IATA DG Willie Walsh believes load factors in the highly profitable third quarter for airlines illustrate capacity has been well-matched to demand and provides reason for optimism that recent profitability is sustainable even with economic headwinds ahead. Airlines enjoyed improved financial fortunes across the regions during the third quarter, as demand surged due to Covid border restrictions further easing. Notably, revenues in many cases were at or above 2019 highs, even though capacity was still not fully restored. That revenue increase was largely driven by higher yields, the result of ‘revenge travel’ demand as passengers were willing to pay higher fares having missed out on travel during the pandemic. Walsh though takes particular heart from the load factors, which he believes illustrates a sustainability about the industry performance. ”I think it is sustainable, because the average seat factor across the third quarter was still in the order of 82-83%, which is similar to what the industry was doing in 2019, actually slightly less than 2019,” Walsh said, speaking during the Airlines 2022 event in London on 21 November. ”So capacity and demand have been coming back at a fair pace,” he says, noting load factors would have been far higher if it was a case of demand being high because of a shortage of capacity. “I think the profitability for the quarter was good and important for the industry given the significant financial losses encountered in 2020 and 2021, and at an industry level 2022 will be more profitable.” he says. IATA will provide a fresh industry forecast in December, which will include its first outlook for 2023. The industry body’s most recent outlook, issued in June, is for collective losses to be cut to less than $10 billion this year and that an industry-wide profit for 2023 was “on the horizon” for the first time since 2019. “[There is] still a long way to go, particularly when you look at the damage to balance sheets in that period,” says Walsh. “But it is good to see a strong recovery, and despite the headwinds, we believe that recovery will continue into 2023.” <br/>
general
Flight chaos over the summer has air travelers on edge as Americans head into what's expected to be the busiest holiday travel season since 2019. By all accounts -- from airlines, industry groups and aviation analysts -- US air carriers are in a much better position than they were this summer to avoid operational meltdowns over the holidays. "They've adjusted their schedules, they've been on hiring binges, on putting people in the right places that we hope will be at the right time," said Nick Calio, president and CEO of Airlines for America, an industry group representing US air carriers. The number of Americans expected to travel by air over Thanksgiving is up 8% over last year, according to AAA's forecast, and air traveler volume is expected to be about 99% of the 2019 volume. United Airlines has said it's on track to hire 15,000 employees in 2022, and Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the company has hired 25,000 people since the start of last year and is still hiring. Airlines have now passed 2019 staffing levels, according to Airlines for America, and US carriers have adjusted their staffing models to account for factors such as increased absenteeism. US airlines also have increased the staffing reserves they have on hand, the group said, and it also pointed to a less concentrated holiday travel period as Americans who can work remotely have more flexibility. "I would not say we're out of the woods yet," said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on Monday. "But I am cautiously optimistic about this week being off to a good start." But there's still a big wild card -- one that long predates problems aggravated by the pandemic. It's a force that has a way -- even when predictions are dead-on -- of shattering the best-laid plans "I always worry about the weather because that's the number one thing that can ruin a flight or a flight pattern," Calio said.<br/>
“I forgot.” That’s the number one reason TSA agents say they hear at airport security checkpoints when they catch a passenger with a firearm. Of the 5,832 firearms stopped so far this year, as of Monday, nearly 88% were loaded, according to the TSA. The total number is quickly catching up to last year’s record of 5,972 – or approximately 17 guns a day. The news comes ahead of the busiest travel time of the year – when nearly 55m Americans are estimated to be traveling this Thanksgiving, according to AAA – just shy of pre-pandemic levels. “It’s very concerning because firearms are prohibited in the checkpoint – and certainly onboard the aircraft,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said. “We’ve seen an increase nationally… [and in] parts of the country where open carry and concealed weapons permits are higher, [that] generally indicates we’ll find higher weapons at our checkpoints.” It’s legal to travel with a firearm – but only if it’s declared with the airline before the flight, unloaded and packed correctly inside checked luggage. According to the TSA, passengers caught with guns were fined $52m in civil penalties over the past three years. “I have total confidence in our transportation security officers to stop these,” said Steve Wood, the Federal Security Director for the TSA in Tennessee. “But we need the public’s help in not bringing them.” Atlanta tops the list because it’s such a large airport, Pekoske said. “There’s just more people moving through Atlanta airport.”<br/>
Three Democratic senators urged the Department of Transportation on Wednesday to increase airline passengers’ compensation for canceled and delayed flights when the airline is at fault. The pressure campaign comes on the eve of Thanksgiving, as airlines prepare for near pre-pandemic levels of travel. In a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell of Washington, Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wrote the airlines should be responsible for passengers’ “secondary costs” when they cancel or “significantly” delay a flight. “The refunds rule should require airlines to cover secondary costs – such as hotel rooms, food and drink, and transportation to-and-from the airport – when an airline, due to a problem within its control, cancels or significantly delays a flight,” wrote the senators. Politico first reported the senators’ letter. Airlines have paid more than $600m in refunds to hundreds of thousands of passengers for canceled or changed flights since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Department of Transportation. But federal regulators say that some airlines have skirted the rules. The department has issued $7.25m in fines against six airlines for “extreme delays in providing those refunds to passengers,” said Buttigieg this month. That brings the total assessed fines for 2022 to $8.1 million – a record in civil penalties for the department’s consumer protection program.<br/>
