A pro-Russian group is claiming credit for a series of disruptions that temporarily knocked the websites of some US airports offline. The group, called Killnet, has engaged in a series of cyberattacks in recent months against Western targets, including incidents that temporarily rendered some state government websites offline last week, according to cybersecurity experts. The attack caused intermittent delays with accessing LaGuardia Airport’s website, for 15 minutes starting about 3 a.m., according to a Port Authority spokesperson. There was no operational impact. Los Angeles International Airport issued a statement saying its website was partially disrupted and that the interruption was limited to portions of the public-facing website. There were no disruptions to internal airport systems nor were there any operational difficulties, according to the statement. Websites for O’Hare and Midway airports in Chicago were offline Monday, according to a statement from the Chicago Department of Aviation, but no airport operations were affected. On Killnet’s Telegram channel, the group claims to have launched attacks against dozens of US airports though it wasn’t immediately clear how many of the airports were actually hit and whether the victims suffered any disruptions. The TSA, which oversees airport security, referred questions to the individual airports. The FAA said it would defer comments to TSA. The FAA’s air-traffic website showed no indications of any flight disruptions from the cyberattacks. Similarly, the tracking website FlightAware.com showed relatively few delays or flight cancellations across the country. The FAA’s air-traffic computers are designed to remain off the internet and have dedicated communication lines to ensure they are safe from hacking.<br/>
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Europe’s leading airlines are misleading consumers with claims that they can fly guilt-free by using carbon offsets to neutralize the environmental impact of air travel, according to a new report by the nonprofit Carbon Market Watch. A temporary dip during the Covid-19 pandemic aside, airline emissions have been steadily rising for the past two decades and, left unchecked, could potentially triple by 2050. Globally, the industry generates roughly one billion tons of CO2 per year — comparable to the emissions of Japan, the world’s third-largest economy. To assuage travelers’ conscience, airlines have turned to carbon offsets, marketing their corporate investments and encouraging passengers to purchase offsets to cover their own flights. But these voluntary efforts don’t work, Carbon Market Watch said, because the carriers are relying on cheap, poor quality offsets that can’t be guaranteed to reduce emissions elsewhere. The conclusions are based on a study by research firm Öko-Institut, that assessed the the scale and quality of the emissions reduction policies from May to July of the eight largest airlines in Europe, collectively responsible for over half of the total CO2 emissions of the EU aviation sector in 2019: Air France, British Airways, Easyjet, KLM, Lufthansa, Ryanair, SAS and Wizz Air. The study found that nearly all the airlines assessed rely on offsets from cheap forestry projects in developing countries, efforts that are vulnerable over the long term. Trees can burn, die or be cut down if policies change, reversing their carbon storage, and might not around long enough to truly compensate for the carbon emitted. “While not paying for their pollution, airlines are sending misleading climate neutrality signals to customers based on purchasing poor-quality carbon offsets,” said Daniele Rao, aviation and shipping decarbonization expert at Carbon Market Watch. “This bad practice must end.”<br/>
The Asia Pacific region will no longer be the world’s largest travel region by the end of 2022, ceding the title to Europe. That’s according to a new report from international travel industry analysts at CAPA –Centre for Aviation. The organization discussed how aviation in the region remains down by 45 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels while European air travel has recovered to roughly 85 percent of pre-pandemic levels. That being said, we believe the reason is that China is still locked up/locked down. In 2019, 3.38 billion passengers transited through Asia Pacific airports. CAPA reported current predictions that only 1.84 billion passengers would pass through Asia Pacific hubs by the end of this year. Most travel in Asia Pacific destinations remains at 50 percent or more below 2019 levels. India is the standout at only 11 percent below 2019. CAPA predicts Asia Pacific will not see a full return to pre-pandemic travel figures until the end of 2023 or early 2024. China’s international share of Asia Pacific seats fell from 26.2 percent in 2019 to an estimated 5 percent in 2022.<br/>
Frustrated passengers have been forced to evacuate from Melbourne and Adelaide airports after security breaches, causing long delays and missed flights. Federal police shut down one section of a Melbourne airport terminal and ordered passengers disembark from a plane ready for takeoff after an apparent security breach on Tuesday morning. A Qantas passenger allegedly entered security gates at Tullamarine without being screened, which led to other passengers having to evacuate the area before being re-screened. The airline has since apologised to customers as it investigates. “A passenger appears to have inadvertently passed from an unscreened area to a screened area of the airport in Melbourne,” a Qantas spokesperson said. “As a precaution, all Qantas operations have been put on hold and passengers in the terminal are being re-screened, which is causing delays to some services this morning. Safety is our number one priority but we know this disruption is causing some inconvenience for our passengers and we apologise for that. We are investigating how this incident occurred.” In a post on Twitter about 7.30am, Melbourne airport officials said screening of passengers in T1 had resumed although delays were expected. In Adelaide, passengers were also subjected to travel delays after a similar incident.<br/>
Tech firm Honeywell International will roll out technology that could increase supplies of lower-carbon aviation fuel produced from ethanol, the company said on Monday, as the Biden administration calls for the aviation industry to reduce emissions. Honeywell's technology can increase production efficiency of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to lower costs. The airline sector is considered one of the most difficult to decarbonize as fuel cannot be easily replaced with other kinds of power. Oil refiners have been trying to increase production of SAF to try to lower emissions. "As demand for SAF has increased, we've been looking at different ways to make more SAF economically that people can adopt and adopt at large-scale and produce to displace significant fractions of the jet and diesel pools," Kevin O'Neil, senior business leader for renewable fuels at Honeywell UOP, said. The company says, depending on the type of ethanol feedstock used, that its technology can cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% on a total lifecycle basis compared with petroleum-based jet fuel. Ethanol is primarily made from corn in the United States.<br/>