The death toll from a violent storm that whipped up tornadoes in the southern and midwestern regions of the United States rose to at least 32 over the weekend, according to officials and media reports.<br/>U.S. President Joe Biden declared a "major disaster" in Arkansas on Sunday, ordering federal aid to help with the recovery. The National Storm Prediction Center warned of severe weather on Sunday in parts of north and northeast Texas around Dallas and Fort Worth, including very large hail, significant wind gusts and a "strong tornado or two." Dallas Fort Worth International Airport was under a ground-stop order for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon, and flights were delayed as heavy rain, hail and strong winds hit the area.<br/>
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Four major US wireless carriers told the Federal Communications Commissions late Friday they had agreed to some voluntary actions to address aviation safety concerns and allow full use of the C-Band wireless spectrum for 5G use. "These voluntary commitments will support full-power deployments across C-Band, and are crafted to minimize the operational impact on our C-Band operations," said the letter from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile US and UScellular filed with the FCC on Friday and seen by Reuters. The agreement follows extensive discussions with the FAA and is a major step forward, allowing carriers to increase power levels to get to full C-Band use, according to the letter and people involved in the talks. Concerns that 5G service could interfere with airplane altimeters, which give data on a plane's height above the ground and are crucial for bad-weather landing, led to brief disruptions at some US airports last year as international carriers canceled some flights. Last year, Verizon and AT&T voluntarily agreed to delay some C-Band 5G usage until July as air carriers worked to retrofit airplane altimeters. T-Mobile and UScellular had not begun deployment when the agreement was announced. Reuters first reported in February that the FAA, Verizon and AT&T were in talks to reach a new agreement that sought to extend some voluntary mitigations beyond July 1. Verizon said Friday it "agreed to final voluntary commitments that will allow our company to fully use our C-band spectrum for 5G by the previously agreed to deadline of July 1." AT&T said the "filing is the result of collaborative and productive conversations with the FAA."<br/>
European airlines fear losing out to rivals based outside the EU that can ignore the bloc’s emissions-reduction rules to become carbon neutral by 2050. The “Fit for 55” package sets out an initial goal of reducing emissions by 55% in 2030 compared with the 1990 level. This involves bloc-level obligations to scale up the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) to be blended with fossil fuels in all flights departing from European airports. SAFs come from sources such as municipal solid waste, leftovers from the agricultural and forestry industry, used cooking oil, crops and plants, and hydrogen. These technologies are still developing and the end product is more expensive, thereby placing additional costs on airlines obliged to use them while passengers will have to pay more for flights. The aviation sector is growing in Asia and the Middle East and companies based there could benefit greatly as they are not subject to these constraints, industry experts say. “The European airline industry has to live with the fact that it’s cheaper to bypass environmental reduction ideas if you hop outside of Europe,” Carsten Spohr, CEO of German carrier Lufthansa, said at the Airlines for Europe (A4E) aviation summit in Brussels on Wednesday. Spohr said an airline flying from Brussels to Singapore via Paris, for example, must pay through a carbon emissions trading plan for the European leg of the trip. “If you want to go via Doha, you don’t need to pay emission trading, you also don’t need to be part of blending (SAF and traditional fuels),” Spohr said. Carbon dioxide emissions from aviation have been included in the EU emissions trading system since 2012.<br/>
The summer travel season is shaping up to be a good one for European airlines, prompting Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays Plc to upgrade several carriers that could benefit from rising fares, strong demand and lower jet fuel prices. Air travel took a hit during the coronavirus pandemic, as lockdowns, travel bans and capacity restraints at airports weighed on earnings. Now, more and more European carriers are predicting a rebound in travel this summer, with Deutsche Lufthansa AG recently joining the chorus of carriers expecting an earnings boost. European airlines could see a quicker recovery in profit this year than previously thought, Deutsche Bank said. Even with conservative assumptions on yields, fuel prices and non-fuel costs, analysts Jaime Rowbotham and Andy Chu nonetheless see potential for operating profits in 2023 to be more than 20% higher than previously thought. The positive momentum is “hard to ignore,” they wrote in a note Friday upgrading Air France-KLM SA, British Airways owner International Consolidated Airlines Group SA and Lufthansa to buy from hold. Shares in all three airlines rose on Friday, with the Stoxx 600 Travel & Leisure sub-index climbing to its highest level since March 8. The magnitude of their upgrades to 2023 estimates, which would imply lower indebtedness for airlines, could provide catalysts for further share price appreciation in the coming months, with 45% upside on average, Rowbotham and Chu wrote. Their preferred pick is Lufthansa, with a price target of E14.50 implying upside of about 50%. In a separate note, Barclays said it expects travel demand to stay strong despite macro concerns, while airlines will benefit from lower fuel prices and a weaker dollar. While European airlines are expected to report losses for the first quarter, those would be “significantly reduced” relative to the Covid-affected year-earlier period, analysts led by Andrew Lobbenberg wrote in a note.<br/>