Early in the pandemic, many travelers experienced headaches while trying to rebook air travel purchased through third parties such as Orbitz and Kayak. Overloaded customer service centers and constantly changing airline policies resulted in a big mess at these agencies, prompting many travelers to book directly through the airline to avoid future issues. Yet as the dust settles on the pandemic and travel begins to return to normal, air passengers are experiencing a different reality: Booking directly through airlines involves navigating a maze of fees, add-on offers and confusing seat selection choices. The resulting price at checkout is often higher — much higher — than the advertised price. The issue has become so problematic that even President Biden has joined the fray. “You should know the full cost of your ticket, right when you’re comparison shopping ,” he said in a press conference announcing a new Department of Transportation initiative to force airlines to disclose these fees. “So you can pick the ticket that is actually the best deal for you.” Efforts to rein in airline fees are nothing new. The Obama administration tried and failed to enact similar regulations. And until meaningful changes are made, airline customers will be the ones footing the bill, especially if they use the airlines’ own websites and apps to make their purchases. Since the rise of budget airlines such as Spirit and Frontier, US airlines have dramatically shifted how they make money. Rather than earning profit margin on airfare itself, which is highly competitive, airlines are increasingly focused on “ancillary revenue” from add-on fees, credit card rewards programs and seat upgrades.<br/>
US regulators have disclosed that two “nearly catastrophic” events were among 38 take-off incidents involving inadvertent Airbus A220 autopilot engagement, and are taking additional action to prevent a recurrence. Transport Canada has already mandated aircraft flight manual changes to emphasise the risk of unintentionally activating the autopilot during the take-off roll. But the US FAA is imposing an additional requirement after an incident in September in which the crew attempted to re-engage a disconnected autothrottle but mistakenly activated the autopilot, causing the jet to rotate below the V1 decision speed. “This resulted in a low-energy take-off, which is extremely hazardous as it could lead to the [aircraft] stalling [or] impacting terrain,” says the FAA in a 22 November directive. Autopilot and autothrottle buttons for the A220 are located, one directly above the other, in the centre of the mode control panel. “The control panel for autothrottle and autopilot engagement is structured in such a way that it is possible for the flightcrew to mistakenly engage the autopilot when attempting to re-engage the autothrottle,” says the US FAA. Activation of the autopilot is normally prohibited below 400ft. The FAA states that the autothrottle is “prone to disconnect” during turbulence because it sources airspeed information from a different source than the flight control system monitor. Different sources for pressure altitude between systems can also cause a disconnection. Operators have already been instructed by Transport Canada to amend flight manuals to warn that inadvertent autopilot engagement could result in premature rotation, tail-strike, inability to climb or a loss of control.<br/>
Callista Wessels, a college senior in Ithaca, N.Y., has been used to flying home to Seattle from the small airport in her university town. But flights in and out of Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport dropped to about 3,000 this year from 6,000 in 2019, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics firm — and prices have gone up so much that sometimes she takes a four-hour bus ride to New York City to take advantage of airfares that are hundreds of dollars cheaper. “There is definitely more of a barrier to getting home,” she said. An unexpected hangover of the pandemic has been the withered flight schedules at many regional airports. Of the 430 airports in the continental United States and Hawaii that offered commercial passenger service before the pandemic, 76 percent had fewer flights scheduled in 2022 than in 2019, according to the Regional Airline Association. Smaller airports lost “a dramatically higher percentage” of their flights than larger airports, Faye Malarkey Black, chief executive of the association, wrote in an email. Those airports lost an average of 34% of their flight traffic while larger airports’ schedules shrank an average of 16%. This September, American Airlines ceased flying to Ithaca and Islip’s MacArthur Airport in New York — as well as Toledo, Ohio, and Dubuque, Iowa — bringing the total number of airports where it has canceled service to 15. The airline says it has 100 regional jets parked because of a lack of pilots. United Airlines is ending flights to Lewisburg, W.Va.; Clarksburg, W.Va.; Weyers Cave, Va.; and West Paducah, Ky., this fall. Delta has not returned to 10 of the airports it left in May of 2020, including Flint, Mich., and Lincoln, Neb. For travelers who live near small-market airports, that can mean not only higher fares, but also inconvenient and infrequent scheduling, hours added to trips as they need to make new connections, or long drives to bigger airports that still have service.<br/>
