President Joe Biden said on Monday his administration had cracked down on US airlines to improve treatment of passengers, a claim rejected by the carriers. Biden said prior to changes made in customer service plans by major airlines "if your flight was cancelled or delayed, no top airline guaranteed covering your cost of hotels and meals". "My administration is also cracking down on the airlines to get passengers fairer treatment," Biden said. "Secretary Buttigieg, at my request, called them out." US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told airlines in August he would publish their responses in a "dashboard" and gave them two weeks to disclose what customer service protections they would commit to offering when delays were the fault of the airline. "As of last week, airlines now cover hotels - eight of them; nine (cover) meals; nine rebook for free," Biden said. "We're going to get more rules in the works to protect airline passengers even further." Airlines for America, a trade group representing American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines , JetBlue Airways and others, took exception to Mr Biden's assertions. "It is not accurate to say that no US airline covered meals and hotels for passengers severely impacted by carrier-caused flight delays and cancellations," it said in a statement, adding that the dashboard reflected airlines formalising existing policies. Airlines cancelled or delayed tens of thousands of flights this summer as they struggled to ramp up staffing as demand returned from historic Covid-19 pandemic lows, and Congress has pressed the administration to take a tougher line on airlines.<br/>
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A US appeals court on Monday heard arguments from a flyer advocacy group urging it to order the FAA to set minimum seat dimensions on passenger airplanes. In 2018, Congress said FAA within a year had to issue regulations establishing minimum dimensions for passenger seats - including minimums for seat pitch, width, and length - "that are necessary for the safety of passengers." Seat pitch - the distance from one seat back to the next - on low-cost carriers Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines is among the industry’s tightest at 28 inches (71 cm) in coach class. The average for other mainline economy seats is around 30 to 31 inches. "Currently there are no minimum seat dimensions," said Michael Kirkpatrick, a lawyer for FlyersRights.org. "Maybe they're going to codify the current seat dimensions and status quo for all conditions required for safety, then maybe there'll be a challenge on the merits. But the point here is that there is no regulation now on seat pitch, width or length." The Justice Department said the FAA's "examination of existing evidence has not yet demonstrated a safety need for minimum seat dimensions" but the FAA continues to "diligently examine" the issue. The government argues the FAA does not need to issue rules if the regulations "are not required to protect passenger safety," while the flyers group said without judicial action "FAA will continue to treat the statutory requirement as a low priority that it can ignore indefinitely."<br/>
Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport has asked airlines to cancel flights between 4pm and 11pm local time on Monday due to labour shortages, it said. The move comes as one of Europe’s busiest airports again grapples with long lines, leading to some travellers missing their flights. Travel at Schiphol has been disrupted on and off since April. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled, and queues have become routine. “After weeks of improvement, Schiphol did not expect to have to take these measures. Employees in the terminal are working as hard as they can to ensure that everyone can travel today, but unfortunately there is a chance that travelers will miss their flight due to long waiting times,” the airport’s statement said. Airlines that comply with the request to cancel flights will be compensated, it said.<br/>
Flights for the holidays will be the most expensive in five years, fare-tracker Hopper said Monday. Average domestic airfare for trips over Thanksgiving is $350, and international round trips are going for an average of $795 — both mark a 22% increase compared with 2019, before the Covid pandemic, Hopper said. Domestic round-trip tickets over Christmas, which falls on a weekend this year, are nearly a third more expensive than 2019, averaging $463, while international is up 26% to $1,300, according to Hopper’s data. Traveling during peak-demand days, like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or the days leading up to Christmas, always command higher prices. Travel experts recommend flexibility and traveling outside of the busiest travel days. But Brett Snyder, founder of the Cranky Flier travel website and a former airline manager, warns cheap fares might be hard to find on any day this holiday season because airlines have improved their control over how many seats they sell. “Airlines are so much better at this now,” Snyder said. “Now they just fly a lot fewer flights on Christmas Day. If it is cheaper, it’s not significantly cheaper.” Many of the factors that contributed to a chaotic summer for air travel — a shortfall of planes, staff and a backlog of training — aren’t immediately easing, which will limit flying capacity going forward. That also means prices are likely to remain elevated, though they’re already off the year’s peaks. <br/>
