The eastern US is covered with air quality alerts from Iowa to Maine, including New York, as smoke from Canadian wildfires billows south for another day.In New York City, the air quality index ranges from 50 to 70 in many places, implying that people who suffer from respiratory ailments should stay indoors, according to AirNow.gov. New York and Chicago can expect bad air through midnight, according to alerts posted by the National Weather Service. Further to the south and west conditions are worse. Air in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Madison, Wisconsin, and Davenport, Iowa is “very unhealthy” while conditions in Washington and Cincinnati are “unhealthy,” AirNow.gov shows. In Canada, conditions are “moderate” in Montreal and “unhealthy for sensitive groups” in its capital Ottawa. On Wednesday, 1,198 flights around the US were cancelled, with most of them traveling to or from Newark, New York, and Chicago, according to Flight Aware. Canada enters a long holiday weekend with 500 fires burning across the country, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. So far this year, 3,030 fires have consumed 8m hectares of land, or about 30,888 square miles of charred area. Meanwhile, heat continues to sear down across the lower Mississippi River Valley and parts of the southern Great Plains, including eastern Texas. Extreme temperatures are also building in southern Oregon through California into Arizona. The high in Dallas is forecast to reach 104F (40C) on Thursday with a heat index of 109 when humidity is factored in, the National Weather Service said. In Del Rio, Texas, the string of daily record high temperatures was extended to an eleventh day Wednesday when readings reached 108F, tying the previous high for the date set in 1994. The streak may end Thursday. The worst of the heat will be focused along the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois in the north, where it joins the Ohio River, to New Orleans, where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, In California, highs in Sacramento could reach 101F Thursday and push to 107F by Saturday, the National Weather Service said. <br/>
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A looming deadline for airlines to retrofit their planes with updated technology could potentially disrupt some flights during one of the heaviest travel weekends of the year. On July 1, wireless carriers such as AT&T and Verizon are set to begin running their 5G cellular networks at higher power levels near US airports, marking the end of a phase-in period. The change may lead to greater 5G performance in and around airports, but it may also lead to radio interference affecting aircraft that have not yet been equipped with gear that can accommodate the signals. Specifically, the 5G signals could affect equipment known as radar altimeters, which bounce radio waves off of the ground to inform pilots of how high they are off the ground. Radar altimeters are especially important for landings in inclement weather and other low-visibility conditions, where other methods of determining an aircraft’s altitude may be impaired. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last week that more than 80% of the US domestic aircraft fleet had been retrofitted, but that “a significant number of aircraft” remain to be upgraded. Most of the outstanding planes are operated by foreign airlines, he wrote in a letter to Airlines for America, an industry trade group. But he warned that in general, failure to complete the transition could lead to travel disruption, including delays and cancellations. “Passengers must not bear the brunt of any airline’s inability to equip sufficient aircraft to be able to operate safely in the 5G C-band environment,” Buttigieg wrote in the letter obtained by CNN, “and passengers cannot be expected to bear the responsibility for an airline that fails to realistically adjust schedules” in response to a lack of 5G readiness. Multiple US air carriers told CNN Thursday that they will be able to meet the deadline. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines said that their fleets are already fully upgraded, while a spokesperson for United Airlines said the company will “complete this work on our mainline fleet by July 1.”<br/>
Geneva Airport said some of its employees were planning to stage a strike on Friday that was likely to cause flight delays and cancellations at the start of the summer travel season. "The strike announced by the public service trade union is regrettable because it is taking place on the first day of vacation departures, including those of employees," the airport said in a statement on Thursday. "Flight delays and cancellations are likely." In a separate notice on its website, the airport called on passengers to arrive two and a half hours before their flights. The airport said the strike was called after its board of directors approved a salary policy that freezes pay increases for some employees. Geneva Airport is a hub for diplomats and officials travelling to the United Nations.<br/>
A 57-year-old Thai woman lost part of her left leg Thursday morning in a moving walkway accident at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok. According to Airports of Thailand, the company that manages the six international airports in the country, the woman was on her way to her 9:45 a.m. Nok Air flight to the Nakhon Si Thammarat province when she was “seriously injured” at the end of a moving walkway. Airports of Thailand said it was alerted at 8:40 a.m. that a female traveler had her foot stuck in an escalator in Terminal 2. The assigned medical team had to cut her leg off from above the knee, the Associated Press reported. The woman was later taken to two hospitals for treatment, including an attempt to reattach her leg. In a news conference after the accident, Don Mueang International Airport director Karun Thanakuljeerapat said suitcase wheels were also found under the walkway belt, and that the walkways are inspected on a daily basis. He added that authorities will take care of medical expenses and compensation for the traveler. After the accident, the moving walkways at the airport were inspected and temporarily disabled. Airports of Thailand said its engineering team will conduct further inspection. Officials said they created a committee to investigate the incident, promising that if the accident occurred due to negligence, strict penalties would be taken.<br/>
Spirit AeroSystems said it would begin resuming operations at its plant in Wichita, Kansas, on Friday, after union workers on Thursday voted to accept a new contract and end a strike that led to a week-long work stoppage. Following a vote where union employees represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers agreed to a four-year deal, Spirit said it would closely coordinate with its suppliers and customers as it fully restarts production on July 5. The rejection of a previous offer on June 21 sent shockwaves through the aviation industry, as Spirit is a lynchpin for the U.S. aerospace sector, making major aerostructures for American manufacturer Boeing and its European rival Airbus. Its Wichita plant is especially critical for Boeing, as workers at the site manufacture the entire body of its bestselling 737 MAX, as well as the forward fuselage of most other Boeing jets. It also produces pylons for the Airbus A220. The new four-year contract, which union leaders endorsed on Tuesday, includes additional wage increases, allowed employees to keep their current health care plans and eradicated mandatory overtime on the weekends - three features that workers had earmarked as priorities for a deal. The agreement is a boon for Boeing, which is on the verge of increasing MAX production from 31 jets to 38 jets per month. Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal said on June 18 the production ramp was set to occur "pretty soon."<br/>
Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. sent paying customers to the edge of space for the first time, a milestone for the Richard Branson-founded company almost two decades in the making. The VSS Unity craft reached space at about 9:30 a.m. local time in New Mexico, Virgin Galactic revealed in a livestream of the event on its website Thursday. That was about an hour after the flight took off, carrying six people on board, including researchers from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy. The commercial debut officially ushers Virgin Galactic into the ranks of space tourism providers alongside the likes of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin LLC. Virgin Galactic has said it expects to move soon to a regular cadence of monthly commercial flights, bringing in much-needed revenue. While the company has carried employees on several previous test missions, the latest launch was the first with ticket-holding passengers. It’s Virgin Galactic’s highest-profile flight since Branson flew to the edge of space in 2021. “This is a big deal,” Mike Moses, Virgin Galactic’s president of spaceline missions and safety, said in an interview before the launch. “It’s the thing we were founded for.” It comes much later than planned: Virgin Galactic was started in 2004 and had hoped to ferry tourists to the cosmos as early as 2008. Over the years, the company has endured numerous delays and setbacks, including fatal accidents, regulatory investigations and lawsuits. The company has lost hundreds of millions of dollars each year since it went public in 2019 while generating only nominal revenue.<br/>