Business travel came back this year more strongly than most industry analysts had predicted in the depths of the pandemic, with domestic travel rebounding by this fall to about two-thirds of the 2019 level. But in recent weeks, it appears to have hit a new hurdle — companies tightening their spending in a slowing economy. Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst for Atmosphere Research, said that corporate travel managers have told him in the last few weeks that companies have started to ban nonessential business travel and increase the number of executives needed to approve employee trips. He said he was now predicting that corporate travel would soften slightly for the rest of the year and probably remain tepid into the first quarter of 2023. Harteveldt also said his conversations led him to believe that business travel would “come in below the levels airline executives discussed in their third-quarter earnings calls.” Airlines were bullish on those earnings calls, a little over a month ago. Delta, for one, said 90% of its corporate accounts “expect their travel to stay the same or increase” in the fourth quarter. United Airlines, too, said its strong Q3 results suggested “durable trends for air travel demand that are more than fully offsetting any economic headwinds.” The change in mood has come as the economy has more visibly slowed. Technology companies, in particular, have been announcing significant layoffs. Housing lenders have also been reducing staff, as rising mortgage rates cut into their business. The travel industry has long relied on business travel for both its consistency and profitability, with companies often willing to spend more than leisure travelers. When the pandemic almost completely halted business travel in 2020, people were forced to meet via teleconference, and many analysts predicted that the industry would never fully recover. But business travel did come back. As the economy reopened, companies realized that in-person meetings serve a purpose. Story has more.<br/>
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You can't call Frontier Airlines to book a flight or fix travel issues anymore. The Denver-based carrier has gotten rid of its customer service phone line. "Our Customer Care function recently transitioned to fully digital communications, which enables us to ensure our customers get the information they need as expeditiously and efficiently as possible," Frontier said, adding it was a gradual transition that was completed last weekend.A chatbot on Frontier's website can answer common questions. Customers can also can email the airline or file formal complaints through its website. "If live agent support is needed, we have live chat available 24 hours a day / 7 days a week," Frontier added, noting that most of its customers prefer digital communication. "Customers may also chat with us via common social media channels and WhatsApp."<br/>
Mexico’s domestic airline industry is in shambles, plagued by safety problems, a ratings downgrade by the US FAA, and vandalism. This week alone, passengers missed connections because thieves cut the fiber optic cables leading into the Mexico City airport, forcing immigration authorities to return to using slow paper forms. The internet outage Wednesday came almost one month after aviation and transportation authorities were forced to suspend medical, physical and license renewal exams until 2023 because the Transportation Department’s computer systems had been hacked. After a near-miss between two planes at the Mexico City airport on May 7, things just got worse. Authorities revealed that one of the airport’s main terminals is sinking and needs emergency work to shore it up. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s answer has been to propose allowing foreign airlines to fly domestic routes. But the safety downgrade — the FAA dropped Mexico from Category 1, which most countries have, to the lower Category 2 in 2021 — prevents Mexican airlines from opening new routes to the United States. Thus, Mexico’s struggling airlines face competition in their home market, with no access to new international routes. Experts say all of it looks like a disaster for domestic aviation, a sector López Obrador had placed special emphasis on developing.<br/>
The European Union said it will enable the “wide-spread deployment of 5G services” on aircraft by designating certain frequencies for in-flight cell-phone connectivity. The decision will allow airlines to let customers make and receive phone calls, text messages and data just as they would on the ground, the European Commission said in a statement Thursday. Service will be provided using special network equipment called a pico-cell that connect the in-flight network to the ground via a satellite, the statement said. “5G will enable innovative services for people and growth opportunities for European companies,” Thierry Breton, the EC’s commissioner for the internal market said. The US Federal Communications Commission in 2020 scuttled plans to allow in-flight voice and data services via mobile wireless frequencies, saying that there was strong opposition including from airline pilots and flight attendants on safety and national security grounds.<br/>
Brussels Airport has purchased an 80% interest in Belgian technology company Jetpack for an undisclosed sum. The founding members of the company will continue as minority stakeholders. Founded in 2017, Jetpack combines data analysis with artificial intelligence (AI) to convert data into information to enhance business processes and boost innovation. Brussels Airport said the acquired business will allow it to ‘expand its expertise’ in big data and AI while helping it deliver more differentiated services for its passengers. Apart from continuing the development of its activities independently, Jetpack will also establish an aviation-focused competence and innovation centre. Brussels Airport CEO Arnaud Feist said: “Brussels Airport’s investment in Jetpack fits in perfectly with our strategy of continuous improvement of our operational and commercial performance to serve our customers even better. The optimisation of our processes requires the real-time analysis of a large amount of data and the making of forecasts based on the increased use of artificial intelligence. Thanks to Jetpack, we will accelerate our developments in this field. Jetpack will continue to serve all its customers and develop solutions for different industries.""<br/>
Passengers will be able to leave laptops and liquids in their hand luggage when passing through security at London City airport from next year. The hub is trialling one security lane equipped with advanced baggage scanners and plans to introduce the machines in all of its lanes by April. The airport in the east of the capital said it will be one of the first in the UK to offer full CT – or computed tomography – scanners. The airport said it would replace its conventional security X-ray machines with the new technology. 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 system will mean that travellers can leave everything in their hand luggage before going through the X-ray machine. It emerged this week that 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 in two years, although a final decision had yet to be made, a source told the BBC. 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. London City’s COO, Alison FitzGerald, said in a statement: “Following our one-lane trial this year, we know the new CT scanners are high-performing and our passengers love them … It also delivers the highest security specifications.”<br/>
