More than 1,000 flights were cancelled and many more delayed Monday with more expected in coming days as Texas and nearby states dealt with freezing temperatures and wintry precipitation. Nearly 350 flights were canceled at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and more than 200 at Dallas Love Field, according to the tracking service FlightAware. About 4,700 flights were delayed nationwide. Dallas-based Southwest scrubbed more than 500 flights, or about 12% of its entire schedule, while American, based in Fort-Worth, had dropped about 200 flights. Monday’s disruptions follow Southwest’s meltdown in December that began with a winter storm but continued after most other airlines had recovered. Southwest canceled about 16,700 flights over the last 10 days of the year, and the US Transportation Department is investigating. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for parts of north Texas starting on Monday afternoon. An icy mix covered some roadways as snow and rain fell and then froze. Beyond Texas, forecasters said ice could accumulate in neighboring Oklahoma and Arkansas and stretch east into the Deep South and Midwest this week. Schools and colleges in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas planned to close or go to virtual learning Tuesday.<br/>
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The FAA told lawmakers it had made a series of changes to prevent a repeat of a computer system outage that on Jan. 11 disrupted more than 11,000 US flights. Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen wrote in a letter dated Friday and seen by Reuters on Monday that the agency has made a change in the system to prevent a corrupt file from damaging a backup database. Last week the FAA told lawmakers it had revoked access to a pilot messaging database by contractor personnel who unintentionally deleted files in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) database. Nolen's letter said attempts to restore those files contributed to the outage and since then the FAA had adopted a one-hour delay in synchronizing databases that should prevent data errors from immediately reaching the backup database. The FAA also said it "now requires at least two individuals to be present during the maintenance of the NOTAM system, including one federal manager." Reuters reported some of the upgrades earlier. The FAA action was the first nationwide groundstop of departing flights since the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States.<br/>
US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday said the government needs to “pick up the pace” on its efforts to modernize aviation computer systems after a pilot messaging database outage forced a nationwide groundstop on Jan 11. Buttigieg told Reuters in an interview that President Joe Biden’s administration plans to seek from Congress “the resources needed to accelerate these system changes” at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He said it was important to look beyond the recent outage that snarled more than 11,000 flights. “The broader context is aging systems and growing demand. I don’t want this to be ‘whack-a-mole’ where we figured out one flavor of problem on one system... only to face another one later on.” Last week the FAA told lawmakers it had revoked access to a pilot messaging database by contractor personnel who unintentionally deleted files in the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) database, forcing the first nationwide groundstop since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. “We’re working to make sure we can accelerate the NOTAM modernization but what we really need to do is pick up the pace on FAA’s wholesale system modernization -- all the way down to the backbone of how the data moves,” Buttigieg said. “This is something that obviously has been underway through multiple administrations. It’s not going to happen overnight.” The FAA told US lawmakers in a letter first reported by Reuters that the agency has adopted new safeguards to prevent a subsequent outage, including a one-hour delay in synchronizing databases that should prevent data errors from immediately reaching the backup database. “I’m confident that we have identified the specific chain of events that led to this specific problem” that led to the ground stop, Buttigieg said.<br/>
UK airlines will be forced to “use or lose” their valuable take-off and landing slots this summer after the government announced “the return to business as usual” for aviation. Airlines such as British Airways and Virgin Atlantic will have to hand back their slots if they are not used 80% of the time over the summer season, which begins on March 26, the UK’s Department for Transport said on Tuesday. The government waived its “80/20” slot rules during the pandemic as border restrictions led to a collapse in the number of people flying. This allowed airlines to park their fleets and only run slimmed-down schedules while hanging on to spots at capacity-constrained airports. The waiver was also designed to stop airlines from running virtually empty with polluting “ghost flights” to maintain their slots, which can be worth millions of pounds. The rules were gradually restored as border restrictions eased, and over the winter airlines have had to use their slots 70% of the time. The decision to return to the pre-pandemic rules marked “a vote of confidence in the aviation industry” as demand for travel rebounds, the government said. It added that passenger numbers at UK airports had returned to 85% of normal levels by October. “We’re able to start a new, more optimistic, conversation about the future,” transport secretary Mark Harper said. The decision to waive the rules proved controversial, and some airlines and airports have long urged the government to bring competition for places at airports back more quickly. Rapidly expanding low-cost airlines such as Wizz Air complained that their ambitions to grow their UK businesses were being blocked by the waivers, as rival airlines were allowed to sit on their unused slots.<br/>
Greece has hired Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank to act as advisers on its planned listing of a 30% stake in Athens airport, two officials close to the matter said on Monday. Athens said last year it was considering listing a 30% stake in its biggest airport after an ownership review. Germany-based manager AviAlliance holds a 40% stake in the airport. Greece’s privatisation agency, the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF), aims for the initial public offering to take place in the first half of the year, said a HRADF official who declined to be named. The 30% stake could be valued between E800m and 1b, the official said, adding that state-owned HRADF has come to a tentative agreement to sell a 10% stake of its total shareholding to AviAlliance. <br/>