Brazil faces a new wave of COVID cases just as the soccer-crazed nation is gathering en masse to follow the World Cup, with new coronavirus sub-variants and delayed vaccine boosters raising alarms among public health specialists. On World Cup game days, many Brazilians get time off work to pack into bars and restaurants or gather for home barbecues to watch the games, rooting for a national team seeking its sixth world champion title in Qatar. New COVID cases in Brazil jumped last week by 230% from early November to a level not seen since August, according to official figures. Related deaths jumped to 116 on Tuesday from single digits in October. "At every gathering there is a high possibility of transmission, because it's very easy to catch", said Margareth Dalcolmo at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a biomedical research center in Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian health regulator ANVISA announced late on Tuesday that face masks would be required again in airports and on all flights to prevent the spread of the virus. It also decided on Tuesday to approve the use of two new vaccines made by Pfizer that protect against the Omicron sub-variants BA.1 and BA.4/BA.5 as well as the original virus, to be used as boosters. <br/>
Airline passengers with long connection times between flights at Doha’s main airport have been encouraged to visit Qatar during their stopover, part of the country’s longstanding drive for more tourism. But while the country hosts the World Cup 2022, passengers have no access beyond the transit area, even for a few hours. They are not allowed to visit the capital and its tourist attractions, and soak up the World Cup 2022 atmosphere. Until the end of December, only those with match tickets are entitled to acquire a Hayya card, the ID permit that allows access to Qatar. All other travellers are banned. Humphrey Wilson, planned an overnight stopover visiting friends in the Qatari capital. He arranged a daytime flight from Johannesburg to London with a 15-hour overnight connection at Doha’s Hamad International Airport. “It all sounded rather civilised,” he said. “We figured we would visit some friends overnight for dinner, have a nice rest and check in for the morning flight.” But after buying the flight tickets for himself and his wife, Wilson discovered Qatar has become the first World Cup host nation to ban tourists during the tournament. “We checked before booking that [Covid] testing requirements were being lifted from 1 November, and checked that we were eligible for visa-free entry. Nowhere did we see this Hayya card nonsense. It was only when my friend who lives in Qatar mentioned it to me, that I realised.” At the time he booked the flight, no match tickets were available – though Fifa has opened sales on many thousands of them.<br/>
Ownership of Moldova’s largest airport, which serves the capital Chisinau, has been passed to the state by an appeals court, Deputy PM Andrei Spinu said on Wednesday. “Chisinau International Airport is returning to state ownership. I congratulate the people of Moldova,” Spinu wrote on the Telegram app, citing the country’s justice minister. Control of the airport was handed over for a 49-year term in 2018 to a company associated with politician and businessman Ilan Shor, who fled Moldova in 2019 after the election of pro-Western President Maia Sandu. Shor, who is in exile in Israel, has backed protests in Chisinau demanding the resignation of Sandu’s government as inflation and energy costs rise in the former Soviet republic. Shor’s party, which advocates friendly relations with Russia, has blamed Moldova’s problems on Sandu’s strong condemnation of Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. <br/>
Security restrictions on liquids and laptops in airport hand luggage could be abolished in the UK in 2024 due to the deployment of hi-tech 3D scanners. The government is considering rolling out the advanced technology, which is similar to CT scanners used in hospitals, in two years although a final decision has yet to be made, a source told the BBC. Currently, passengers taking liquids in their cabin bags are restricted to containers of up to 100ml which must be placed in a single, transparent, resealable plastic bag when they pass through airport security. The current rules have been in place since November 2006. The Times reported that major UK airports have been given a deadline of mid-2024 to install more advanced scanners and ministers have been carrying out a review with a formal announcement expected in the coming weeks. Passengers failing to remove items from their bags or travelling with large bottles of liquids and creams are the biggest cause of delays at airport security. The new technology, which has been trialled at London’s Heathrow airport since 2017, enables staff to zoom in on a bag’s contents and rotate the images for inspection. Heathrow’s CE, John Holland-Kaye, told the Times: “We are slowly rolling them out. “We have just started the expansion of the security area in Terminal 3 which will have more CT scanners and have a deadline of mid-2024 from the [Department for Transport]. By then the normal passenger experience will be that liquids stay in bags.”<br/>
The owner of Britain’s Manchester and Stansted airports said passenger numbers should jump next year as travelers switch to the low-cost flights in which the hubs specialize. Manchester Airports Group sees flyers increasing to 59m in 2023 from about 54m this year, CEO Charlie Cornish said. That’s just 3m, or 5%, below the total in 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak upended global air travel. MAG expects to gain momentum from discount carriers splurging on capacity as the economic slump pushes people to switch to cheaper travel options. Ryanair Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest no-frills airline, is targeting gains in market share and counts Stansted as its largest base. Manchester also hosts the Irish carrier as well as EasyJet, Jet2 and tour operator TUI AG. “We’ve got a high proportion of low-cost airlines, which will definitely help,” Cornish said. “People will trade down. They won’t fly longhaul but they may fly Ryanair, EasyJet and Jet2 for their low fares.” By 2024, he said, passenger numbers should be “well ahead” of pre-Covid levels. The optimism at MAG, which also owns East Midlands Airport, contrasts with a gloomier outlook at London Heathrow. John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Britain’s biggest hub, doesn’t expect demand to return to 2019 levels until 2025 or 2026. Heathrow relies much more on business travel, which has yet to fully return, especially on the long-haul routes in which it specializes, and hosts none of Europe’s major discount airlines. The airport has forecast total passengers of 62m this year, still down 23% on 2019’s 81m. The October number was equivalent to 84% of the pre-Covid level, compared with 93% at MAG.<br/>