general

Baggage mishandling rates last year hit the highest in a decade globally as the airline industry scrambled to recover after the pandemic, a report shows. Some 26m pieces of luggage were lost, delayed or damaged in 2022 - nearly eight bags in every 1,000. But new data seen by the BBC indicates the situation is improving as passenger numbers return to pre-pandemic levels. This was down to more airport staff and automation technology, said Sita, which handles IT systems for 90% of airlines. The UK watchdog, the Civil Aviation Authority, said the maximum most airlines pay out is about £1,000 but added: "It would be very rare for you to receive this much." It also warned that airlines judge the value of an item on its age when lost, not how much it costs to buy new, so it might be better to claim via travel insurance. Airlines must track every piece of luggage at various points during its journey using the barcode on the luggage tag, according to Sita. Last year was the first summer that holidaymakers returned in droves after Covid travel restrictions were eased. But many airports and airlines that had made cuts during the pandemic struggled to recruit staff including baggage handlers quickly enough.<br/>

The US FAA said on Tuesday it will hold runway safety meetings at 90 airports over the next few weeks after a series of troubling close-call aviation incidents. Earlier this month, the FAA and NTSB said they were investigating a near collision between a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 and a Cessna Citation 560X business jet in San Diego. The NTSB is investigating seven runway incursion events since January, including the San Diego incident. In March, the FAA said it was taking steps to improve its air traffic control operations after near-miss incidents, telling employees: "There is no question that we are seeing too many close calls." At the "Runway Safety Action Team" meetings taking place through the end of September, the FAA said representatives from the FAA’s air traffic organization, airlines, pilots, airport vehicle drivers and others will "come together to identify unique risks to surface safety at that airport and develop plans to mitigate or eliminate those risks." The FAA has been without a permanent administrator since April 2022. President Joe Biden's nominee to head the agency Phil Washington withdrew in March and the White House has yet to pick a new nominee. Deputy Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg since June has been serving as acting FAA administrator in addition to her USDOT duties. The FAA said its preliminary review of the Aug. 11 incident showed an air traffic controller at San Diego International Airport cleared the Cessna to land even though Southwest Airlines Flight 2493 had already been told to taxi onto the same runway and await instructions to depart.<br/>

Bo Ellis has been a devoted member of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) for nearly four decades, but the 64-year-old is waging a campaign against the union to extend his flying career. ALPA and other pilot unions oppose a bill in the U.S. Congress that seeks to raise the retirement age for commercial airline pilots to 67 from 65, arguing it will "introduce new risk" into the aviation system as no safety agency has studied its implications. The measure, however, is estimated to provide 5,000 pilots like Ellis the option to continue working over the next two years, according to the Regional Airline Association (RAA). Increasing the age limit by two years would also align pilot retirement with the minimum federal retirement age, allowing them to receive full social security benefits. Ellis, a head pilot at a US carrier, said senior pilots are "by far much safer" due to experience, accusing ALPA of "politicizing" safety. "My own union is being discriminatory against me," he said. Ellis has co-founded a coalition of thousands of pilots at carriers including Delta, United, American and Southwest Airlines to lobby for the legislation and has contacted over 200 lawmakers. ALPA said it "carefully" considered and its elected representatives voted "unanimously" last October to reaffirm its opposition to an "arbitrary change" in the retirement age. "America did not establish the aviation safety gold standard by cutting corners when making significant changes to our complex, global aviation system," ALPA said. Rick Redfern, a Mesa Air pilot who was present at ALPA's October meeting, said the union's board merely approved its strategic plan which contains its position on age. But the specific question of increasing the retirement age to 67 was never brought to the floor for a vote. Two other pilots, present at the meeting, confirmed Redfern's account. Internal emails reviewed by Reuters and interviews with a dozen pilots show members are divided over the age issue. Some of the pilots asked not to have their employers identified due to the risk of losing their jobs.<br/>

Joanna Lubkin, a Unitarian Universalist minister, has chronic pain and fatigue and relies on her service dog, a 4-year-old black Labrador named Sully, to pick up items she drops, press elevator buttons and brace her when her body weakens. She never travels without him. In June, when she and Sully arrived at the Pittsburgh International Airport to fly home to Boston after a conference, the agent at the JetBlue Airlines gate told her that there were no forms on file certifying Sully as a service dog, and refused to let her board. Since 2021, the Department of Transportation has required travelers with disabilities to fill out a standard form before boarding an aircraft with their trained service animal, attesting to the dog’s health, behavior and training. Before her flight to Pittsburgh on Delta Air Lines, Lubkin, 37, had completed the D.O.T. form for both Delta and JetBlue and uploaded it to their websites. With Delta, she experienced no issues. But a week later she found herself stranded in Pittsburgh, confused and frustrated. She did not know she was only one of many travelers with disabilities encountering hurdles with the verification process, and finding themselves stuck at the airport even after they had correctly verified their service dogs for air travel. JetBlue is one of four airlines that uses a third-party — a small, Chicago-based company called Open Doors Organization — to review the new D.O.T. forms and issue approvals or denials on their behalf. And when Lubkin arrived at her gate for her return flight home, she was told Open Doors had not verified her form, and she would not be allowed to fly. A JetBlue spokesman acknowledged her concerns. “We understand that we need to ensure better consistency in verifying paperwork during travel on all flights of a customer’s itinerary,” said Derek Dombrowski, the airline’s senior manager for corporate communications. Story has more.<br/>