About 32.2m passengers passed through Changi Airport in 2022, which is nearly half the passenger traffic for the airport in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of 219,000 flights – 57.2% of the 382,000 flights in 2019 – also took off or landed at the airport, according to the latest figures released by Changi Airport Group on Tuesday. December was the busiest month, with 4.62m passengers passing through Changi Airport. This is 72% of the passenger traffic in December 2019. In the week between Dec 12 and Dec 18 alone, a little more than a million passengers or 82% of the weekly average traffic in 2019 were handled at the airport. In December 2022, 25,400 flights – more than three-quarters of the number before the Covid-19 pandemic – landed or took off at Changi Airport. Changi Airport’s top five passenger markets for the year were Australia, followed by Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Thailand. With South-east Asia seeing a strong recovery in passenger traffic, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta were Changi Airport’s three busiest routes, similar to 2019. Among Changi’s top 10 markets, passenger traffic from South Korea in December 2022 exceeded pre-Covid-19 levels. This was partly due to additional capacity from Changi’s airline partners, including new airlines T’way Air and Air Premia on the Singapore-Seoul route, and Scoot plying the new Singapore-Jeju route, said CAG.<br/>
Auckland Airport says they're continuing to clear the backlog of passengers left stranded at the airport after Friday's deluge of rain. Auckland Airport CE Carrie Hurihanganui said 40 stranded passengers spent the night on stretchers in the international terminal, supported by Auckland Airport staff and community response organisations. On top of this, the Auckland Airport Novotel accommodated around five people who needed some additional support. BBQ sausages were handed out to any travellers and staff who needed something hot to eat, Hurihanganui said. "We know how disruptive and demanding this experience has been for many passengers; we are genuinely sorry for the distress they have faced, and we want to again thank everyone for their patience in getting through this remarkably demanding time," Hurihanganui said.<br/>
Boeing said it plans to add a fourth 737 Max production line in the second half of next year as it targets higher output of its best-selling plane, an executive told staff on Monday. The new line will be housed in Boeing’s massive Everett, Washington, factory, where it has been reworking some of its 787 Dreamliners and producing 777s and 767s. Until December, it had also been producing the 747 jumbo jet there. “This undertaking is significant,” Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in a note to staff, which was seen by CNBC. “In addition to preparing the facility, we have begun the process of notifying and preparing our suppliers, customers, unions and employees as we take the necessary steps to create a new line.” Boeing has been eager to increase production of the 737 Max, but CEO Dave Calhoun has said the company is hesitant to ramp up output too quickly because of labor and supply chain strains. It is currently producing around 31 of the jets a month and last week said it is aiming for a rate of 50 a month in the “2025/2026 timeframe.” The manufacturer plans to hire around 10,000 workers this year, it said in a filing on Friday. It has a backlog of more than 3,600 of those single-aisle planes, with carriers including United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines awaiting planes. Boeing booked 700 orders for new 737 Max planes last year. Boeing still plans to operate three production lines at the Renton, Washington, 737 Max factory, Deal said. He pointed to demand for newer models like the 737-10, the largest in the family, which still hasn’t won regulatory approval.<br/>
Google made changes to Google Flights and Hotels related to transparency in hotel reviews and pricing under pressure from the European Commission — but stopped short of making those modifications elsewhere in the world. At the behest of the European Commission, Google added text in hotel reviews in European Union countries, noting “Reviews aren’t verified.” Unlike online travel agencies, Google doesn’t take bookings so it would be hard-pressed to verify user reviews. Tripadvisor, likewise, doesn’t verify hotel reviews for the same reason. Clicking further into Google’s explanatory language about user reviews in Europe, Google states that it accepts reviews from signed-in users — there’s no requirement that they ever stayed at that particular hotel — and licenses reviews from third-parties. “Google doesn’t do any additional filtering for spam or inappropriate language beyond that done by the provider, nor do we verify these reviews,” Google states. The European Commission stated that Google accepted this disclosure about hotel reviews and additional transparency commitments that other hotel-booking platforms such as Expedia Group and Booking.com agreed to on pricing and availability. Google agreed to these changes about user reviews, consented to disclose that Google Flights and Google Hotels is merely a middleman, and agreed to provide greater clarity when presenting discounted pricing, explaining that such deals are merely a reference point. But Google decided to make these changes in Europe only — and not in other geographies around the world where regulators were not providing heat.<br/>
By the middle of this century, most cars and buses should be powered by renewable energy while bikes, electric trains and your own two feet will continue to have little impact on the climate. And if global aviation achieves the goal it adopted last year, then a 2050 flight from New York to Hong Kong will result in “net-zero” carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is no guarantee that the industry will get there, but the technologies being developed in pursuit of the target will change aviation, regardless of whether the goal is met. In the years leading up to the pandemic, aviation emitted roughly a billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, about as much as the entire continent of South America in 2021. And the figures are bouncing back as passengers return to the skies. But major airlines, including six of the largest United States airlines, have pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, if not sooner. At a meeting in October of the United Nations agency dedicated to civil aviation, delegates from 184 countries adopted net zero by 2050 as a “long-term global aspirational goal”. “Aspirational” is the operative word. Aviation is what experts refer to as a hard-to-abate sector, meaning there are not any easy, market-ready technologies currently that can drastically reduce its carbon emissions. And the “net” qualifier attached to the goal means that airlines can account for any carbon dioxide they continue to emit either by using traditional carbon offsets, a practice that has attracted major criticism, or by capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. Scientists have also found that contrails – the wispy, short-lived clouds that sometimes appear in an airplane’s wake – affect the planet’s temperature, perhaps even more so than the carbon dioxide they release. It all adds up to a complex picture, especially given that global demand for aviation is expected to double over the next 20 years.<br/>