Air travel disruptions eased Thursday, a day after a severe pilot safety alert system failure sparked the delay of close to half of US flights. The FAA halted US flight departures early Wednesday after an outage of the Notice to Air Mission system, which provides pilots and others with safety information such as runway hazards. The FAA said a preliminary review traced the outage to a “damaged database file.” The issues started around 3:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday. Unable to fix the problem, the FAA rebooted the system, and ordered the ground stop, which it lifted around 9 a.m. on Wednesday. That caused a cascade of US flight delays, which totaled 10,563, according to FlightAware. More than 1,300 flights were canceled. The FAA said Thursday that it is seeing “no unusual delays or cancellations this morning.” Delays worsened throughout the day, however, with late US flights totaling nearly 4,000 by 4:50 p.m. ET, according to FlightAware. The FAA said in a tweeted video message Thursday morning that some flights could be disrupted by bad weather. The outage and rare nationwide ground stop highlighted yet again how a failure of one of the numerous systems that underpin the US aviation system can so dramatically derail air travel for hundreds of thousands of passengers. The FAA’s outage prompted questions from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and will likely lead to hearings and debate over additional funding for the US aviation regulator. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg vowed to investigate. “When there’s a problem with a government system, we’re going to own it, we’re going to find it and we’re going to fix it,” he told reporters Wednesday. There was no evidence of a cyberattack, the FAA said. Both the primary and back-up systems were fed the corrupted data file, according to a person familiar with the matter.<br/>
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An overlooked software flaw is opening up US aviation authorities to new scrutiny over the resiliency of the systems that keep the nation’s planes moving. FAA officials were still working late Wednesday to determine what went wrong in an outage that prompted a nationwide flight stoppage. The agency said preliminary findings traced the cause to a “damaged database file” — confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report — and there’s no evidence of a cyberattack. The system breakdown immediately attracted criticism from prominent lawmakers and aviation industry leaders, just weeks after Southwest Airlines was called out by authorities for its own technology failures. “The FAA’s inability to keep an important safety system up and running is completely unacceptable and just the latest example of dysfunction within the Department of Transportation,” said Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the leading Republican on transportation issues. The system outage heightens tensions after an already-contentious year in which airlines and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg traded accusations over who was most responsible for air-traffic disruptions. It also sets up a potential showdown as Congress prepares to write legislation setting FAA policy for the next few years. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat who chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said the committee will be “looking into” the FAA meltdown. The situation is an awkward turn for aviation officials, coming shortly after the Southwest meltdown stranded thousands of passengers during the holidays. “We have the secretary who lambasted Southwest and the airlines over their response to avoid cancellations and delays and provide compensation, but right now he doesn’t appear to accept responsibility or provide a clear answer when his own department fails,” said Kenneth Quinn, a partner at the Clyde & Co law firm and former chief counsel for the FAA. “Who’s going to compensate these affected passengers?”<br/>
Airlines have cancelled tens of thousands of US flights this winter, and imposed even more delays, resulting in the worst chaos in more than a decade and straining a country dependent on planes for long-distance trips. The latest disruptions came on Wednesday when a computer glitch at the US FAA grounded planes across the nation for two hours. More than 10,000 flights were cancelled or delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. This followed widespread problems triggered by a winter storm at Christmas. Several US carriers suffered delays while Southwest Airlines, a low-cost carrier, left some travellers stranded for days. During the holiday season between December 20 and January 4, US air travellers endured the most flight cancellations and delays in a decade, according to data from FlightAware. The more than 32,000 cancelled flights exceeded the previous high by over 50%. The cancellations amounted to about 8% of flights in the period, while 37% were delayed, according to FlightAware’s data. On average, only 2% of flights were cancelled between 2011 and 2021, while 22% were delayed. “It definitely is a most unusual start to the winter travel season,” said Dan Akins, an economist at consultancy Flightpath Economics. “It suggests how fragile is the system that we rely on as a utility, from a private company perspective to the public oversight of the FAA.” Airlines have cancelled tens of thousands of US flights this winter, and imposed even more delays, resulting in the worst chaos in more than a decade and straining a country dependent on planes for long-distance trips. The latest disruptions came on Wednesday when a computer glitch at the US Federal Aviation Administration grounded planes across the nation for two hours. More than 10,000 flights were cancelled or delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. This followed widespread problems triggered by a winter storm at Christmas. Several US carriers suffered delays while Southwest Airlines, a low-cost carrier, left some travellers stranded for days.<br/>
