Labour shortages and supply chain snarls are making it harder for airlines and lessors to return airplanes grounded during the pandemic to the skies as quickly as they would like, operators and maintenance providers say. A global squeeze on maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) capacity is one of the factors contributing to higher airfares for travellers, as demand has rebounded faster than aircraft can be made available and costs are rising. "Some suppliers are coming out with double-digit escalations and surcharges," said Mahesh Kumar, CE of Asia Digital Engineering, the maintenance arm of Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia. "The airlines keep increasing their fares but that is not a sustainable business," he added at the MRO Asia-Pacific conference in Singapore. Complications of that kind mean that just about 110 of AirAsia's fleet of 200 planes have returned to service, he added. Yet getting the rest back in the air is challenging because of the scarcity of MRO slots that also drives up their prices. The bottlenecks at MROs have been compounded because airlines returned planes to lessors at a much higher rate than usual during the pandemic, which crushed travel demand. Aircraft switching to a new airline need maintenance checks, cabin interior changes and livery repainting at MROs that are often short-staffed after pandemic lay-offs of workers while facing delays at parts suppliers struggling with similar woes.<br/>
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How safe is air travel? Last year, when large commercial jets took off 21.6m times throughout the world, there was just one fatal accident. Boeing’s comprehensive annual compilation of data about air accidents involving large Western-built jet airliners, released at the end of August, shows a decades-long trend toward safer air travel. At the beginning of the jet age, in 1959, there were 40 fatal accidents per million flights. The accident rate fell rapidly and a decade ago was down to less than one fatal accident per million flights. Last year, it was less than 0.05 fatal accidents per million flights. In airlines operated by North American airlines, last year the fatal accident rate was zero. Story has more.<br/>
The strength of the overall recovery in global airline passenger demand will be impacted if China continues to enforce tight border restrictions next year, the head of airline body IATA said on Wednesday. IATA DG Willie Walsh told a conference in Doha that China’s zero-COVID policy had “devastated” Hong Kong, and caused it to lose its position as a global aviation hub. Hong Kong, traditionally a major hub where passengers transit between international flights and on journeys to China, is the base of airline Cathay Pacific.<br/>
Air travel volume is up and passenger satisfaction is down. This comes as no surprise to anyone who passed through an airport over the summer. The J.D. Power 2022 North America Airport Satisfaction Study, released Wednesday, shows overall satisfaction down 25 points on a 1,000 point scale from the 2021 score. Newark Liberty International Airport had the worst score among mega-airports. The overall satisfaction score for North American airports in 2022 was 777. US passenger volume is nearing pre-pandemic levels. On Sunday, the US TSA screened 2,371,992 passengers at airport checkpoints. That figure is 94% of the same weekday in 2019. But travelers are met with fewer flights, more crowded terminals and limited food and beverage options, the new J.D. Power study says. "The combination of pent-up demand for air travel, the nationwide labor shortage and steadily rising prices on everything from jet fuel to a bottle of water have created a scenario in which airports are extremely crowded and passengers are increasingly frustrated," said Michael Taylor, travel intelligence lead at J.D. Power. And Taylor expects this unfortunate set of circumstances to continue through 2023. The 25-point drop comes on the heels of a record high level of satisfaction with North American airports -- 802 on the 1,000-point scale -- in last year's study, which included passenger surveys from the second half of 2020.<br/>
The TSA is on pace this year to again break the record for the number of guns intercepted at airport security checkpoints, underscoring a persistent challenge for security officials amid brisk gun sales in the United States. So far this year, TSA officers have already discovered more than 4,600 guns at airport checkpoints, and about 87% of them were loaded, according to the agency. Last year, the TSA found nearly 6,000 guns at airport checkpoints, which itself was a record. The number of guns discovered at security checkpoints has been trending upward for more than a decade, with the only decrease coming during the pandemic. The slew of guns found at the nation’s airports this year have come as air travel in the United States is nearing a return to prepandemic levels. Gun sales in the country have surged in recent years, suggesting that some travelers may be unfamiliar with the rules for carrying firearms while traveling by plane. “Entering a checkpoint with a firearm, particularly a loaded one, is an expensive mistake,” said Carter Langston, a TSA spokesman. When a gun is found at a checkpoint, the TSA does not seize it. Instead, agents are instructed to call law enforcement to handle the situation. There is no federal criminal penalty for passengers caught with a gun at a checkpoint, but the TSA can impose a fine of up to about $14,000 and the loss of PreCheck membership — which allows for expedited security screening — for up to five years.<br/>
