general

The US FAA on Tuesday finalized new rules requiring airline flight attendants receive at least 10 hours of rest time between shifts, an action that Congress directed in 2018. The FAA first proposed the rule in October 2021. Under existing rules, flight attendants get at least nine hours of rest time but it can be as little as eight hours in certain circumstances. Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen, who has been on the job since April 1, said during a news conference at Washington National Airport that the rule took " way too long" to finalize. "They need just as must rest" as pilots, Nolen added. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants representing 50,000 workers at 17 airlines, said the rest rule was a "safety loophole we had to close." Under the administration of President Donald Trump the rule "was put on a regulatory path to kill this." Under Trump, the FAA issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking but never proposed new rules despite the 2018 directive from Congress. Airlines will have 90 days to comply once the rule takes effect. The FAA estimates airlines will need to hire 565 additional flight attendants at a cost of about $117 million annually. Airlines for America said "having rested and alert flight attendants" is critical to aviation safety, adding airlines back "scientifically validated and data-driven countermeasures to prevent fatigue." Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell said "flight attendants perform critical safety roles on behalf of the flying public and have long deserved the same rest periods afforded to pilots."<br/>

A trade group representing major US airlines rebuffed a request by 70 US lawmakers to voluntarily extend a expired prohibition on stock buybacks that was a condition of US government COVID-19 payroll assistance. Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, led a group of 70 lawmakers last week urging airlines to "refrain from initiating stock buybacks ... at least until air carriers are able to publish and fulfill schedules that meet demand; staff flights and key personnel positions appropriately; and return service to every community." Congress approved $54b in three rounds covering much of US airline payroll costs for 18 months through the end of September 2021. The ban on stock buybacks expired on Friday. DeFazio's letter, which was first reported by Reuters, was also signed by Democratic representatives including aviation subcommittee chair Rick Larsen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, David Cicilline, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jerrold Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, Rosa DeLauro and Debbie Dingell. Aviation unions launched a campaign in August to pressure airlines against stock buybacks. It came as major carriers are negotiating new contracts with pilots, who are seeking higher pay and improvements in schedules. Airlines for America told lawmakers in a previously unreported letter dated Friday seen by Reuters that "airlines willingly agreed to the intentionally temporary restrictions of the (payroll support program) to protect jobs and preserve their workforces amid the unprecedented global health crisis."<br/>

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday said the Army is working on a proposal to create its own commercial airline, confirming reports from a leak of government documents last week. "An analysis of its economic viability is being carried out," Lopez Obrador said at a regular news conference, noting that a decision had yet to be made. "It's likely that this new airline will be (in operation) next year," he said. The president confirmed last week that Mexico's military had suffered a major data hack, revealing sensitive information including communications regarding the president's health, customs security and infrastructure projects. Lopez Obrador said Olmeca-Maya-Mexica, a military-run business set to take charge of a handful of airports and the multibillion-dollar "Mayan Train" project being built in the south of the country, would also run the proposed airline. He said he was shown the initial proposal for the airline about two weeks ago. "The presidential plane is also being considered, to hand it over to the business, which will have 10 planes in its fleet which won't be bought, rather rented," Lopez Obrador said. The president had for more than three years tried to sell the presidential plane his predecessor purchased, but struggled to find a buyer willing to pay its $130m price tag. According to local newspaper El Universal, the leaked documents show that the armed forces were considering circumventing a law prohibiting companies from running an airport and airline at the same time by tweaking regulations without going through Congress.<br/>

European airlines and airports, reeling from delays that caused widespread disruption as demand roared back after COVID-19, are counting the cost of efforts to avoid a repeat next summer. Industry leaders meeting at the headquarters of air traffic control agency Eurocontrol sparred on Wednesday over who was to blame for the chaos that upset passengers and politicians. “We found ourselves more in the news than we would have wished over the summer,” Olivier Jankovec, director general of airports association ACI Europe, told a Eurocontrol conference. Labour or parts shortages and strikes led to cancellations of hundreds of flights, prompting some airports to introduce capacity curbs and exposing slim margins for error. “We somehow survived the summer but it was not great and it should not be happening again. We have to put appropriate resources in the system to deal with the challenges,” Wizz Air CE Jozsef Varadi said. For the budget carrier, that may mean unusually recruiting more people than it needs for the time being. “We are redesigning the operating model to make sure that we build ... more slack in the system so we’re going to be losing some efficiency,” Varadi said. “I’m not optimising for today, but optimising for demands to make sure that we remain as low-cost as possible.” Airports too are increasingly upping pay or handing out recruitment bonuses to hire back workers laid off during the pandemic. Many defected to new-economy jobs like ride-sharing.<br/>