US airline profits are set to come under pressure in 2023 as they look to shell out more cash to retain pilots amid worries about the impact of a potential recession on travel demand. Major carriers such as United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta and Southwest have rushed to add staff after a faster-than-expected rebound in the US travel market. Some airlines have had to hand out bumper contracts to pilots, stoking concerns about a rise in costs as they recover from the pandemic when they were saddled with heavy debt loads. "Margins are set to take a hit in 2023 as airlines ratify new contracts with labor groups," Cowen analyst Helane Becker said last month. "We expect pilot pay, which represents approximately 40% of labor expense, will increase by 20% to 30% under the new agreements." In a recent note, BofA Global Research estimated that the industry will need to hire about 5,200 pilots per year from 2024-2030. Last month, Delta offered a 34% pay hike to pilots, which aviators at rival carriers termed as a new "benchmark". "Delta's recent tentative pilot agreement, assuming it is ratified, could drive incremental unit costs higher by ~2%, and 2%-3% higher for American, Southwest and United," Barclays analyst Brandon Oglenski said on Wednesday.<br/>
Morocco will not take part in a soccer tournament being held in Algeria after the Algerian government rejected its request for the team to fly there directly on Morocco's national airline, the Moroccan football federation said on Thursday. Algeria closed its airspace to Moroccan aircraft in 2021 after it unilaterally severed diplomatic ties with its North African neighbour. Morocco are the title holders of the African Nations Championship for players under 23 who still play in African countries. The tournament starts on Friday and finishes on Feb. 4.<br/>Soccer authorities in Rabat had written to the Confederation of African Football to say Morocco would only take part if its team could take a direct flight to Algeria with Royal Air Maroc. Morocco's senior national team last month became the first from an African country to reach the World Cup semi-finals, raising the global profile of Moroccan soccer. Algeria and Morocco are at odds over a range of issues including the future of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco regards as its own but where Algeria backs an armed independence movement.<br/>
Airlines in the Asia Pacific region flew 13.4m passengers internationally in November, compared with just 1.8m in the same month a year earlier, according to preliminary data from their trade association. Revenue passenger kilometers, which measures demand, surged nearly 500%, far ahead of the 187% growth in seat capacity. That resulted in a 40 percentage point jump in load factor — or how many seats are filled in a plane — to 77.4%, close to pre-pandemic levels, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines said in a statement Thursday. Leisure and business travel have both experienced a strong revival following the lifting of travel restrictions, AAPA said. Air cargo demand softened, however, due to continued weakness in global manufacturing and business confidence, and as costs remained high. Average international freight load factor slid 9.3 percentage points from a year earlier to 63.9% in November. “The first 11 months of the year saw a near six-fold jump in the combined number of international passengers carried to an aggregate total of 87.5m,” AAPA Director General Subhas Menon said in the statement. “Nevertheless, in November, demand averaged only 43% of 2019 levels, indicating significant progress still required towards full recovery.” “The recent reopening of China’s borders with quarantine-free travel after nearly three years of strict virus containment policies will markedly improve demand prospects, given China’s significant trade and tourism links with the region’s economies and beyond,” Menon said. But he warned that fresh curbs on travelers from China could hamper the recovery. <br/>
Singapore’s Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung told Parliament Monday that the government is not imposing new restrictions on travelers from China because limited flight capacity, combined with its current border policies, have resulted in few imported cases — and even fewer severe cases — coming from China. Ong said the government is “acutely aware” that some Singaporeans are worried that an influx of visitors from China could lead to a rise in infections. But he said travel volumes between Singapore and China are “very low” — with fewer than 1,000 people arriving from China daily. “As of now, we run 38 weekly flights from China to Singapore, compared to around 400 flights pre-Covid,” he said. Ong acknowledged that a new, more dangerous variant could emerge from China as the virus spreads through its population of 1.4b, but said that so far, this has not materialized. Ong said Singapore is monitoring this through GISAID, a non-profit organization that he said is obtaining viral sequencing data from authorities in major Chinese cities and provinces, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Sichuan, which is processed in GISAID’s Singapore office. Though there are “gaps in the data,” Ong said, “So far, the data shows that the epidemic in China is driven by variants that are well-known and have been circulating in other regions of the world” — namely BA.5.2 and BF.7. So far, more than a dozen countries have announced new rules for visitors from China. But Ong said Singapore did not, because it already has effective border measures in place. “Many countries have dismantled all their border measures,” he said. “Singapore … kept relevant measures precisely because we anticipated these risks.”<br/>
