A dayslong disruption of flights into and out of the Greater New York area is raising concerns about how prepared airlines are for the Fourth of July holiday, a weekend that is forecast to have record numbers of air travelers. More than four million Americans are expected to fly this holiday period, according to the AAA, the automobile owners’ group, about 11% more than last year and roughly 6% over the record set in 2019. The busiest day of the period, with 52,564 flights, will be Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration said. But as travelers prepared for a busy holiday weekend, airlines sought to shift blame to the FAA, which runs the country’s air traffic control system, for at least some of the thousands of canceled flights and tens of thousands of flight delays nationwide this week. Story features what travelers need to know.<br/>
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Hundreds of thousands of US airline customers were stranded this week as severe weather grounded planes and led to canceled flights. But storms were only one factor behind the travel nightmare. Staffing shortages, at both US airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control operations, took a bad situation and made it worse. The situation at US airports was only slightly better Wednesday. As of 2:44 pm ET, FlightAware tracking service reported there were nearly 850 flights canceled and another 3,500 delays. Storms in the Boston area caused a groundstop there early Wednesday and New York’s LaGuardia and Newark airports had a groundstop in the afternoon, keeping planes destined for those locations at the gate or parked on the tarmac at airports around the country. Although that’s better than the 2,200 canceled flights in each of the last two days, or the more than 16,000 delayed flights between Monday and Tuesday, it’s hardly a smooth-running operation. The US air travel system is unable to recover quickly from widespread weather problems because it doesn’t have the bodies to deal with the disruptions. Despite $54b of taxpayer funds funneled into airlines to keep them alive during the pandemic, most airlines greatly reduced staff during the first year of the pandemic when air travel, and fares, plunged. They were not allowed to involuntarily layoff staff but they did offer buyouts and early retirement packages. Many also permanently grounded older, less efficient aircraft. Rehiring staff has taken longer than planned. Story has more.<br/>
The United States and China agreed to consider expanding commercial flights between the two countries to improve people-to-people contact, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, Daniel Kritenbrink, said on Wednesday. He told a Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank event in Washington that the countries agreed “to look at increasing in a phased manner the number of commercial flights between the United States and China.” There were about 350 flights a week between the U.S. and China prior to the coronavirus outbreak, compared to 24 a week currently, Kritenbrink said. “I think we can do better,” he added. He said the agreement was reached during Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China earlier this month. During the trip, Washington and Beijing failed to produce any major breakthrough in their rivalry but agreed to stabilize relations. Soon after Blinken’s trip, U.S. President Joe Biden referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a dictator. After the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the two countries restricted flights and travel to prevent the spread of the disease, and air service has not been fully restored. Kritenbrink said he wanted to see an imbalance reversed in the number of Chinese students in the United States and American students in China, which he put at 300,000 Chinese students to 350 U.S. students. During Wednesday’s event, Kritenbrink described China’s actions in the South China Sea as coercive.<br/>
Iran has filed a complaint against Canada at the United Nations’s top court, accusing the North American country of violating its “international obligations” by allowing people to seek civil damages against Tehran. The International Court of Justice — known as the World Court — announced the case on Wednesday, saying that Iran is asserting a violation of its sovereign immunity, which generally shields states from civil lawsuits in foreign jurisdictions. Iran “requests the Court to adjudge and declare that ‘by failing to respect the immunities of Iran and its property, Canada has violated its international obligations'”, the ICJ said. Last year, a Canadian court awarded 107 million Canadian dollars ($84m) to the families of six victims who were killed when Iranian forces shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight near Tehran in January 2020. The same judge — Justice Edward Belobaba of Ontario’s Superior Court — had labelled the incident an “act of terrorism” months earlier, a ruling Iran rejected as “shameful”. Iranian officials have said the shooting of the plane was an accident caused by “human error” in operating a surface-to-air defence system. Story has more.<br/>