Spain’s airport operator Aena said on Tuesday the number of seats airlines will offer to passengers for travel to Spain over the winter season is set to exceed the number in 2019-2020, the year before the pandemic. Just before the summer, airlines had booked a capacity of 216m passengers in Spain, 1.6% more than in 2019, as they sought to prepare for a tourism rebound after almost all travel restrictions were lifted. The airport operator said it expected a similar uptick in winter, but did not give the exact number of seats it expected to be available. In the first eight months of the year, Aena said the passenger traffic through Spanish airports increased 85.3% compared to the same period in 2019, with a total of 159m travelers. Although the number of foreign tourists visiting Spain this year remains below 2019 numbers, the operator said it would continue to give airlines incentives to bolster passenger traffic to pre-pandemic levels. <br/>

Hong Kong’s dreaded Covid quarantine policy may be gone, but don’t expect a return to the good old days of travel any time soon. Although millions of people stuck in the Asian financial hub since early 2020 are desperate to get out, there simply aren’t enough flights to meet demand. The number of available seats and flights this month is only about 18% of what it was in October 2019, when travel to and from Hong Kong was already adversely impacted by mass protests. Some 45 airlines are showing scheduled flights to the city in October, half the number versus three years ago. Hong Kong’s main airline, Cathay Pacific, has said it will take time to rebuild capacity as it brings back grounded planes and trains its workforce. The carrier has nine flights a week from Hong Kong to Taipei in October, data from Cirium show. That was 93 before the crisis, when it was one of the world’s busiest international routes. Short-haul trips in Asia are the most popular options for Hong Kong residents looking to escape, according to Trip.com, which saw a nearly 400% increase in outbound bookings the weekend after the plan to drop quarantine was announced. Still, Cathay is only flying to Bangkok 14 times a week versus 63 before the pandemic. Fares have also soared due to the limited availability and with no direct flights to many destinations such as Johannesburg, Adelaide, Colombo and Chicago, journeys are longer. <br/>

Boeing doesn’t expect its 737 Max 10 model to be ready for certification until next summer at the soonest, US aviation regulators told a key lawmaker. The planemaker’s latest plan was relayed in a letter Monday from Federal Aviation Administration acting Administrator Billy Nolen to Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican. The comments provided the latest indication that the plane won’t meet a crucial deadline to finalize its approvals by the end of 2022. Congress in 2020 had required that newly built airliners have more modern safety alerting systems in the wake of the twin fatal crashes on a similar plane, the Max 8, after assurances the last remaining 737 models would be cleared to fly by this year. But both the Max 7 and Max 10 models of the jet are in danger of missing the upcoming deadline, Nolen said. The jets face costly redesigns unless Congress acts to change the law. “I support my team taking the time they need to fully understand the human factors assumptions” on the planes, Nolen said in the letter, which was reviewed by Bloomberg. Boeing declined to comment on the letter, referring instead to a prior statement that it’s “focused on meeting all regulatory requirements to certify the 737-7 and 737-10, and safety remains the driving factor in this effort.”<br/>

Aviation needs to accelerate the use of biofuels before new technologies like hydrogen and electric-powered aircraft become viable to limit emissions as demand for travel will not abate, the boss of Rolls-Royce (RR.L) said on Tuesday. "Ultimately, one day I'm pretty confident that you'll be able to fly from here to San Francisco on an aircraft with something like a gas turbine burning hydrogen, but there's no way that we're going to be doing that in the next 15 years," Warren East told the Reuters IMPACT conference in London. "So we need a transitional technology," said East, who will step down from the aero-engine maker at the end of the year. Companies from oil majors to startups are making sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), which offer a reduction of up to 80% in carbon emissions over their lifecycle, using feedstocks like cooking oil. SAF can be blended with traditional fuel and dropped straight into existing aircraft, but it is more expensive and makes up less than 1% of the fuel used by commercial aircraft today. East said there would be an exponential rise in SAF as more capacity comes on stream. But government intervention would be needed, for example in SAF mandates, to help the make the numbers stack up, he said. Eventually, purely synthetic fuels made from carbon captured from the air combined with green-sourced hydrogen could offer a net zero solution, but the process is energy intensive.<br/>

Planemakers will at best reach 90% of their production targets because of constraints including the challenges of recruiting and training qualifed staff, the head of the world's largest aircraft leasing company, AerCap, said on Wednesday. CEO Aengus Kelly also told a Eurocontrol aviation conference that demand for air travel would continue to grow and that AerCap was already leasing planes to airlines for 2025.<br/>