A disability activist whose wheelchair was severely damaged during a recent flight says mobility aids are treated no better than luggage, leading to renewed calls for greater regulation of airline disability services. Maayan Ziv says her wheelchair was rendered inoperable after an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Tel Aviv, Israel to attend the Access Israel disability conference earlier this month. Air Canada said that the airline offered to pay for the damages and sent a specialty repair person immediately to Ziv’s hotel. “Regrettably, in this case we did not meet our normal service levels. We did respond to this customer's concerns immediately at the airport, including arranging for a specialized wheelchair service to fix the damage,” Air Canada said. However, Ziv says that the mishandling of mobility aids happens all too often and that monetary compensation is not enough. "For me, that's the bare minimum. What about my time? What about the health of my body, and the amount of trauma that I still experience? Like, I'm not OK," said Ziv. "People with disabilities are experiencing this second-class citizen treatment, where our mobility devices are treated like baggage instead of extensions of our bodies, which is what they are."mActivists such as the chair of Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, David Lepofsky, said that Ziv’s story is horrible but not surprising, as there have been a number of reports where mobility devices and passengers were improperly handled by airlines. “The fact of the matter is, air travel in Canada is not properly supervised, to ensure that it is safe and accessible for people with disabilities,” said Lepofsky. <br/>
Some Russians on Wednesday rushed to buy one-way plane tickets out of the country or expressed interest on social media in moving after President Vladimir V. Putin ordered up reservists to bolster Russia’s military in Ukraine. Tickets to visa-free destinations such as Istanbul; Dubai; Yerevan, Armenia; and Almaty, Kazakhstan, were either sold out for the next several days or their prices had skyrocketed. There were no one-way tickets out of Moscow to Yerevan, Istanbul or Dubai for Wednesday on an airline ticket aggregator that is popular in Russia. Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, had no tickets to Istanbul or Yerevan for this week, according to its website. Aeroflot operates up to eight flights per day to the two cities, according to its schedule. Channels discussing relocations on the Telegram messaging app have been filled with messages about the border situation and possible ways to get out of the country. Some posters said that they were afraid the Kremlin could shut the border soon for men of military age. Meduza, a Russian media outlet in exile, published a guide to countries Russians can travel to without visas. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said he would not comment on whether the borders would be shut for potential recruits, asking that people wait for the law to be clarified, according to Interfax, a Russian news agency. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which all border Russia, this month banned Russians from crossing into their countries by land, sealing one of the last relatively easy routes out of Russia. Latvia said Wednesday it would not issue humanitarian or other visas to Russian citizens seeking to avoid mobilization.<br/>
The 2022 edition of Bahrain International Airshow (BIAS) is all set to return to the aviation calendar after a gap of four years. It will see industry-leading professionals and organisations gather at the Gateway to the Gulf to do business, network and also discuss the key challenges facing the sector as it heads into 2023. Held under the patronage of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, and under the supervision of Shaikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Personal Representative of His Majesty the King and the Chairman of BIAS’ Supreme Organising Committee, the big aviation event will run from November 9 to 11 at Sakhir Airbase Bahrain. BIAS’s sixth edition celebrates a decade of distinction with an exciting programme of new features, industry-leading content, and a first-class networking experience with key regional decision-makers. Organised by the Bahrain Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications and the Royal Bahraini Airforce in association with Farnborough International, BIAS has been designed to reflect aerospace and defence industry demands and will harness global expertise to provide crucial thought leadership. <br/>
Hong Kong has lost its position as a global aviation hub due to China’s zero-COVID policy, the head of airlines group IATA said on Wednesday, warning the industry’s recovery from the pandemic would be slowed if Beijing continued its restrictions next year. Attending an IATA conference in the Qatari capital Doha, IATA Director General Willie Walsh said China’s zero-COVID policy had “devastated” Hong Kong and hit airline Cathay Pacific hard. “Cathay Pacific is a shadow of its former self as a result. Hong Kong has lost its position as a global hub and will struggle to regain it because other hubs have taken advantage of it,” he said, blaming government policies, not the virus. Hong Kong is traditionally a major hub where passengers transit between international flights and on journeys to China, and is the base of Cathay Pacific. The pace of the recovery in global passenger demand has picked up over the northern hemisphere summer, with airline executives attributing higher than expected demand to a surge of people keen to travel after two years of restrictions. But the recovery has been uneven, with China continuing to enforce tight COVID-19 related border and social curbs. Walsh said IATA was closely watching for any indications that China would ease its restrictions, and said there had previously been expectations there would be changes this year. If the restrictions continue next year, the industry will suffer. “It clearly will have an impact on the overall strength of the recovery,” Walsh told reporters.<br/>
