Sustainable aviation fuels may or may not eventually transform the carbon footprint of flying. But while a full tank is a way off, the mere whiff of a guilt-free future has got airline executives giddy. The annual meeting of Iata, the airlines’ global trade body, in Istanbul last week served up some exotic fare. Was that Willie Walsh, its director general, denouncing governments for “greenwashing”? And Marjan Rintel, boss of KLM and fresh from a Dutch court battle against government caps on Schiphol flights, outlining her purpose to “create memorable experiences on the planet we care for”? And Mehmet Tevfik Nane, head of Turkish airline Pegasus, co-hosting an event for 1,500 delegates where he urged firms and states to join their climate struggle, saying “we have to take care and heal our world”? Wider society’s mix of dissociation, hope and underlying fear about climate is writ large in aviation, whose leaders are well aware of its outsized share of greenhouse gas emissions and lack of easy options to decarbonise. Meanwhile, passenger numbers are booming, with rampant demand for travel after Covid. Airlines are gearing up for worldwide growth, as China reopens and Indian carriers expand. Bar the obvious solution of flying less, immediate tangible steps to cut CO2 are limited. Commercial flights using hydrogen or electric power are, at best, a hope for the future. Replacing old fleets with modern fuel-efficient planes for less CO2 a head is a step most airlines are taking – but that benefits the bottom line more than the environment when more people fly.<br/>
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The rate of lost, damaged or delayed luggage nearly doubled last year as air travel rebounded and the sector faced staff shortages following the Covid-19 pandemic, a recent study found. The report by SITA, an IT provider for the air transport industry, said 7.6 bags per 1,000 passengers were mishandled in 2022, up from 4.35 per 1,000 passengers the previous year. The surge follows more than a decade of reduction in the rate of mishandled luggage, according to SITA. In total, 26m bags were mishandled last year, compared to 9.9m in 2021, as the number of travellers neared pre-Covid-19 levels, the study showed. “After a decade where the mishandling rate more than halved between 2007 and 2021, it is disheartening to see this rate climbing again,” said SITA CE David Lavorel. “As an industry, we need to work hard to ensure passengers are once again confident to check in their bags,” he said.<br/>
A US House committee will take up an aviation bill next week that would bar airlines from charging family seating fees but would not set minimum seat size requirements or impose new rules to compensate delays. The leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee unveiled a nearly 800-page proposal on Friday to reauthorize the FAA, aviation safety and infrastructure programs for the next five years. The Senate Commerce Committee is set to take up its version as early as next week, while the House committee plans to vote on amendments on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Biden administration wants Congress to mandate airlines to pay cash compensation for delays of three hours or more when carriers are responsible, and provide new requirements for transparency over fees such as for baggage when booking tickets. The bill released on Friday does not include those consumer proposals but does respond to a Biden administration call in February to ban family seating fees for airlines that assign seats ahead of time. “Baggage fees are bad enough - airlines can’t treat your child like a piece of baggage,” President Joe Biden said in February. After a series of close call incidents raised questions about the safety of U.S. aviation this year, the House bill would require the FAA to establish the Runway Safety Council to develop strategies to address safety risks of ground operations at airports. The House proposal would mandate by 2030 an increase to the recording time of cockpit voice recorders from the current two-hour loop to a proposed 25-hour loop, and require a cockpit video recorder. The proposal would reorganize the FAA leadership - splitting the deputy role into two positions including a new career deputy administrator for safety and operations. It would also create a new FAA Office of Innovation as the agency grapples with how to govern drones and flying air taxis. The House bill would create a new National Center for the Advancement of Aerospace, a new Ombudsman of the FAA and new Aviation Noise Officer.<br/>
