Winter certainly is arriving with a bang in the United States. An arctic blast and bomb cyclone will push through most of the country as the season officially starts, and that's bound to bring disruptions for millions of holiday travelers. In fact, just over 1,000 Thursday flights within, into or out of the US had already been canceled by 7:50 p.m. ET Wednesday, according to data from flight tracking site FlightAware. US air travelers had a decent run of it over the July Fourth, Labor Day and Thanksgiving holidays with largely favorable weather conditions. But it appears we're in for a different story for Christmas. Scott Keyes, founder of discount travel site Scott's Cheap Flights, said that "our luck might have finally run out." That huge winter storm, what the National Weather Service is calling a "once in a generation type event," is delivering deadly cold, possible blizzards and a proverbial lump of coal in our travel stockings. And it's all coinciding with a travel season that's returning to crowded, nearly pre-pandemic levels.<br/>AAA, the auto and travel membership club, expects nearly 113m people to travel over the end-of-year holiday period. The number of travelers expected to fly -- 7.2m -- is just shy of 2019's 7.3m. And when you factor in that airlines are operating fewer flights that are more crowded, there's serious potential for a serious mess.<br/>
general
The number of international flights allowed to land in Vancouver will be restricted over two of the busiest travel days of the year as the airport works to clear a backlog of planes following widespread delays and cancellations during a snowstorm on Tuesday. Vancouver International Airport (YVR) said the decision affects more than two dozen international flights scheduled to land between Wednesday and Friday, just ahead of the Christmas weekend. "A significant number of aircraft remain at YVR [after the snowstorm], which has led to congestion on our airfield and limited our ability to facilitate arriving and departing flights," read a statement from the airport on Wednesday. "Our focus is to depart aircraft from the airport and get crews and passengers safely on their way. Therefore, we will be temporarily limiting arriving international flights for approximately 48 hours." The airport temporarily suspended operations after an unusually heavy snowfall across B.C.'s South Coast on Monday night through Tuesday morning, leading to hundreds of cancelled or delayed flights. Both days were expected to be some the airport's busiest of the year, with more than 134,000 combined travellers passing through. In an interview on Wednesday, YVR's vice president said the airport was back to about 60% of its typical operating levels as of midday, but the situation won't be fully back to normal for days. <br/>
Passengers flying into the UK have been warned to expect disruption over Christmas as passport officers join the wave of strikes gripping the country. Border Force staff at six of the UK’s busiest airports, including London Heathrow and Gatwick, will walk out from Friday in a row over pay rises as part of a series of strikes from the PCS union. Steve Dann, Border Force’s COO, on Wednesday said there were “robust plans” in place to minimise queues, but that passengers “should be prepared for disruption and take action to plan ahead”. The action will take place between December 23 and 26 and then again between December 28 and 31; around 10,000 flights are expected to land over that period. The walkout comes as public sector workers including railway staff, nurses and ambulance drivers have all taken part in industrial action this month in protest over low pay rises at a time of high inflation. Electronic passport gates will remain open as normal, and departing passengers are not expected to be caught up in the problems. Dann raised the prospect of closing some airports as a worst-case scenario if disruption were to spiral out of control, but he said he had a “reasonable expectation” that government contingency plans would keep borders open and flowing. Industry executives privately dismissed the possibility of closures. UK government officials and the aviation industry have spent the past month scrambling to prepare plans to keep people moving during one of the busiest periods of the year.<br/>
Visitor arrivals to Japan jumped to nearly 1m in November, the first full month after the country scrapped COVID-19 curbs that effectively halted tourism for more than two years, data showed on Wednesday. The number of foreign visitors, for both tourism and business, rose to 934,500 last month, almost double the October figure, the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) said. Still, arrivals were down nearly two-thirds compared with pre-pandemic levels of 2019. "The demand for Japan out of North America is very strong right now," said Virgilio Russi, vice president of international sales for Air Canada, speaking Reuters in an interview before Wednesday's numbers were released. Passenger demand from Canada to Japan is more than double what it was in 2019, Russi added, citing a shift away from China among business travellers, as well as tourists taking advantage of the current weakness of the yen. "From a cost perspective, Japan is quite reasonable right now," he said. While the yen has climbed this week after a surprise policy change by the Bank of Japan, it remains 13% weaker against the US dollar this year. And while China has begun to relax its zero-COVID policy, analysts don't expect its borders to reopen till March or April. So far this year, 2.46m visitors have arrived in Japan, the JNTO data showed. That's a fraction of the record 31.8m in 2019 and the government's original 2020 goal of 40m, timed to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics that were eventually postponed due to the pandemic. Japan on Oct. 11 ended some of the world's strictest border controls, and PM Fumio Kishida is counting on tourism to boost the economy.<br/>
Hong Kong International Airport says it’s ready to use driverless buses, confident it can shuttle passengers around the aerodrome from next year after extensive trials years in the making. By bolting on cameras, sensors and tracking devices, the Asian financial hub’s main airport has adapted and kitted out an electric bus from Chinese carmaker BYD Co. and been testing so-called Level 4 autonomous technology. The four-year effort, using other types of driverless vehicles without passengers, has racked up around 130,000 kilometers without an accident, according to the airport. “We can carry passengers to and from different destinations — totally driverless,” Chapman Fong, the airfield’s general manager, said. Reaching full levels of autonomous driving with flawless safety in a real world environment is the holy grail for automakers and tech firms alike. But despite the tens of billions of dollars spent, it remains illusive. While self-driving trucks are being used in some controlled applications, like hauling rocks around a mine site, cars without humans that can navigate streets shared by pedestrians, pets and other vehicles don’t exist. HKIA’s bus, a BYD J6 model, seats 14 passengers, features 10 cameras placed outside the vehicle from Uisee Technology (Beijing) Co. and uses GPS locators to track its position. A key part of the technology’s hardware is in a sizable, silver metal case next to where a driver would sit that contains the driverless unit and a back-up system that can independently scan the path ahead. If the main system fails, the back-up kicks in. “For the autonomous technology we are quite confident because we have been using it for live operations and have had zero accidents,” Fong said. Having actual passengers on board is another milestone and “we’re confident it’s the next move for autonomous vehicles at this airport.”<br/>
The total Vietnamese aviation market is expected to reach 55m passengers by the end of this year, an increase of 3.7 times compared to the previous year, Vietnam News reported on Wednesday. It added that the growth indicated the market has recovered by nearly 70% from pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels in 2019. The airline's domestic passenger transport reached 43.2m passengers this year, an increase of 3.5 times compared to the previous year and more than 15% compared to 2019. However, international transport only reached 11m visitors, despite growing 22 times over the previous year, a mere equivalent to 27% of the volume in 2019, the newspaper reported. In terms of goods, the total volume of goods transported by air is estimated at more than 1.25m tons, equivalent to that of 2019.<br/>