Singapore's Changi Airport has avoided long lines and baggage handling problems that have plagued rivals in Europe, North America and Australia through tight coordination of capacity increases with airlines and suppliers, an executive said. The airport reached 56% of its 2019 passenger numbers in August and the government has forecast the number of flights will reach 80% of pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. Jayson Goh, Changi Airport Group's managing director of airport operations, said it was holding regular meetings with airlines and key suppliers like baggage handling, cleaning and catering companies to ensure that flight increases could be accommodated without affecting service levels. That has sometimes resulted in measures like changing flight times rather than stopping plans to add services, he said in an interview on Wednesday. "You can say okay, this hour is really a peak. Can I still fly but I fly two hours earlier or two hours later so that you don't try to clash with a peak?" The airport has also found it somewhat easier to ramp up capacity than many rivals in part because it and contractors retained 25,000 of the 35,000 workers they had before the pandemic with aid from government programmes, even though at low points only a tiny amount of capacity was operating.<br/>
More than 40 flights have been cancelled at Sydney Airport due to poor weather conditions, creating chaos for hundreds of travellers who were hoping to take advantage of the public holiday. Air traffic controllers on Wednesday night warned airlines the airport could be forced to reduce to single runway operations on Thursday after strong winds of almost 40 km/h were forecast. As a result, multiple airlines chose to cancel services ahead of the poor weather forecast to prevent thousands of travellers arriving to potentially cancelled flights at Sydney Airport on Thursday. “In anticipation of bad weather today, domestic airlines advised overnight that some services would be affected,” the airport said. “Passengers are advised to check with their airline regarding the status of their flight. Passengers who are travelling today are recommended to arrive 2 hours prior to domestic flight departures, and 3 hours for international services.” On Thursday morning, Sydney Airport spokesman Josh Clements said the airport had not yet been forced to move to single runway operations, but flights were still being cancelled in anticipation. “The alternative was to run the gauntlet and have those passengers show up,” he said. “If we did go to single runways there would have been lots of disrupted passengers in the terminals today.”<br/>
Boeing CE David Calhoun remains optimistic the FAA will certificate the 737 Max 7 before year-end – and before a critical regulatory change. He is less optimistic that the larger Max 10’s clearance will come in time, however. “I do. I do,” Calhoun said on 15 September when asked if he thinks federal aviation regulators will green light the Max 7 before the end of 2022. Boeing has been working to get both jets certificated before a regulatory change that will require newly certificated aircraft to have a modern cockpit warning system for pilots. The requirement comes from a law signed by President Donald Trump on 27 December 2020. Under that law, starting two years after its enactment, the FAA cannot certificate transport aircraft that do not have a “flight crew alerting systems”. Boeing’s 737 Max lacks that type of modern, centralised system, which displays and prioritises cockpit warnings, helping pilots work through issues. Instead, the Max’s cockpit alert system is essentially unchanged from previous-generation 737s. It involves two panels and lacks the same prioritisation function. Boeing insists the legacy system is safe, and some safety experts agree, questioning whether introducing changes to a system well understood by pilots could introduce new risks. Analysts and experts widely agree that equipping the Max with more-modern alerting technology would be enormously costly and time-consuming. FAA acting administrator Billy Nolen declines to discuss any timeline for when the FAA might complete the Max 7’s and 10’s certifications. “Our goal will be to make sure that we do all of our certification work safely, and the safety will always dictate our time,” Nolen tells FlightGlobal on 15 September.<br/>
Airbus is quietly relaxing pressure on suppliers to commit to a sharp output hike to 75 narrow-body jets a month by mid-decade, amid growing doubts over the ability of battered supply chains to meet the deadline, industry sources said. Officially, Airbus continues to target output of 75 narrow-body jets a month in 2025, after an interim target of 65 jets slipped last month. It is poised to reaffirm both output goals at an investor meeting later this week, industry sources said. But as more suppliers sound the alarm over parts and labour shortages, Airbus has privately recognised the challenges of reaching the higher target by 2025 even as it sticks firmly to an earlier goal of 65 a month, up from 50 or so now, they said. Requests for detailed plans of how suppliers will get to 75 are "going quiet," a senior aerospace source told Reuters. In July, Airbus pushed back its interim target for 65 A320-family jets a month by six months to early 2024, citing "supply chain challenges". At the same time, Chief Executive Guillaume Faury said Airbus continued to aim for 75 a month in 2025. "The A320-family monthly production target of 75 for 2025 remains unchanged," an Airbus spokesperson said on Wednesday. The head of the world's largest aerospace supplier, Raytheon Technologies CE Greg Hayes, last week called into question this end-target. "If you take a look at the projections for Airbus, we think that Airbus by 2025 will be at rate 65 (a month). And Guillaume (Faury) might say rate 75, but we think rate 65 is doable," he told a Morgan Stanley conference.<br/>