Under sweeping bipartisan aviation legislation introduced Friday, a new eye in the sky might monitor US airline flights in the near future: crash-proof video recorders in cockpits. After years of controversy and pushback by pilot unions, House leaders from both parties have opted to require video to monitor air crews’ actions to give accident investigators greater insights after accidents. The measure is contained in a 773-page bill setting US aviation policy for the next five years. The provisions are a consensus of both the Republicans who control the House and Democrats — and both sides are eager to pass the legislation soon. If passed, the provision would mark a sea change in how accident investigators approach crashes and would likely lead other nations to follow suit. The legislation also includes broad protections that unions have sought to prohibit the release of recordings to the public and bar their use for disciplinary action by carriers. Under the bill, airlines would have seven years to install the devices on their fleets, and the Federal Aviation Administration would have three years to establish requirements for the devices. The bill would also require upgraded cockpit sound recorders, extending the time they capture from two to 25 hours. Video devices would also record 25 hours under the legislation. The US National Transportation Safety Board has long sought video evidence after repeated cases in which the existing sound and data recordings in so-called black boxes — which are encased in protective covers that are actually colored orange — weren’t sufficient to determine what happened in crashes. <br/>
The head of a leading company in the race to bring electric aircraft to the skies has hit out at Europe’s aviation regulator, warning its rules threatened to put the fledgling sector out of business. Adam Goldstein, CE of Archer Aviation, said in an interview that certification guidance published by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency would make it “extremely hard” to bring the new vehicles — often described as air taxis — to market. “EASA has openly said, ‘We know our regulations are harder and not good for business, and we don’t care,’” Goldstein told the Financial Times. California-based Archer is among the companies seeking approval to operate so-called electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to provide a range of services from short-hop flights over congested urban areas to longer regional flights. The company, co-founded by Goldstein, went public in 2021 and has a market capitalisation of about $800mn. Several companies hope aviation safety regulators will begin to certify their vehicles for flight from as early as next year. EASA is the only regulator to have published formal guidance for eVTOLs offering commercial services to passengers. Its approach assumes relatively large flight volumes over urban areas. The agency has told developers to adopt the same standard for safety as the one applied to large commercial jetliners: the chance of just one catastrophic failure in 1bn flight hours, or “10 to the minus nine”, in industry parlance. Goldstein criticised the regulation as too strict, saying there was no point in fostering an industry only “to regulate it out of business”, when it was possible to take “an approach that can still be at the highest levels of safety, but . . . that is more amendable to allowing companies to build around.” Archer, whose second prototype, Midnight, will have its first test flight this summer, wants to build a vehicle that is “as safe as commercial airliners today”, Goldstein said. EASA said in a statement: “Archer’s opinion is that high safety standards are not good for business. This point of view is not shared by EASA.” The EU regulator said the safety objectives it had set out were based on “risk assessment” and had been “evaluated to be equivalent to bus transportation safety, once eVTOL operations have reached a moderate scale”.<br/>
The Government of Canada has ordered the seizure of a Russian-registered cargo aircraft grounded at Toronto Pearson Airport, with plans to transfer it to Ukraine. The seizure is being carried out as part of Canada’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that commenced on February 24, 2022. The targeted aircraft is an Antonov An-124 belonging to the Volga-Dnepr Group. The aircraft, registered as RA-82078, has been stuck at Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) since February 27, 2022, according to ch-aviation.com data. Volga-Dnepr Group and its cargo subsidiary Volga-Dnepr Airlines recently faced sanctions imposed by Canada, due to the company’s participation in the invasion of Ukraine. “Today, Canada is sending a clear message to the Russian regime that there will be nowhere left to hide for those who support and profit from the Kremlin’s war of aggression,” Mélanie Joly, Minister of Foreign Affairs said in a press release. “Canada has been there to support Ukraine’s fight for freedom since day one and we will continue to be there through their victory to aid in their reconstruction efforts.” The government of Canada has announced it would collaborate with the government of Ukraine in exploring various options for redistributing the seized asset. The objective is to utilize the asset for compensating victims of human rights abuses, restoring international peace and security, and contributing to the rebuilding efforts in Ukraine.<br/>