US companies are overlooking uncertainty about the economy and booking fall trips at nearly six times last year’s rate after a flat summer for business travel, according to an analysis. While demand is climbing, average booked fares were down 23% to $419 in August from $543 in mid-May, travel manager TripActions said in a new report. That was about $10 cheaper than in August 2019. The statistics may help dispel concerns that corporations will cut budgets just as business travel is recovering from a collapse during the coronavirus pandemic, and that such trips won’t pick up after Labor Day, as they have historically. United Airlines said this week that leisure bookings have remained unexpectedly strong since the traditional end of the summer travel season. “Autumn is shaping up to be a blockbuster season for business travel,” TripActions said. “There’s no question that the enthusiasm for hitting the road has returned.” The trends are “far from settled,” the company cautioned, and “new wrinkles are likely to appear.” Separately, leisure fares for domestic and international travel during the upcoming winter holidays are expected to be at their highest in five years, travel booking app Hopper said in a report released Monday. More than half of Americans plan to travel for one or both of the holidays this year, it said, with 70% planning to visit family or friends. Spending on business travel rose 27% in August over July, and is projected to jump 30% in September from August, TripActions said.<br/>
Drive down San Diego’s Otay Mesa Freeway and suburban development gives way to a landscape of warehouses and logistics centers along the US-Mexico border. But in the middle of this anywhere-and-nowhere landscape sits a stucco terminal building with a busy curbside, full parking lots, and all the trappings of a contemporary airport. This is Cross Border Xpress. Opened in late 2015, Cross Border Xpress is the only international bridge on the US border that caters solely to air travelers. It has transformed the Tijuana Airport from a mid-sized Mexican facility into one of the country’s busier gateways if one takes into account the number of Americans using the bridge to fly to and from the airport. From 2015 to 2021, passenger numbers at Tijuana nearly doubled to 9.7m from 4.9m, according to data from airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico (GAP). The pandemic has only accelerated the changes to California-Mexico travel driven by Cross Border Xpress. In 2019, US Bureau of Transportation Statistics data show 1.6m people entered the US via the bridge, while only 150,760 people entered at the San Diego airport after flights from Mexico. That split appears to have only widened with Cross Border Xpress entries up nearly 28 percent compared to 2019 during the first seven months of the year, while US-Mexico airline seat capacity at the San Diego airport was down 34%, Diio by Cirium and the latest BTS data show. Cross Border Xpress is “really transforming the way of traveling from Southern California to Mexico,” GAP CEO Raul Revuelta Musalem said.<br/>
Spanish airport passenger traffic in August almost reached pre-pandemic levels, airport operator AENA said on Monday. More than 27.3m passengers passed through Aena’s airports in August, 93% of the number of people flying in Spain in August 2019, the company said in a statement. Over 159m passengers transited Spanish airports during the first 8 months of the year. In June, Aena estimated passenger traffic would rise to between 75% and 85% of 2019 levels in 2022, raising its forecast after demand for summer travel bounced back. The swift recovery that followed the lifting of most COVID-induced travel restrictions led to disruptions in most European airports such as congestion and hour-long queues at security and passport controls.<br/>
In an endeavor to fly faster, further and ever more fuel-efficiently, the air transport industry has repeatedly delivered since the Wright brothers' first flight almost 120 years ago. It bears repeating that the aviation sector was among the first to zero in on sustainability, long before "net zero" became a buzz phrase. The most recent gamechanger is the twin-engine ultra-long-range flight that slashes fuel consumption on intercontinental journeys like those between Asia and the Americas by eliminating intermediate stops. Continuous progress on fuel efficiency has been made through effective changes in infrastructure and operations. From energy efficiency improvements through the use of lightweight materials on aircraft, and optimization of flight separation, planning and taxiing to reduce fuel burn, to the enhancement of aircraft and engine designs as well as a pivot to biodegradable in-flight products, the industry's record on carbon reduction is indeed nothing but remarkable. Sustainability is a key area for innovation, given the airline industry's dependence on fossil fuels. Business-as-usual transformations have halved emissions from every passenger journey over the last 30 years. The International Civil Aviation Organization's carbon offsetting and reduction scheme and an all-industry pledge to net zero emissions through the transition to new energy sources have set the industry on the path to eliminate overall emissions growth for the next 30 years. Climate change is a generational challenge for which the fight began long before the search for alternative energy sources which, unfortunately, remain few and far between for the aviation sector. Electric- and hydrogen-powered aircraft will provide partial solutions over the next 10 to 15 years, but are prospectively limited to flights below 1,500 kilometers. Carbon offsets will be essential because they bookend the net-zero emissions strategy by facilitating carbon-neutral growth to 2035 and the abatement of residual emissions through 2050. Story has more.<br/>