The remnants of Tropical Storm Hilary pummeled California with record rains on Monday, disrupting flights but sparing its largest cities from widespread destruction. Across the region, “the ongoing and historic amount of rainfall is expected to cause life-threatening to locally catastrophic” floods, along with landslides and mudslides, the National Hurricane Center said in a notice early Monday. The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, has weakened since coming ashore in California late Sunday. As of early Monday, it had maximum sustained winds of about 56 km per hour and is forecast to move across Nevada and dissipate on Monday. Hilary, a rare storm to hit the Southwest, could bring a year’s worth of rain to parts of a region famous for its usually balmy weather. Heavy rain and flash flooding have already disrupted transportation, and officials warned residents to stay off the roads. In the last 10 years, flooding from rainfall has caused the most deaths from hurricanes and tropical storms in the US. More than 1,200 flights were canceled around the US Sunday and Monday, with most of those in California, Nevada and Arizona, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking company. Flood watches stretched eastward into Arizona and northward into Oregon and Idaho, according to the National Weather Service. High wind warnings were in place across most of Nevada early Monday.<br/>
general
A US appeals court on Monday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems of misleading investors by withholding information about production cuts on the 737 MAX following two crashes in 2018 and 2019. A three-judge panel of the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that investors pursuing the proposed class action against Spirit had not met the "stiff burden" required for allegations of fraud. Spirit AeroSystems said it "appreciates the well-reasoned ruling by the Tenth Circuit of Appeals, upholding the dismissal opinion by the US District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma." The FAA grounded the 737 MAX in March 2019 as did regulators around the world. The plane was not cleared to return to service until November 2020. After the grounding, Boeing reduced production of the 737 MAX from 52 shipsets per month to 42 but kept purchasing 52 shipsets from Spirit. Shipsets include an aircraft’s fuselage, pylon, wing leading edges, thrust reverser and engine nacelle. Spirit reassured investors in October 2019 it would continue to produce 52 shipsets for an extended period. In December 2019, Boeing told Spirit to stop delivering shipsets for the 737 MAX. The plaintiffs alleged Spirit executives made the reassuring statements about production even though Boeing had privately told Spirit about plans to reduce purchases, something the executives deny. Gilson resigned after a Spirit review in late 2019 concluded its accounting processes did not comply with established procedures.<br/>
On the afternoon of July 2, a Southwest Airlines pilot had to abort a landing at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. A Delta Air Lines 737 was preparing to take off on the same runway. The sudden maneuver avoided a possible collision by seconds. Nine days later, in San Francisco, an American Airlines jet was accelerating down the runway at more than 160 miles per hour when it narrowly missed a Frontier Airlines plane whose nose had almost jutted into its path. Moments later, the same thing happened as a German airliner was taking off. In both cases, the planes came so close to hitting the Frontier aircraft that the Federal Aviation Administration, in internal records reviewed by The New York Times, described the encounters as “skin to skin.” And two and a half weeks after that, an American flight to Dallas was traveling at more than 500 m.p.h. when a collision warning blared in the cockpit. An air traffic controller had mistakenly directed a United Airlines plane to fly dangerously close. The American pilot had to abruptly yank the Airbus A321 up 700 feet. The incidents — highlighted in preliminary F.A.A. safety reports but not publicly disclosed — were among a flurry of at least 46 close calls involving commercial airlines last month alone. They were part of an alarming pattern of safety lapses and near misses in the skies and on the runways of the United States, a Times investigation found. While there have been no major U.S. plane crashes in more than a decade, potentially dangerous incidents are occurring far more frequently than almost anyone realizes — a sign of what many insiders describe as a safety net under mounting stress. So far this year, close calls involving commercial airlines have been happening, on average, multiple times a week, according to a Times analysis of internal F.A.A. records, as well as thousands of pages of federal safety reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former pilots, air traffic controllers and federal officials. The incidents often occur at or near airports and are the result of human error, the agency’s internal records show. Mistakes by air traffic controllers — stretched thin by a nationwide staffing shortage — have been one major factor. Story has more.<br/>
A French seaside resort has renamed its airport after the late Queen Elizabeth II, with her son King Charles’s blessing. Le Touquet received the official support of the king on Monday for the change, the northern resort’s town hall said. “The international airport of Le Touquet Paris-Plage is about to undergo a historic transformation by taking on the name ‘Elizabeth II International Airport of Le Touquet Paris-Plage’,” it said. “This is a tribute to a great Queen and her uncle who had a fondness for France, as well as a recognition of the ‘most British of French resorts’,” it added, saying an inauguration date had yet to be set. The authorities had requested the name change just days after the queen died on 8 September last year aged 96. The town hall noted that the queen’s uncle, Edward VIII, used to travel over by plane to enjoy horseback riding and sand yachting, sometimes accompanied by his niece. Le Touquet, about an hour’s drive south of Calais, is a popular resort where the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte, have a home. By the 1900s, the area’s attractive forested seaside location had become so popular with Parisiens that it became known as Le Touquet-Paris Plage.<br/>
