend with a surge in air travelers and relatively smooth operations across the US, according to data released on Tuesday. The TSA screened nearly 8.76m people from Friday through Monday, surpassing pre-pandemic levels of the same weekend in 2019, when it screened 8.6m people. It was the first holiday weekend since the pandemic began that TSA screenings topped 2019 tallies, a milestone in air travel’s bumpy recovery. Airlines had reduced their schedules this summer to help stop spiraling flight delays as they grappled with labor shortages. Flight disruptions over the popular travel weekend were also below recent trends, helped by decent weather. US airlines canceled just 0.6% of the more than 90,000 flights they scheduled, while 16% were delayed, according to FlightAware. That compares with 2.1% of US carriers’ flights canceled between May 27, the Friday before Memorial Day, through Labor Day. More than 22% of flights were delayed during that period. Last Thursday, the Transportation Department launched a new dashboard that lists what passengers are entitled to if their flight is canceled or delayed. Executives from major US carriers including United and American are expected to provide outlooks for the fall and the usually busy year-end holiday season during an industry conference that begins Wednesday.<br/>

With summer vacations winding down, airlines are counting on the return of more business travelers to keep their pandemic recovery going into the fall. Air travel in the United States, bolstered by huge numbers of tourists, has nearly recovered to pre-pandemic levels — even topping 2019 numbers over the Labor Day weekend. Inflation — and especially this year’s sharp rise in airfares — raises concern about how long vacationers can afford to keep flying at their current pace. Airlines say they see no signs of a slowdown in leisure travel. Business travel, however, remains about 25% to 30% below 2019 levels, according to airlines and outfits that track sales. And it is not clear when — or if — road warriors will return to their old travel habits. “The whole challenge for the industry is around the return of the corporate traveler, and whether he is going to come back in enough volume and frequency that is going to help these airlines,” says John Grant, an analyst with travel-data provider OAG. The Global Business Travel Association recently predicted that corporate travel won’t fully return until mid-2026, 18 months later than the trade group had previously forecast. Business travel is slower to return because it is more complicated than somebody deciding they want to take a vacation after staying home during the first two years of the pandemic, says Chuck Thackston, who leads data research at the Airlines Reporting Corp., a ticket-settlement firm that operates as a middleman between airlines and travel agents.<br/>

In the labour-force wreckage wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s commercial airline pilots stand out as an anomaly. No other group of white-collar workers with their level of training, skill and pay levels was let go in other sectors of the economy over the past two years as the country was reshaped by infection and uncertainty. Not in banking, not in education and not in government. Pilots making six-figure salaries and operating some of the world’s most sophisticated flying machines joined coffee baristas, hotel cleaners and hairdressers in the ranks of the unemployed – all workers in industries hardest hit by the health crisis. Thousands of pilots lost their jobs. They are the casualties of an airline sector that stopped almost overnight and a government that experts say lacked the leadership and foresight to properly plot its restart. The fallout of that failure is clear. And it stretches from the baggage carousel to the cockpit. Demand for air travel is back with unexpected force this year, but the supply of pilots isn’t there to match for a number of reasons. Many are still coming back up to speed in training after months away. Others have left Canada or the industry entirely for more predictable jobs. Airlines are scrambling daily to find the pilots to fly planes, sometimes just hours before scheduled takeoff. Delays on the ground at airports and changes to federal rules governing pilot flight hours have compounded the problem. “It’s like if we had a snowstorm every day for the past four months,” said Louis-Éric Mongrain, a pilot with Air Transat who comments regularly on the industry in the media. Airline crew schedulers, the men and women whose job it is to find pilots and flight attendants to staff a flight, are “going nuts” dealing with irregular operations, he said.<br/>

Germany will soon drop mask requirements on commercial flights introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Tuesday, after flagship airline Lufthansa complained that the rule was no longer enforceable. Authorities will focus instead on making sure people wear face-and-mouth coverings on public transport in Germany, Lauterbach said in Berlin, after the coalition government agreed to axe the measure. Germany is well prepared for a potential rise in cases this autumn, according to the minister, who said mask-wearing rules may return in some indoor or outdoor spaces if infections surge. Restaurants owners and event organisers could also be asked to limit the number of guests again.<br/>

Russia will provide its airlines with another 50.6b roubles ($810 million) of emergency support as the industry reels from the fallout of the war in Ukraine, the RBC daily reported on Tuesday, citing a government source. The funds will be an extension of a 100b rouble scheme put in place earlier this year which is due to expire at the end of October. The transport ministry press office declined to comment. State-owned Aeroflot, which also runs the low-cost Pobeda airline - Russian for “victory” - was the biggest beneficiary of the first tranche of funds. Since invading Ukraine in February, Russia has seen many of its international air links severed. The European Union has banned Russian planes from its airspace, while other Western sanctions are squeezing Russia’s ability to secure spare parts or service its large fleets of Boeing and Airbus planes.<br/>

An Israeli air attack on Syria's Aleppo airport on Tuesday has damaged the runway and taken the airport out of service, the Syrian defence ministry said. The Israel missile attack was launched from the Mediterranean Sea, west of the coastal city of Latakia, at 8:16 p.m. local time (1716 GMT), the ministry said. Syrian air defences intercepted Israeli missiles, downing several of them, the Syrian state news agency (SANA) reported earlier on Tuesday. It was the second reported attack in less than week. On Aug. 31, Israel fired rockets at the airport, which resulted in material damage, according to Syrian state media. Israel has intensified strikes on Syrian airports to disrupt Tehran's increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon including Hezbollah, regional diplomatic and intelligence sources told Reuters.<br/>

Indian airport service aggregator DreamFolks Services Ltd (DREM.NS) surged 68.4% in its market debut on Tuesday after its IPO drew strong response from investors betting on robust growth in air travel demand in Asia's third largest economy. Shares climbed to as much as 549 rupees in the session, giving the company a valuation of 28.71b rupees ($359.45m). The stock was trading at 473 rupees as of 0543 GMT, compared to the issue price of 326 rupees. The blockbuster debut comes as public listings globally have dried up following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and an escalation of geopolitical tensions between the West and China. DreamFolks is well poised to capitalise on an expected jump in air travel and credit card usage in India following the pandemic, analysts have said. Underscoring the potential, DreamFolks posted a profit of 134.4m rupees for the June quarter in results released after the debut, compared to a loss of 13.9m rupees a year earlier. Revenue surged 6.5-fold to 1.6b rupees.<br/>

Enviva Inc and privately held Alder Fuels have agreed to partner on the long-term supply of biomass byproducts from timber for making a biofuel for aviation, a key part of cutting carbon emissions from air travel, the companies said on Tuesday. Under the agreement, Enviva, a US producer of woody biomass, will supply up to 750,000 tonnes per year of what it said is sustainably sourced forest byproducts like treetops and tree limbs to Alder, which is building a facility in the U.S. Southeast to make an energy-dense liquid that can be refined into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). They expect the agreement to begin in 2024. The biomass under the deal can make about 37m gallons a year of SAF, a replacement for petroleum-based jet fuel, and is the largest such US agreement, Bryan Sherbacow, the CE and president of Alder, told Reuters. The companies did not reveal the terms of the deal. Sherbacow said the biggest problem with SAF has been scalability, but that Alder will provide lower-cost fuel that can also incorporate sources such as regenerative grasses and sugarcane waste.<br/>