Flight attendants rallied at four major Canadian airports Tuesday over what they say are unfair working conditions that keep them on the clock without being paid. CUPE, which represents about 18,500 flight attendants across the country, says much of the time that they're present for their employers and in uniform, they're doing it for free. The union says it leads to flight attendants working on average 35 hours each month without compensation. "We get paid pretty much anytime the plane's in motion," said Wesley Lesosky, a flight attendant with Air Canada and president of CUPE's airline division. The union says that means there are many jobs flight attendants do without pay. "All the safety-related stuff, all the service preparation, boarding, deplaning, waits … all that kind of stuff," Lesosky added. "So anytime you're required to show up in uniform, we're just asking to be paid for that." CUPE flight attendants for Air Transat are currently negotiating a new collective agreement. Agreements with several other airlines, including WestJet and Air Canada, are set to expire in coming years. Lesosky says discussions on new agreements and inflationary pressures putting the squeeze on flight attendants make this the time to change what he calls an unfair system.<br/>
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French infrastructure company Vinci on Tuesday posted a jump in first quarter revenue, boosted by strong traffic across the airports and highways it operates. Revenue in Q1 was E15.0b, up 17% on an actual basis against the 12.8b posted for the same period a year earlier. Europe's biggest construction and concessions company, which operates highways and airports like London Gatwick, has seen travel rebound as pandemic-related travel curbs eased, while it also benefits from investments in renewable energy. The recovery however has been slower in Asia. "The strong recovery in air traffic was confirmed in the first quarter of 2023," the group said in a statement, adding that several airports it operates reached record passenger numbers. Sales in the Concessions business rose 24% in the quarter to E2.2b, largely due to Vinci Airports which grew 89% in the quarter. Excluding Asian airports, passenger numbers reached 96% of pre-pandemic levels, Vinci said. The construction segment's sales were up 13%, but the group flagged some challenges ahead for the unit.<br/>
EU countries on Tuesday gave the final approval to the biggest revamp to date of Europe's carbon market, which is set to make it more costly to pollute and sharpen the 27-member bloc's main tool for cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The world's first major carbon trading system has since 2005 forced power plants and factories to buy permits when they emit CO2, and has cut emissions from those sectors by 43%. European Union members approved a deal agreed last year by negotiators from EU countries and Parliament, to reform the carbon market to cut emissions by 62% from 2005 levels by 2030, which is designed to deliver the EU's emissions-cutting targets. After nearly two years of EU negotiations, the member states' approval means the policy will now pass into law. The EU Parliament approved the deal last week. Of the 27 EU countries, 24 voted for the reform. Poland and Hungary opposed it, while Belgium and Bulgaria abstained. The reform is set to hike the cost of polluting for sectors including cement manufacturing, aviation and shipping, while also raising billions of euros through CO2 permit sales, for national governments to invest in green measures. Heavy industries will lose the free CO2 permits they currently receive by 2034, while airlines will lose theirs from 2026, exposing them to higher CO2 costs.<br/>
China said on Tuesday that it would no longer require travelers entering the country to show a negative P.C.R. test for the coronavirus, another step toward reopening after a long period of pandemic-era isolation. But it was not clear whether testing requirements would be abolished altogether. A spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry said only that, beginning on Saturday, people going to China “can” take an antigen test to “replace” the previously mandated PCR test within 48 hours before boarding their flight. Airlines will not check test results before boarding, the spokeswoman, Mao Ning, added at a regularly scheduled news briefing. She did not say whether others, such as immigration officials, would check. Notices by Chinese embassies overseas said that travelers arriving in China would still need to fill out a health declaration form, and that customs officials would conduct unspecified spot checks. For three years, China imposed the world’s strictest coronavirus restrictions, requiring lockdowns and regular mass testing in the name of “zero Covid.” Then the government abruptly abandoned those rules in December as the economy sagged, the virus spread widely and protests broke out across the country. Beijing has since declared that it is open to the world, and tried to woo foreign businesspeople and diplomats. In practice, the reopening has been slowed, in part, by geopolitical tensions. Tourist visas were not reinstated until last month. International flights remain prohibitively expensive for many, often costing thousands of dollars. The United States and China have not yet lifted tit-for-tat caps that they imposed on routes between their two countries during the pandemic.<br/>as for Chinese travelers.)<br/>
In the early days of the invasion of Ukraine, the European Union and Russia closed off their airspace to each other – an aerial blockade that has remained in place ever since. Now that China has reconnected to the world after almost three years of Covid border closures – welcome news to the world’s recovering tourism markets – some in the European aviation industry are calling out what they feel is an unlevel playing field. During a visit to China in April, French President Emanuel Macron announced that France-headquartered Airbus landed huge deals in China, as the two countries vowed to “resume airlinks to pre-pandemic levels as quickly as possible.” However, reviving these air links could be a much simpler prospect for Chinese airlines than European. Like other passengers flying on European carriers to Asia, Macron did not take the quickest route between France and China – his plane avoided flying over Russia for both political and security reasons. But because Beijing and Moscow are still friends, direct, quicker routes remain open over Russian airspace, requiring less fuel and bringing better profits. “The closure of Russian airspace for European airlines has forced European carriers to take detours, involving more southern flight routes to East and Southeast Asia,” Laurent Donceel, managing director of Airlines for Europe (A4E) told CNN. “This has resulted in longer flight times and added to the fuel used on these flights.” <br/>
NetJets, the luxury plane unit of billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, has been sued by its 3,000-member pilots union for allegedly interfering with its communications with aircraft owners and customers about contract negotiations. In a lawsuit filed on Monday, the NetJets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilots objected to a March 8 email from a senior NetJets executive. The email said it violated company policy for pilots to refer owners to a union website to learn about talks to amend their collective bargaining agreement. The union said the email "necessarily implied" that pilots could be disciplined and even fired for mentioning the website, suppressing their speech and violating the federal Railway Labor Act governing airline labor relations. The lawsuit filed in the federal court in Columbus, Ohio, where NetJets is based, seeks an injunction protecting pilots from discipline for referring people to the union website or expressing support for the union. NetJets and the union had years of contentious relations in the previous decade before agreeing to a contract in 2019. Berkshire, based in Omaha, Nebraska, employed more than 382,000 people at the end of 2022. Most are not unionized. Buffett flies on NetJets planes, and in 2015 told Berkshire shareholders "we have no anti-union agenda whatsoever."<br/>