President Joe Biden on Tuesday called on US airlines to follow American Airlines in committing to eliminating family seating fees as part of their customer service plans. "No one should have to pay extra to be seated with their kids," Biden wrote on Twitter. "Time for more airlines to follow suit." Biden had urged airlines in his State of the Union earlier this month to take the action, saying, "Baggage fees are bad enough - airlines can't treat your child like a piece of baggage." Airlines for America, which represents the largest US airlines, has said its carriers do not charge for family seating. Other carriers have not adopted the commitment in customer service plans. Carriers that do not honor commitments in written plans can face enforcement actions from the US Department of Transportation. USDOT plans to propose regulations to bar airlines from family seating fees and will next week disclose on a government dashboard which airlines have committed to not charging such fees. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the family seating dashboard will "show which airlines guarantee families can sit together for free" and praised American Airlines "becoming the first US airline to commit to putting this guarantee in its customer service plan." American said its written plan "provides additional clarity" and is "proud to offer industry leading, customer-friendly policies that ensure a positive travel experience for families."<br/>
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New York City and the Northeast had a slushy start Tuesday as a storm brought the first significant snowfall of the season to the region, grounding hundreds of flights. Manhattan’s Central Park got 1.8 inches (5 centimeters) overnight, with precipitation likely switching over to rain for the rest of the day, said Rob Carolan, Bloomberg Radio meteorologist and owner of Hometown Forecast Services. While a modest accumulation historically for New York, it’s the biggest so far this winter. Snow has been nearly non-existent this season, with the city breaking a 50-year-old record in January for the longest stretch without measurable snow. That’s in part thanks to a La Nina in the Pacific Ocean and a kink in the jet stream that’s pushing storms in the US Northeast away from the coast. About 5 inches fell in The Bronx. Queens got 2.5 inches. Areas to the north and west of the city could get upwards to 8 inches, as well as parts of southern New England, according to the National Weather Service. Across the US, more than 450 flights were canceled as of 9:15 a.m. New York time, with almost 300 of them going in or out of New York area airports, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service. Boston also had 84 flights scrubbed and Toronto reported 52 halted. More snow is possible later this week, but exact amounts aren’t clear yet. While it’s the deepest snow of the season, “it’s still not much,” said Bryan Ramsey, a National Weather Service meteorologist in New York. “Anything else we see, at least in New York City, will be liquid.”<br/>
The FAA needs permanent leadership and is at a "crossroads," President Joe Biden's nominee to head the agency plans to tell US lawmakers in written remarks seen by Reuters on Tuesday. Nominee Phil Washington, currently CEO of Denver International Airport, will tell US Senators at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that the "FAA is at a crossroads – an agency that must protect the safest era in aviation, modernize its technology, lift employee morale while staffing up, and maintain its global leadership in aviation," according to written testimony seen by Reuters. Acting FAA administrator Billy Nolen said this month he was forming a team of experts to review air safety and will hold a safety summit in March after several recent near-miss incidents raised questions about the US aviation system. "We need permanent leadership at the top of the FAA to address the challenges that we have seen in the last several years," Washington's testimony says. Republicans have criticized Washington's nomination citing his limited aviation experience and the FAA's performance. "The FAA is running on autopilot. You can only run on autopilot so long before you run out of gas, you wake up and you're over Utah," said Representative Sam Graves, a Republican who heads the House Transportation Committee overseeing the FAA.<br/>
Russia's defence ministry said it had carried out air defence drills involving interceptor jets after St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport was forced to suspend all flights on Tuesday for an hour. The government of Russia's second city announced the closure on its official Telegram channel without providing a reason for the suspension, as unconfirmed media reports said an unidentified object, such as a drone, had been spotted in the area. City officials said later on Tuesday that flights had resumed and that a temporary airspace ban within a 200-kilometre radius of Pulkovo had been lifted by 1200 local time (0900 GMT). In a statement issued around an hour after flights had restarted, Russia's defence ministry said it had been conducting drills, which had involved the despatch of fighter jets, in Russia's western air space. "During the training, air defence forces worked on the detection, interception and identification of targets, as well as interacting with emergency services and law enforcement agencies," Russian news agencies cited the ministry as saying. It said fighter plans had flown sorties as part of the training exercise. The drills were not previously announced and caused several flights to reroute and airlines to reschedule flight plans for the rest of the day.<br/>