Passengers flying from London’s Heathrow airport face potential disruption over the Easter holidays after security staff began a strike in a row over pay. More than 1,400 members of the Unite union began 10 days of industrial action on Friday after last-ditch talks to find a deal broke down. The strike will run until Easter Sunday on April 9, taking in one of the busiest travelling periods of the year. Unite said the walkouts would cause “severe delays”, but Heathrow said it expected passengers would be able to travel as normal, albeit with longer queues at security. Heathrow said the first day passed smoothly on Friday, and that the airport was operating “as usual”. The strike is the latest action to hit the aviation industry in recent months, and follows a series of walkouts by Border Force officials at immigration. Officials at the UK’s Passport Office have also launched a five-week strike starting on April 3. The security staff involved work at Terminal 5, which is the home of British Airways, and in the wider airport’s cargo operations. British Airways has cancelled more than 300 short-haul flights over the 10-day period, the equivalent of 5% of its flight schedule. Heathrow also asked airlines to stop selling tickets over the strike period in order to control the number of passengers moving through the airport. The airport is deploying an extra 1,000 staff to help passengers through departures, and will only allow travellers to take two items of hand baggage through security. Unite turned down an offer of a 10% pay rise plus GBP1,150 cash payment, following a 4% rise plus GBP2,000 one-off payment in 2022, according to Heathrow. The average starting salary for a security officer would be GBP27,754, including the proposed pay rise. “We will not let these unnecessary strikes impact the hard-earned holidays of our passengers. Our contingency plans will keep the airport operating as normal throughout,” the airport said. The union said the offer represented a real terms pay cut, and that staff were “unable to make ends meet due to the low wages paid by Heathrow”. <br/>
Singapore’s immigration systems were largely back to normal after a disruption that caused delays at Changi airport and at land-border crossings just before the start of the weekend. Although travelers were told to delay non-essential travel, there haven’t been any flight cancellations, according to data from Flightradar24.com. The glitch came two days after the city’s largest bank, DBS Group Holdings Ltd., suffered a 10-hour outage on its mobile-phone apps and online-banking. Singapore’s Immigration & Checkpoints Authority said technical issues led to the disruption. "Preliminary investigations found that there was a technical glitch during a pre-scheduled system upgrade, and this caused an unanticipated system overload,” it said in a Facebook post Friday night. Singapore prides itself on efficiency and being a trusted business hub. Rated the world’s top airport for the 12th time by Skytrax earlier this month, Changi handled 68.3m passengers in 2019, before the Covid pandemic decimated the global travel industry. Known for its indoor waterfall, butterfly garden and plethora of shopping outlets, Changi has also embraced automation to handle the large volume of passengers passing through the Southeast Asian hub.<br/>
Virgin Orbit Holdings, the satellite-launch company tied to British billionaire Richard Branson, is ceasing operations indefinitely, succumbing to growing cash-crunch pressures that have paralyzed startups in many emerging technologies. The company said in a filing Thursday that it was cutting 675 jobs, or about 85% of its workforce, “in order to reduce expenses in light of the company’s inability to secure meaningful funding.” A spokesperson for Virgin Orbit said the remaining 15% of employees will work on winding down the business. The move punctuates a rapid fall after its high-profile launch failure in January and a collapse in its stock price. Virgin Orbit temporarily suspended operations earlier this month while it sought additional capital. The firm — part of Branson’s empire that includes airline Virgin Atlantic and spaceflight company Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. — hasn’t turned a profit as a public company. Virgin Orbit shares fell 45% in extended New York trading as of 7:20 p.m., trading at just 19 cents each. The stock was worth more than $7 a year ago. Charges will amount to about $15m, consisting primarily of $8.8m in severance pay and employee benefits, and $6.5m in other costs such as outplacement services, Virgin Orbit said in the filing. Just two weeks ago, the company approved a severance plan for top executives, with CEO Daniel Hart standing to collect a payout of twice his base compensation, a cash payment equal to the pro-rated annual target bonus, as well as as much as six months of health insurance cover.<br/>
When you think about that dot on the screen and how many people that represents,” Jess Walton says as she points to a blinking circle on one of the four screens in front of her. “It’s our job to keep them safe, so you can’t really get distracted.” The air-traffic controller sits in the “en route” section of the air-traffic services centre next to Melbourne airport, in the offices of Airservices Australia, the commonwealth-owned organisation responsible for the management of the country’s skies. While towers overlooking airports might be where most people think air-traffic controllers work, taking off and landing is just the tip of the iceberg. Different sections of airspace and altitudes are carved up and split between the roughly 100 desks in the Melbourne control room. Between this room and a similar one in Brisbane, Australian air-traffic controllers manage 11% of the world’s airspace, 24 hours a day. Walton sits below a map of a section of airspace between Katoomba and Griffith, west of Sydney, which is the zone she will focus on for several months. She is tasked with safely separating aircraft flying through this section, but only between 19,000 ft and 25,000 ft. Next to her is Adam Heap. Before becoming an air-traffic controller, he worked as a baggage handler in Perth. “I prefer being inside with a roof over my head, it’s much more mentally stimulating,” he says. Air-traffic controllers Jess Walton and Adam Heap in the Melbourne en route centre at Melbourne airport.<br/>Air-traffic controllers Jess Walton and Adam Heap in the Melbourne en route centre at Melbourne airport. Photograph: Penny Stephens/The Guardian Heap has been charged with overseeing airspace between Mungo and Oxley, in western New South Wales, and south through an area between Melbourne and Adelaide. For six months, he’ll be in charge of separating all aircraft operating above 25,000 ft in that area. Others will handle movements through the space at lower altitudes.<br/>