When Zambian authorities searched a private jet that arrived from Egypt last week, they found a mysterious trove that included millions of dollars in cash, hundreds of bars of what appeared to be gold, and weapons. They arrested 12 people, six of them Egyptian citizens, and the haul stirred wild speculation in both countries. Zambian officials launched an inquiry into what they called a gold scam, eliciting a jittery response from Egyptian authorities. The Zambian officials said the gold was, in fact, fake — made of copper and zinc, probably in order to fleece foreign buyers. “This has been a clear case of scamming, gold scamming,” Nason Banda, director general of the country’s Drug Enforcement Commission, told a news conference days after the Aug. 14 raid. He said investigators at the airport had been tipped off beforehand about the plane’s suspicious cargo. Egyptian media outlets reported that several members of Egypt’s military and security services appeared to be among those arrested. Egyptian authorities seemed eager to play down the plane’s seizure: Two journalists covering the episode were detained in Cairo without charge on Saturday, then released on Sunday. They were the latest of at least 200 journalists to be arrested under the decade-long rule of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose government and security services own or control most of the Egyptian press. El-Sisi’s government, which has attempted to polish the country’s human rights record recently with overtures toward its political opposition and releases of several high-profile political prisoners, has not commented on the events of the last week. Zambia and Egypt have close ties, even though Zambia is often celebrated for its democratic governance and Egypt is often criticized as repressive. In June,el-Sisi visited Zambia to strengthen regional trade between northern and southern Africa. Story has more.<br/>
The three biggest Moscow airports suspended arrivals and departures early on Tuesday, Russia’s TASS news agency reported. “The air space is closed over Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo,” an unnamed official told the agency. “Flights are not being received, departures are delayed,” the person said. Russia reported a series of Ukrainian drone attacks on Monday and Tuesday, including over Moscow. <br/>
Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, announced Tuesday it served 41.6m passengers in the first half of this year — exceeding figures for the same period in 2019 as travelers return to the air after the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic. The airport, home to the long-haul carrier Emirates in skyscraper-studded Dubai, long has served as a barometer for the aviation industry worldwide. The new figures at the airport known as DXB reflect figures offered by the IATA that traffic worldwide is at 94% of pre-COVID levels. “As we recover with our (half-year) traffic surpassing pre-pandemic levels, we continue to remain committed to ensuring every guest who travels through our airport leaves with a smile,” Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, said in a statement announcing the figures. The 41.6m passengers is up some 50% from the 27.9m recorded the same time last year, as airlines now have more planes and routes running again.<br/>
Aviation experts kicked off a five-day meeting in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Monday to discuss ways of boosting the safety of Africa's aviation industry. The event brought together over 300 delegates composed of international and Africa's civil aviation regulators as well as the private sector to review ways to reduce air accidents in the continent. In his opening remarks during the eighth Africa and Indian Ocean aviation week, Salvatore Sciacchitano, president of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which is a specialized United Nations agency, said that the conference marks a major step towards enhancing the safety of airlines based in Africa because it will develop recommendations on measures to mitigate potential air hazards. "We have seen improvements in aviation safety in Africa and this will bring more benefits to African states," Sciacchitano said. Participants are discussing measures to safeguard civil aviation against acts of unlawful interference including implementation of the ICAO Cyber Security Action Plan, which seeks to build resilience of airlines against cyber attacks. The meeting is also reviewing ways to enhance aviation security audits of airports, cargo agents as well as air navigation service providers through the adoption of new flight management systems.<br/>
Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) saw an increase in airline service fees collected in the January-July period this year, with cargo operators still holding strong despite a softening freight market. In a statement issued 18 August, the agency notes that while Taiwan’s three largest carriers – China Airlines, EVA Air and Starlux Airlines – were still the largest contributors to service fees, cargo operators UPS and FedEx remained in the top 10 carriers by service fees collected. The CAA, which did not disclose a breakdown of fees by airline, says this underscores the fact that “cargo operators still attach great importance to the Taiwanese market”. In the January-July period this year, the CAA collected NT$890m ($27.9m) in service fees, or about 80% that of pre-pandemic 2019. The agency also disclosed that overflight fees have risen following the reopening of borders in the region. It collected more than NT$1b in overflight fees in the first seven months of the year, about 75% pre-pandemic levels. The CAA highlights the trend of more low-cost carriers overflying Taiwan. By total overflight fees paid in January-July, there were five low-cost carriers in the top 10, says the CAA. Vietnam’s Vietjet Air, for instance, rose to fourth position, following a ramp-up on flights to North Asia. South Korea’s T’way Air is now seventh on the list by overflight fees paid, where it was out of the top 10 in pre-pandemic 2019. The CAA says this points to “changing traveller preferences” post-pandemic, with higher fares impacting travellers’ carrier choices.<br/>