Mexico's two-year-old air safety rating downgrade by U.S. authorities has caused a more-than-billion-dollar hit to national airlines, an industry head said in an interview Wednesday. "It was a huge loss," said Diana Olivares, head of Mexico's air transportation chamber and LATAM Airlines'country manager. Mexico was downgraded to the Category 2 air safety rating by the US FAA in May 2021 due to lack of compliance with international standards. This blocked Mexican carriers from adding new flights to the US and prevented some marketing tie-ups. Carrier Aeromexico has said it has been unable to fly newly delivered planes to the US due to a lack of certification. Its rival Volaris has a number of route expansions frozen, pending the rating's return. In the meantime, foreign carriers have been free to boost flights, expanding their market share at the expense of Mexico's domestic airlines, Olivares said. This month, the FAA wrapped up an audit into the country, which Mexican officials say was the "last" after a series of earlier reviews. The FAA has yet to make public its decision on Mexico's recovery of the air rating. The agency's Mexico head, Norma Campos, declined to comment. "We (the air transportation chamber) think that will come in July, by the end of July," Olivares told journalists.<br/>
Mexico is considering buying back up to $4.2b of debt owed by the capital’s principal airport as the Navy prepares to take over the transport hub, according to an official. The buyback is one of various options open to the government, which is looking to guarantee repayments on the debt, transportation undersecretary Rogelio Jimenez Pons said Wednesday at the sidelines of an aviation conference in Mexico City. “What’s most important right now is to give bondholders the certainty that the obligations that Mexico had with them will be met,” he said. Asked if those guarantees could include a buyback, Jimenez said “that’s a possibility, we’ll have to see how it’s done. We’re looking at all options.” Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has decided to hand over the Benito Juarez International Airport to the navy as part of a move to expand military oversight in key parts of the nation’s infrastructure, adding to its current role of overseeing security at the hub. He did not provide a timeline for the shift. The decision adds to a broader move to put branches of the military in charge of important public projects, including building parts of the Maya Train line in the Yucatan peninsula, and managing seaports and air terminals, including the new Felipe Angeles, or AIFA, airport outside of Mexico City. At the start of his administration in 2018, AMLO, as the president is known, canceled the construction of the so-called Texcoco airport and moved to build the more spartan AIFA, while keeping the old Benito Juarez facility running. AMLO’s announcement confirms a report earlier this month by El Financiero that cited the airport’s chief executive. In it, the CEO, a retired admiral, said the navy refused to take over the airport under the current arrangement in which much of its revenue goes to pay the bonds for the Mexico City airport that was never built.<br/>
Air fares are up one-third on pre-pandemic charges as demand for travel continues to outstrip supply, one European industry group calculates. A continued resurgence in travel combined with a squeeze on aircraft numbers has pushed up the cost of flying this year. Airports Council International (ACI) Europe said on Tuesday that the cost of air travel had ballooned. The industry organisation calculated that “the air fares charged by airlines have increased by 32% compared to pre-pandemic prices”. ACI complained that airlines’ ticket prices have risen much faster than European airport charges, which increased just 7% over the same period, according to its estimates. Air fares were widely expected to rise this summer as many airlines are flying fewer aircraft than before the pandemic, while manufacturers are not meeting orders for new planes fast enough. At the same time, demand for travel is growing across Europe, with increased numbers of US tourists (lured by the weaker euro) and Chinese travellers (recently released from lockdowns) adding to the pressure. Late last year, Michael O’Leary, CE of Ryanair Holdings, predicted that air fares would increase across Europe this summer as airlines responded to these factors and to volatile fuel prices. Many European airlines continue to operate with less capacity than in 2019, the year before Covid hit travel.<br/>
A senior European airport executive has called on regulators to scrutinise the cost of air fares following a surge in ticket prices this year. Olivier Jankovec, director-general of airport trade body ACI Europe, said ticket prices had risen 30% year-on-year in Europe and regulators should “monitor the level of air fares, and check whether there is no abuse of pricing power”. Ticket prices have shot up despite the weak economic backdrop thanks to a combination of huge demand since the end of pandemic restrictions and a shortage of aircraft. Jankovec said he was not asking for air fares to be capped, but that it was “legitimate” to question why many major airports had their landing fees capped while airlines were free to charge whatever they wanted. Regulators like the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK oversee consumer protection in the industry, including passenger rights during disruption. The CAA has intervened when there have been problems like last summer’s travel chaos, and the delays to passenger refunds for cancelled flights during the pandemic. But while national regulators can cap landing fees that airports are allowed to charge, they don’t have any role in setting airfares. One executive at a European regulator said it would be “challenging” to control ticket prices. Jankovec said airlines “continue to cry and whine” about airport landing charges, which are passed on to passengers through airfares, while “exerting massive pricing power” by raising ticket prices. In response, trade group Airlines for Europe, which represents carriers including easyJet, Ryanair and British Airways, said competition among airlines has helped drive down air fares and “delivered affordable air travel for millions of European consumers”. “Ultimately, airports — especially larger ones — still function as natural monopolies, necessitating firm regulatory oversight to keep them in check,” it said.<br/>
About 90% of Boeing's China 737 MAX jets have resumed commercial operation as of the end of June, the US aircraft maker said on its official WeChat account on Wednesday. Some planes have been dispatched to regional international routes, Sherry Carbary, president of Boeing China, said in the article. The planemaker's shares rose 1.3% in US premarket trading. China grounded all Boeing 737 MAX jets in the country following the crash of a 737 MAX jet operated by Ethiopian Airlines in March 2019, the second deadly accident of the model in five months. According to official information, Chinese carriers grounded all 96 jets they had at the time. State-owned China Southern Airlines was the country's first carrier to resume flying the 737 MAX in January. Since then, Chinese airlines have been gradually reintroducing the model back to operation. In April, Boeing estimated that half of the country's MAX fleet was in operation. "By the end of June, about 90% of China's 737 MAX fleet had resumed commercial operations, with some of the aircraft placed on regional international routes connecting domestic cities to a number of destinations in Central Asia and Southeast Asia," Carbary said. Boeing, however, is yet to resume deliveries to China, a key market where it has lost ground to arch rival Airbus SE (AIR.PA) in part due to geopolitical tensions between the United States and China.<br/>
Indian aerospace suppliers see record jet orders by the country's top two carriers boosting domestic parts manufacturing and aircraft repairs, but argue the government must do more to support production. Rising traffic, a search for alternative sourcing to China and orders this month from Air India and IndiGo for nearly 1,000 jets combined have made India a key market for aerospace. Now, small and medium suppliers want to capitalize on that to drive more sales of locally sourced parts, they told Reuters on the sidelines of the Paris Airshow last week. "Today we are going to be the largest purchaser of planes in the world," said Shekhar Sardessai, managing director at Kineco Group, a supplier in the western state of Goa, referring to India. "We deserve a piece of that pie," added Sardessai, whose company makes engine and plane interior parts. While French engine maker Safran has plans for an engine repair and overhaul facility in India, about 90% of the country's aircraft maintenance and repair activity occurs outside its borders, according to consultancy Deloitte. The Indian repair and overhaul industry is expected to grow to $4b by 2031, up from $1.7 billion in 2021, Deloitte said. India's civil aviation ministry expects the orders to boost aerospace manufacturing in the country, but it cannot mandate local production since the orders do not have requirements for local production like defense deals, a senior government official told Reuters.<br/>
Joby Aviation said on Wednesday the US aviation regulator has given the nod for flight testing of its electric air taxi, taking it a step closer to securing approvals for commercial operations. The California-based company also said Toyota North America's CEO, Tetsuo Ogawa, will join its board on Saturday. Toyota is Joby's largest external shareholder, having invested around $400m in the company. Joby's shares soared 26% to $8.04 in the morning trade. The company plans to begin commercial passenger operations in 2025. Unlike other electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft manufacturers, which plan to sell aircraft to customers such as airlines and logistics companies, Joby's business model is similar to a rideshare app. Once certified, the eVTOL maker will compete in a crowded market with dozens of other developers such as Archer Aviationand Vertical Aerospace vying to revamp urban transportation. Joby said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had granted a Special Airworthiness Certificate, which allows flight testing of its first production prototype without passengers. Rival Archer received the green signal for flight testing in 2021. But certification deadlines for eVTOL makers keep getting readjusted, underscoring the challenges that need to be addressed in the nascent sector.<br/>