general

With planes full of passengers flying all over the world, it’s easy to forget there was a time when borders were shut, alert levels and traffic light systems were in place, and few of us were travelling anywhere. But it’s important that we don’t. Because airlines are reaping the benefits of those trips that never happened, holding hundreds of millions of customers’ dollars in the form of credits. Back in 2020, with so many flights cancelled and customers unable to travel because of Covid, airlines argued they couldn’t afford to give everyone a refund. Instead, they started issuing customers with the value of those flights in credit, which could be used to book future travel. But expiry dates on those credits are now looming – and if customers don’t use them in time, their loss will be the airlines’ gain. When Qantas (which also owns Jetstar) announced the “final extension” on the expiry date of its Covid credits in March – giving customers until the end of this year to book, and up to the end of next year to travel – it revealed around NZ$800m worth of credits were yet to be redeemed. It said three-quarters of these credits were worth less than $500, with the remaining quarter worth between $500 and $5000. Less than 1% were worth over $5000. Air New Zealand announced it was extending the expiry of its Covid credits in September last year, giving customers until the end of January 2024 to book, and until the end of 2024 to travel. At the time, chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty said the extension would affect around 500,000 customers. But unlike Qantas, Air New Zealand won’t share a dollar amount for how much those unspent credits are worth. An airline spokesperson said this was due to “commercial sensitivity”. Customers who have credits with Virgin Australia, which went into voluntary administration in April 2020, have until the end of December this year to book and travel. The airline also declined to disclose the value or number of outstanding credits, saying it was “commercial in confidence”. Story has more.<br/>

The FAA is stepping up air traffic control training after a series of close calls have left the flying public and regulatory bodies rattled. The transportation agency will require the thousands of air traffic controllers it employs to attend new monthly training as part of an effort to reduce near-collisions of aircraft, according to an FAA statement released Wednesday. The first topics will “cover several items to reduce events on the surface” of airports. The topics for safety briefings will also be driven by “data and seasonal challenges,” the FAA said. There have been several close calls on US runways this year, including one at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in January: “The air traffic controller had to swoop in and stop a flight that was barreling down the runway toward a crossing, taxiing (Boeing) 777 from taking off,” said CNN’s Pete Muntean, an aviation expert and pilot. In March, the FAA hosted a safety summit with industry and aerospace safety leaders. The agency has made other changes in air traffic control towers and facilities, including directing supervisors to have a more hands-on presence during busy times. Ahead of the summit, Muntean explained that while it’s the job of air traffic controllers to keep airplanes from running into one another, some of the responsibility falls on the flight crew to remain vigilant and follow their instructions. There are also radar and other technologies to detect where airplanes are on the ground– not just in the air, Muntean said.<br/>

The Biden administration on Wednesday increased the amount of biofuels that oil refiners must blend into the nation's fuel mix over the next three years, but the plan has angered the biofuel industry, which says mandates for corn-based ethanol and biodiesel are not high enough. The US Environmental Protection Agency has finalized biofuel blending volumes at 20.94b gallons in 2023, 21.54b gallons in 2024 and 22.33b gallons in 2025. That compares with the initial proposal announced in December of 20.82b in 2023, 21.87b in 2024, and 22.68b in 2025. But the finalized volumes include just 15b gallons of conventional biofuels like corn-based ethanol in all three years, plus a 250m-gallon supplemental amount for 2023. That represents a decline from the initial proposal, which included 15b gallons of conventional biofuels in 2023 and 15.25b gallons in both 2024 and 2025. The plan also has modest increases to biomass-based diesel volumes compared with the proposal, despite a major lobbying push from groups that produce biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel to boost volumes higher. The announcement drew strong rebukes from ethanol and biodiesel advocates. "The industry responded to signals from the Biden administration and Congress aiming to rapidly decarbonize U.S. fuel markets, particularly aviation, marine, and heavy-duty transport, and make clean fuels available to more consumers," said Kurt Kovarik, vice president of federal affairs with Clean Fuels, a biodiesel group. "The volumes EPA finalized today are not high enough to support those goals."<br/>

The days of cheap airfares seem to be over in Europe. In most places, a return to pre-pandemic flight pricing is nowhere in sight. This is confirmed, for example, by figures from the German Federal Statistical Office, which reported that the average price of an international flight in April 2023 was 33.4% higher than a year prior. "Just as we are all currently experiencing huge cost increases, driven particularly by high fuel and energy prices, costs are going up for airlines, airports, maintenance companies and service providers," says aviation expert Cord Schellenberg. In addition, demand for air travel in Europe has been very high since travel became more affordable. But flight capacities are not as high as they were in 2019. "So high demand is meeting tight supply." According to figures from the German Aviation Association (BDL), air traffic in Germany last year was 70% of what it was in 2019. "This means that the recovery in Germany is slower than in other European countries where in 2022, flight offers were at 84% of what they were in 2019," the BDL said in its latest industry report. The online price comparison website Idealo recently reported that summer flight fares were up 20% from last year. "At the moment, passengers are willing to pay the higher prices," says Schellenberg. "It remains to be seen whether this is due to the catch-up effect — that people can finally travel again after the pandemic — or a general change in attitude. Air travel may simply cost more because it used to be too cheap." Yet Christoph Brützel, a professor of air traffic management at the International University of Applied Sciences in Bad Honnef, Germany, expects prices to drop, at least in the short term. "Next year, they will likely fall again," he suspects. Brützel says price drops will result from airlines starting to increase their capacity.<br/>