China expects to reach annual production capacity of 150 domestically-produced C919 planes in five years, government-backed media The Paper said on Friday. Zhang Yujin, deputy general manager of China's state-owned Commercial Aviation Corp of China (COMAC), the maker of C919, said the company had received more than 1,200 orders for the jet. "The first orders are from China Eastern Airlines, and at present a number of carriers are vying for our orders," Zhang said, adding that there would be "qualitative change" in terms of C919's production capacity. COMAC delivered the first C919to China Eastern in December, and the maiden commercial flight is expected to take place in spring this year, according to state-owned Xinhua News Agency. The plane, a rival to the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX single-aisle jet families, was certified by Chinese regulators for safe operations in September and mass production in November last year.<br/>
Airbus SE is exploring the next level of cockpit automation, testing a system that would provide advanced assistance from alerts on the ground to emergency diversions at cruising altitude should the crew be incapacitated. The technology, called DragonFly, is designed to let planes perform an automated landing even in difficult weather conditions or low visibility while communicating with air traffic control as well as the airline’s operations team. Airbus is currently testing the system, which also provides taxi assistance, both on the ground and in the air on an A350. Its most advanced model has been equipped with cameras, sensors, and computer vision algorithms, the company said. Airbus says the goal is to eventually let the technology land an aircraft at any airport in the world, regardless of whether the facility has the equipment currently needed for automatic landing. Automation has become a common feature in modern commercial aircraft, allowing the pilots to hand off many tasks to the computer system, particularly at cruising altitude. Given the degree of computing power already in place today, some airlines and regulators are pushing to have just one pilot in the cockpit of passenger jets to cut costs and ease pressure from crew shortages. Critics of the proposal say it puts too much responsibility on one individual, an objection the DragonFly system might help address.<br/>
FedEx Corp. plans to scale back even more on Sunday package deliveries as the courier grapples with faltering e-commerce demand. The pullback will reduce the availability of Sunday service to about 50% of the US population, according to an internal memo. FedEx had announced in July that it would slash coverage on that day to roughly 80% of US residents from 95%. The company expects to halt the service in select areas beginning in mid-March, according to the unsigned Jan. 6 memo, which was sent to the contractors that make deliveries for its ground unit. FedEx will decide next month which markets will be affected. The courier said in a separate statement Tuesday that Sunday deliveries would continue primarily in “densely populated areas with proven customer demand.” “As we continue to adapt and streamline the FedEx global network to meet our customers’ needs in a rapidly shifting landscape, FedEx Ground is making further adjustments to better align our Sunday residential delivery operations with current customer demand,” the company said. The move is the latest step in FedEx’s effort to reduce costs, improve efficiency and deal with a decline of package volume as people return to shopping at retail stores following a surge of online purchases during the pandemic. During the quarter than concluded at the end of November, package volume at the ground unit fell 9.1%. <br/>
On a clear day, with the right weather conditions, a portion of the sky busy with commercial flights can become riddled with contrails, the wispy ice clouds that form as jet aircraft fly by. They might look innocuous, but they're not -- contrails are surprisingly bad for the environment. A study that looked at aviation's contribution to climate change between 2000 and 2018 concluded that contrails create 57% of the sector's warming impact, significantly more than the CO2 emissions from burning fuel. They do so by trapping heat that would otherwise be released into space. And yet, the problem may have an apparently straightforward solution. Contrails -- short for condensation trails, which form when water vapor condenses into ice crystals around the small particles emitted by jet engines -- require cold and humid atmospheric conditions, and don't always stay around for long. Researchers say that by targeting specific flights that have a high chance of producing contrails, and varying their flight path ever so slightly, much of the damage could be prevented. Adam Durant, a volcanologist and entrepreneur based in the UK, is aiming to do just that. "We could, in theory, solve this problem for aviation within one or two years," he says. Durant has long studied how atmospheric contaminants affect the health of aircraft engines, and after the 2010 eruption of an Icelandic volcano brought aviation to a standstill, he embarked on a project with Airbus and easyJet to research volcanic ash. In 2013 he founded his own company, Satavia, initially focusing on preserving engines from damaging pollutants like dust, ice and volcanic ash. "Then, Covid shifted the priorities of the whole industry towards sustainability," he says. Satavia pivoted to tackling contrails, by developing a weather prediction model that can forecast the conditions that lead to their formation. Of contrails' climate impact, "80 or 90% is coming from only maybe five to 10% of all flights," says Durant. "Simply redirecting a small proportion of flights can actually save the majority of the contrail climate impact."<br/>