Border Force officers have been ordered to “deprioritise” customs work at airports such as searching for guns and drugs in order to stop passport queues frustrating travellers. Leaked emails show that staff at Manchester airport were told this month that customs work should be carried out only if “there is no likelihood of an excessive queue time”. It meant there would be no spot-checks for illegal firearms, offensive weapons or drugs by customs officers, sources said. Searches could be initiated by intelligence-led work such as a category A order – a rare response prompted by intelligence from the National Border Targeting Centre. The Guardian understands staff have been under intense pressure from ministers to keep queues moving swiftly, particularly during half-term in parts of the UK. Staff at Heathrow said they had also been told not to work “proactively’ on customs during the February school holiday. The disclosures came as Home Office sources said there was increasing concern within government that there would be another Easter and summer of chaos at UK ports and airports. It follows a highly critical review last year into Border Force by Alexander Downer, commissioned by the former home secretary Priti Patel. The review concluded that Border Force’s work to prevent the entry of firearms and class A drugs had been “diluted”. The leaked email was sent by a named assistant director at the Border Force on 9 February, days before many school holidays began. “I want to confirm the steps we need to take to stabilise the PCP [primary control point] excessive wait times and to make the best use of the resources we have available to secure the border,” the email said.<br/>
Spanish airport operator Aena said on Tuesday it expects passenger traffic to return to normal this year after it booked an annual net profit in 2022 for the first time since the pandemic. With the end of COVID-19 restrictions, the number of passengers at Aena's airports gradually recovered last year, approaching pre-pandemic levels in December and surpassing them in January 2023. The company posted a net 2022 profit of E901.5m, compared with a loss of E475.4m in the prior year. While some European airports were affected by staff shortages as tourism rebounded last year, Aena's terminals have run smoothly since the summer, something it attributed to its ability to keep hold of workers during and after the pandemic. For 2022 as a whole, Spanish airport traffic reached 88.5% of 2019 levels. Aena lifted its estimate for 2023 to 99% of 2019 flows while not ruling out topping pre-pandemic numbers this year. The airport operator had previously said it expected a full recovery of traffic only in 2024.<br/>
Japanese tourism is back in full swing after the government eased COVID-19 entry restrictions for Chinese travelers, though a wave of new arrivals is adding pressure to an industry already grappling with a widespread labor shortage. Japan scrapped a blanket testing requirement on travelers from China at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, a restriction that had been imposed since Dec. 30 in response to a surge in coronavirus cases there. It is now testing a random selection of up to 20% of passengers on flights from China. Japan will also stop limiting direct flights to and from China at the Narita and Haneda airports that serve Tokyo, Osaka's Kansai International Airport and Chubu Airport near Nagoya. Airlines will be allowed to offer more frequent service. About 9.6m Chinese visited Japan in 2019, spending a combined 1.7t yen ($12.5b at current rates). Eased restrictions are expected to accelerate the return of those big-spending travelers. But Japanese businesses are already struggling to keep up with the uptick in travel five months after the government first scrapped most COVID-related entry curbs. Many workers at hotels and other tourism-focused businesses switched careers amid the pandemic. Of the more than 10,000 inns and hotels surveyed by research company Teikoku Databank in January, 77.8% said they did not have enough full-time employees, while 81.1% said they did not have enough part-time and other irregular-hour workers. "There is a record shortage, even compared to 2019 and before" during Japan's tourism boom, Teikoku Databank said. Popular restaurant chain Kiwamiya, based mainly in Fukuoka, served around 400 diners at a single location during its busiest day in January. Over 80% of patrons were travelers from South Korea. "Traffic has surged since Japan eased entry restrictions, and we can't keep up with our current staff," said a representative. Kanucha Bay Resort has been unable to accommodate foreigner travelers due to staff shortages. "We're forced to focus just on domestic guests because we don't have the manpower," Takehiro Shiraishi, president of the Okinawa-based hotel operator, said. <br/>
Two Labrador dogs, which have been trained by British police, are to be flown to Thailand to help crack down on the smuggling of critically endangered pangolins, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said on Tuesday. Pangolins, nocturnal creatures famed for their full armour of scales, are the most trafficked mammal in the world according to the World Wildlife Fund, and all eight species are on the red list of threatened species and at risk of extinction, the ZSL said. The two dogs, Buster and Bess, who have already undergone an eight-week training programme with London's Metropolitan Police, will be sent to Thailand to complete their training, and then use their sniffing skills to detect pangolins being smuggled through airports, ports and by road.<br/>Despite there being a ban on global trade of pangolins since 2017, the mammal is victim to high levels of poaching and illegal trade for their meat, scales and other body parts.<br/>