On the morning of Jan. 26, as two Alaska Airlines flights from Seattle to Hawaii lifted off six minutes apart, the pilots each felt a slight bump and the flight attendants at the back of the cabin heard a scraping noise. As the noses of both Boeing 737s lifted skyward on takeoff, their tails scraped the runway. Both planes circled back immediately and landed again at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Tail strikes happen occasionally in aviation, but two in quick succession were not normal. Bret Peyton, Alaska’s on-duty director of operations, immediately ordered no more planes to take off across the airline’s network. All Alaska flights not already airborne were stopped nationwide. “At that point, two in a row like that, that’s when I said, ‘No, we’re done,’” said Peyton. “That’s when I stopped things.” For Peyton, who was an Air Force lieutenant colonel, that decisive call was a heart-racing moment. But few travelers, apart from the passengers aboard the two Hawaii flights who had to wait several hours to continue their journey, would have noticed anything amiss. The stoppage lasted just 22 minutes. Alaska’s flight operations staff quickly realized that a software bug was sending bad takeoff weight data to its crews. They immediately figured out a workaround and normal flying resumed. Last Tuesday, following a series of recent safety incidents and dangerous close calls around the U.S. aviation system, acting Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Billy Nolen wrote a “call to action” letter warning that the US system’s stellar safety record mustn’t be taken for granted. The Jan. 26 tail strikes at Sea-Tac were not close calls; the passengers on those Hawaii flights were never in danger. Still, the mishaps point to the need for more vigilance by pilots in checking automated data.<br/>
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Qantas announced its biggest investment in global airport lounges in more than a decade, underscoring the demand for premium, long-distance travel as aviation rebounds from the pandemic. The A$100m ($70m) program includes a new flagship first-class Lounge at London’s Heathrow Airport that will open in 2025, Qantas said Tuesday. That’s when the carrier aims to start nonstop flights connecting Sydney with London and New York, which will be the world’s longest direct commercial services. Qantas is due to report record six-month earnings on Feb. 23. Fares are surging as demand for travel outstrips available seats. In Hong Kong, Qantas will in April reopen a refurbished international lounge, which was shut during Covid-19. The company is also redeveloping international business-class lounges in Melbourne and Sydney that will open from mid-2024 onward. Qantas’s new international lounge in Auckland, meanwhile, is due to open this year as the airline starts nonstop services between the city in New Zealand and New York. “Being back in profit means we’re back to making long-term investments,” CEO Alan Joyce said.<br/>
Upholding Qantas’s decision to sack staff ahead of industrial action would create “uncertainty” about accessing workplace rights and water down protections against other forms of discrimination, such as sacking workers before they accrue parental leave. That is the submission of the Transport Workers’ Union in the airline’s high court case seeking to overturn the finding that it illegally outsourced 1,700 ground handler jobs. Qantas is fighting on two fronts, against the union, which argues the protection against adverse action is not limited to “presently existing” rights, and against the workplace relations minister, Tony Burke, who has sought to intervene in the case. On Wednesday the airline filed a notice arguing Burke has no automatic right to intervene, in a bid to force him to seek leave for submissions expected to favour the TWU. Qantas hopes to overturn a full federal court decision exposing it to a mammoth compensation bill for laying off staff at 10 airports in November 2020. In July 2021 the federal court ruled Qantas’s outsourcing of the workers was in part driven by a desire to avoid industrial action, which is a breach of the Fair Work Act.<br/>