Key stakeholders in the UK’s air transport industry have lamented the impact of Brexit as they urged the government to put the sector at the centre of growth plans for the wider economy. Speaking during the Airlines 2022 event in London on 21 November, speakers representing airlines and airports expressed particular concern about the effects of the UK’s departure from the European Union on future economic growth prospects. “There’s no doubt that Brexit has damaged the UK economy, 99% of leading economists would tell you that,” says Manchester Airports Group CE Charlie Cornish. “You just need to look at the UK’s rate of growth now [versus its EU counterparts].” Highlighting an example of that damage, Cornish cites the huge number of EU citizens who have left the UK since the Brexit vote, saying this restricts the aviation sector’s ability to recruit “at scale and at pace”. Describing similar challenges from the airline industry’s viewpoint, IATA director general Willie Walsh says he has not heard “a single politician express or articulate clearly an economic Brexit benefit”. The UK’s aviation minister, Charlotte Vere – known as Baroness Vere of Norbiton – had earlier told the conference that a Brexit benefit was the UK’s ability to proceed with airspace modernisation in a “different” way to the EU’s approach. Walsh does not consider that a meaningful benefit of Brexit, however, and suggests that UK airlines are fundamentally disadvantaged by no longer being able to “cooperate freely within that larger [EU] market”. That view is echoed by FedEx Express’s senior vice-president of air network and global trade services for Europe, Jorn Van de Plas, who says Brexit has made UK operations “more complicated” and has “brought our service down” because goods are “stuck at the clearance point”. <br/>
Kuwait Petroleum Corp. exported its first shipment of aviation jet fuel from the country’s newly commissioned Al-Zour mega-refinery. The first cargo is currently being shipped aboard the Pacific Sarah tanker, KPC said in a statement on Sunday. The company and its subsidiaries are “continuously working to meet the rising demand of the global market for clean fuels in line with environmental regulations,” KPC said. Kuwait said earlier this month it had started commercial operations of the first phase of the Al-Zour refinery, after the production and sale of fuel oil in October to supply local power stations. The second and third phases of the refinery will follow, until full capacity of 615,000 barrels is reached early next year. Once the facility on Kuwait’s coast is working fully, it will boost the OPEC member’s refining capacity to about 1.5m barrels a day. Comprising three mini refineries, Al-Zour is the biggest of several oil-processing facilities being added across the Middle East. The Dangote refinery in Nigeria, slightly bigger at 650,000 barrels a day, is due to start up in 2023. <br/>
Airbus is preparing the ground for further delays to planned delivery dates of some medium-haul aircraft in 2023 even as it races to meet delivery targets for 2022 in the face of supply chain and labour problems, three industry sources said. The twin-speed approach comes as uncertainty remains over supplies of engines for new plane production as well as other parts and labour, they added, asking not to be named. A spokesperson for Airbus said it had no comment on deliveries ahead of its next monthly bulletin in early December. Analysts say aerospace is grappling with a series of concurrent problems with multiple knock-on effects. Jetliner and engine makers are battling supply chain and labour problems, but so too are the worldwide repair shops needed to help airlines meet a sharper than expected recovery in demand by keeping their existing aircraft in service. The logjam in repair capacity has left dozens of planes grounded as their engines are late coming out of overhaul, and that in turn has created competition for engines between new aircraft assembly lines and spares for the existing fleet. At least one engine maker is experiencing renewed pressure to shift more engines away from supporting aircraft production to a pool of spares for existing customers, the sources said.<br/>
Airbus SE said it reached an agreement with French prosecutors to settle probes into corruption allegations linked to Libya and Kazakhstan. The deal represents “a limited extension” to a E3.6billion settlement with French, British and American authorities reached in 2020, Airbus said Thursday, adding that all issues couldn’t be dealt with simultaneously at that time for procedural reasons. The Parquet National Financier prosecutors office confirmed to Bloomberg that an accord was reached with Airbus on Nov. 17 concerning acts of bribery of foreign public officials relating to sales campaigns in Libya and Kazakhstan between 2006 and 2011. The deal still needs to be reviewed -- and possibly approved -- by a French judge during a court hearing on Nov. 30. It would typically include a fine but no admission of guilt. No value was specified by Airbus or the PNF. The planemaker said the latest settlement “will have no adverse impact” on the earlier agreements with France, the UK and US.<br/>
A small plane crashed into a transmission tower in Maryland on Sunday, knocking out electricity to roughly 117,000 customers as rescuers raced to extricate the two people on board who were trapped about 100 feet above the ground, the authorities said. The pilot, Patrick Merkle, 65, of Washington, and the passenger, Jan Williams, 66, of Louisiana, did not appear to be seriously injured, Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service, said on Sunday. He said the authorities had been in contact with the two people as the aircraft dangled in the power lines and tower. Chief Scott Goldstein, of the county fire and rescue service, said in a news conference on Sunday night that officials had told the pilot and the passenger to conserve battery life on their phones in order to communicate with rescuers. Piringer said the pilot and passenger had been flying to Montgomery County Airpark, an airport near Gaithersburg, Md., about 40 miles west of Baltimore. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane, a single-engine Mooney M20J, had departed from Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., on Sunday. It remained unclear what led to the crash, which happened in Montgomery Village, Md., around 5:40 p.m. and made for unusual photos by residents and officials on social media. The images and videos showed the plane entangled in power lines and seemingly suspended in the air in a snarled mess of metal.<br/>