As passengers continue to sound the alarm that airlines aren’t providing valid reasons when denying compensation for delayed and cancelled flights, the number of complaints filed with the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) continues to rise. A process that commonly begins with an email from an airline referring to a delay or cancellation as an event that “was out of the airline’s control” or a “safety-related issue”, ultimately denying the passenger compensation under Canada’s current Air Passenger Protection Regulation, leaving them feeling frustrated and helpless in determining the validity in the airline’s claim. According to the CTA, in 2022 they received 26,840 complaints related to flight disruptions, ranging from flight and tarmac delays, flight cancellations, and denials of boarding. And with the backlog of air passenger complaints sitting at over 47,000 and the estimated wait time for a case to be reviewed at 18 months, it’s no surprise that a number of travellers across the country are choosing to take airlines to small claims court in search of compensation, rather than filing a complaint with the CTA.<br/>
Four children from an Indigenous community in Colombia were found alive in the country's south on Friday more than five weeks after the plane they were traveling in crashed in thick jungle, Colombia's President Gustavo Petro said. The siblings were rescued by the military near the border between Colombia's Caqueta and Guaviare provinces, close to where the small plane had crashed. The plane - a Cessna 206 - was carrying seven people on a route between Araracuara airport, in Caqueta province, and San Jose del Guaviare, a city in Guaviare province, when it issued a mayday alert due to engine failure in the early hours of May 1. Three adults, including the pilot and the children's mother Magdalena Mucutuy, died as a result of the crash and their bodies were found inside the plane. The four siblings, aged 13, 9, 4, as well as a now 12-month-old baby, survived the impact. Narcizo Mucutuy, the grandfather of the three girls and one boy, told reporters he was delighted at the news of their rescue. "As the grandfather to my grandchildren who disappeared in the jungles of the Yari, at this moment I am very happy," he said.<br/>
The European Union (EU) has refused to remove Nepali airlines companies from its blacklist. Unveiling the latest report on the air safety list, the Department for Mobility and Transport of the EU has continued blacklisting 20 Nepali airlines companies. These include the majority of private airlines and helicopter companies along with the state-owned Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC). “These air carriers are banned from operating or are subject to operational restrictions within the Union, as published in the Official Journal of the European Union,” reads the EU report. According to officials of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), the EU authority has refused to remove Nepali airlines from the blacklist mainly due to the government’s apathy to unbundle the CAAN. The EU has long been raising its concern to split CAAN into regulation and operational bodies as the main condition to remove Nepali airlines from the list. The EU has kept Nepal on its air safety blacklist for the past one decade due to which the airline companies registered in Nepal are not allowed to operate flights to EU member states. As a result, the aircraft of the NAC, among others, are not allowed to conduct their flights to the EU skies but the aircraft from EU member states can use Nepal’s sky in an accessible manner.<br/>
Ted Kaczynski, known as the "Unabomber," who terrorized Americans from 1978 to 1995 with his sporadic, anonymous bombing campaign, died in prison Saturday, US authorities said. Kaczynski, 81, whose attacks killed three people and injured two dozen, was found unresponsive at 00:25 am (0425 GMT) at a federal prison medical center in Butner, North Carolina, said the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He was taken to the hospital, where he was officially pronounced dead later in the morning. The reclusive Harvard-educated mathematician, whose targets ranged from academics to random civilians, had a self-professed goal of halting the advance of modern technology and society, mounting his campaign of violence from a shack in rural Montana. His bombs were either hand delivered or mailed over nearly two decades, confounding investigators looking to bring him to justice. It was only after Kaczynski's capture and the revelation of his identity that the FBI uncovered his previous life -- one where he scored 167 on an IQ test and entered university at just 16. The nickname of "Unabomber" came from his targeting of a university and an airline company, leading the FBI to dub him the "University and Airline Bomber." The seemingly random nature of Kaczynski's bombings put the nation on edge, and at one point brought a halt to air travel on the West Coast in July 1995.<br/>