The pilot of a light private plane that caused a security scare on June 4 when it flew over restricted airspace near Washington before crashing, killing all aboard, did not respond to air traffic control minutes into the flight, investigators said on Wednesday. The NTSB said 12 minutes into the flight that killed four, a controller cleared the Cessna 560 to 34,000 feet and the pilot read back the clearance. Three minutes later, the controller amended the altitude clearance but the pilot did not respond and made no further radio transmissions. The NTSB said the cockpit voice recorder has not been recovered. The plane crashed in a mountainous wooded area of southwest Virginia after taking off from Elizabethton, Tennessee at 1:13 p.m. leaving wreckage that was extremely fragmented, scattered around a main crater showing evidence of a post-impact fire. The Department of Defense scrambled F-16 fighter jets, which created a sonic boom over the US capital as they pursued the Cessna. The pilot killed was Jeff Hefner, a retired Southwest Airlines captain and pilots union board member with 34,500 flight hours. The daughter of the plane's owner, his granddaughter and a nanny were also killed. The FAA said it reported the pilot's failure to respond to controllers to the domestic events network that includes military, security and law enforcement agencies at around 1:36 p.m., but the plane was not intercepted until 3:20 p.m. The NTSB said the Cessna 560 after flying past Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York continued southwest on a ground track of about 240 degrees and showed little deviation or altitude change until 3:22 p.m., when it entered a rapidly descending right spiral descent into terrain. The crash was reminiscent of other incidents involving unresponsive pilots.<br/>

Big deals at this week's Paris Airshow have highlighted a sharp recovery in air travel demand. The sector promises to reduce net emissions to zero by 2050. Green groups say more planes in the sky could hamper those efforts. Aviation generates roughly 3% of global emissions. It is also one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize. A GE Aerospace poll suggested almost a third of aviation's sustainability executives doubt the net-zero goal is reachable. The focus on sustainability comes as new European rules will require many airlines to use sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and better track their carbon emissions. Story discusses the main strategies the sector plans to use to reach its goal.<br/>

Jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney flagged "solid progress" in the aerospace supply chain on Wednesday, addressing a key area of concern for planemakers as they continue to rack up orders at the Paris Airshow. The first two days of the world's biggest air show saw bumper orders from Indian airlines looking to cash in on a rapid rebound in travel since the pandemic and forecasts for continued strong growth in the world's most populous country. In a sign of robust demand elsewhere, industry sources told Reuters on Wednesday that European planemaker Airbus was also putting the finishing touches to a deal with Mexican low-cost carrier Viva Aerobus for 90 narrowbody jets, though the deal would fall outside the show. But recovery from the pandemic has been more problematic for suppliers, which are still grappling with rising costs, parts shortages and a scarcity of skilled labour. That has raised concerns whether Airbus and arch rival Boeing will be able to hit ambitious goals to ramp up output in order to meet delivery targets for customers. This week's orders from India alone - for 500 Airbus narrowbody jets from budget carrier IndiGo and a 470-plane deal for both Airbus and Boeing jets finalised by Air India - add almost 1,000 planes to the industry backlog. Pratt & Whitney, a unit of RTX - formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, has had a particularly tough time due in part to problems with its GTF engine that have led to the grounding of several planes. The company said on Wednesday the groundings peaked at 10% of the GTF-powered fleet in the first half of this year, and that percentage would trend lower through the rest of the year. The GTF is one of two engine options to power Airbus's top-selling A320neo narrowbody aircraft. Pratt & Whitney President Shane Eddy, who has faced a backlash from airlines over durability problems and a shortage of spare engines, told the air show he was seeing "solid progress" in the supply chain. The company has the capacity in place to support maintenance demand but faces shortages of materials, he added.<br/>

Brazilian planemaker Embraer is returning to China with a deal to convert passenger jets into freight aircraft with a local partner in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, the company said on Wednesday. Anticipation of new business in China has been high since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's trip to China in April. At the time, he publicly backed Embraer's efforts to return to a market where it has struggled to find new business since the 2016 closure of a joint venture in Harbin. Some had expected a deal for aircraft sales to a Chinese airline. Instead, Embraer announced during the Paris Air Show that it had signed a letter of agreement with Lanzhou Aviation Industry Development Group for 20 E190F and E195F passenger-to-freight conversions. "It is a market with increasing demand for cargo aircraft to accommodate the tremendous growth of e-commerce trade and the consequent evolution of the logistics industry," said Embraer's commercial aviation CE, Arjan Meijer. A day earlier, Embraer announced fresh orders from American Airlines and Spanish carrier Binter for commercial aircraft totaling about $1b at list prices. Financial details of the Lanzhou deal were not disclosed. Embraer said that the companies intend to cooperate on establishing conversion capability in Lanzhou to boost the introduction of first-generation E-Jet freighters to the Chinese market. Embraer forecasts demand for such jets to reach 700 aircraft over the next 20 years, with China responsible for 240 of them, and said the deal with Lanzhou was a "strong indicator" of such demand.<br/>

Airbus has filled more than half of the 13,000 positions it expects to create in 2023, as aerospace manufacturers try to boost staff numbers to meet soaring demand, the European planemaker said on Wednesday. Planemakers and aerospace suppliers are wrestling with shortages of workers, from engineers to machine shop operators, which is holding back plans to ramp up aircraft production needed to meet soaring travel demand. Airbus said it had filled more than 7,000 positions so far. The hires put the company on track to fill the remaining positions this year, which will support increased plane production and other goals, Thierry Baril, Airbus's chief human resources officer, said at the Paris Airshow. The company’s commercial aircraft division has reached 60% of its recruitment target. Of the 7,000-plus hires, 29% are aged 28 or below, a trend that Baril expects will continue through year’s end, he told Reuters in an interview. “It’s remarkable because when you have close to one-third of your resources joining the company which are representing the future you can think about the future differently,” he said.<br/>