UK cockpit crew representatives are urging potential student pilots to exercise caution before committing to flight training, insisting that suggestions of a global pilot shortage are misleading. The UK pilot union BALPA acknowledges that there is an “acute” shortage in the USA, as well as a shortfall of “experienced” pilots in south and east Asia. But it adds that these are “localised” and not reflected in other parts of the world. “We believe that claims of a ‘worldwide pilot shortage’ are unfounded and not backed up by independent analysis [or] evidence,” the union states. In the aftermath of the pandemic there is still a pool of experienced pilots – including 500 in the UK, it adds – from which crews are being drawn to meet recruitment demands. BALPA says it expects to see a “sustained reduction” on the number of unemployed pilots from 2024, as well as increasing demand for newly-qualified crew members compared with the 2020-22 period when the pandemic disrupted air transport. The union has welcomed airline-backed cadet-pilot schemes recently unveiled by British Airways and TUI Airways, which shift the heavy financial risk of training courses onto the carrier. BALPA says the TUI scheme, in particular, will feature multi-crew pilot licence training, and adds that it marks the first time the union has been able to support such a programme. “With all previous MPL programmes the financial risk has been entirely placed on the trainee,” it states. Given that a number of flight schools have collapsed in the wake of the pandemic, while still holding large sums of trainees’ money, the union is warning potential trainees not to pay for the entirety of flight training up-front, and to conduct “thorough research” on each academy and training avenue being considered. It adds that would-be pilots should not base commitment to a school on promises of jobs, even if the school claims to have close ties to airlines. “The only certainty of a job with a company is a signed contract from that company,” says BALPA. “All too often we see members chose a flight school based on a ‘gentleman’s promise’ of a job or a conditional offer of employment with a company – only for that offer to no longer be valid, two years later, at the end of their training.” BALPA says it has undertaken a campaign to ensure that trainees are better-protected financially, while offering a “stable training pipeline” for the UK airline sector.<br/>

Dubai predicts air traffic from China will rebound in the fourth quarter, raising the need to boost capacity at the world’s busiest international airport. The city’s main air hub increased its forecast for this year to 85m passengers from 83.6m, after a surge in arrivals pushed numbers to pre-Covid levels, its CEO said. About 41.6m passengers traveled through Dubai International Airport in the first half of 2023. That was up 49% from a year earlier and exceeded arrivals during the same period in 2019, before the pandemic grounded air lines across the world. “We have to accelerate our efforts to improve the capacity of the existing airport in the short term, which will cover us for the next 10 to 15 years,” Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday. “Then, we have to have a real push to develop the big one,” he said, referring to the city’s second airport, Al Maktoum International, which is designed to accommodate more passengers once it fully opens. The company sees a “very strong” rebound in China, he said. The world’s second-biggest economy was mostly closed to international travelers until earlier this year, when strict Covid lockdowns were lifted. Demand for long-haul travel has picked up in the past two years as travel restrictions have ended. Dubai’s flagship airline, Emirates, posted a $3b dollar profit for the year through March, and the city reported a record number of tourist arrivals in the first half. That’s helped push hotel room rates to a fresh high.<br/>

Hundreds of Indian airline pilots plan to form an association to challenge flying duty regulations they say cause fatigue and jeopardise safety after an IndiGo pilot collapsed and died before his flight. Former pilots have taken to social media and newspaper columns to publicly raise concerns that airlines, though operating within regulatory frameworks, are stretching them to the brink as air travel booms in India. The sudden death last week of an IndiGo pilot heightened those worries although India's biggest airline says he had a 27-hour break before duty and was in good health. Captain Shakti Lumba, a retired vice president at IndiGo, has garnered the support of hundreds of pilots who plan to come together with an existing group of 600 to raise awareness and lodge concerns over fatigue with authorities and airlines. "The main focus of the group will be compliance with international standards and recommended practices, flight safety and pilot fatigue - which is a clear and present danger to (the) safety of aircraft operations in India," said Lumba, who was involved in setting up IndiGo's operations from 2005. India's aviation watchdog did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. In the United States, regulators allow flights manned by two pilots to serve maximum duty time of 14 hours during the day and 9-10 hours for late-night flights. India does not differentiate on the basis of day or night-time and allows pilots to be on duty for 13 hours within a 24-hour span. While airline pilot fatigue is a global problem, India is uniquely at the heart of the matter as the world's fastest-growing aviation market, where hundreds of new planes are on order by IndiGo and Tata group-owned Air India. About a dozen Indian pilots with whom Reuters spoke in recent weeks shared worries not just about work hours but flight schedules they say are erratic and worsened sometimes by consecutive late-night departures without sufficient rest.<br/>

UPS workers ratified a massive five-year labor deal that includes big wage increases and other improvements to work rules and schedules, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said Tuesday. The deal passed with 86.3% of votes, the highest contract vote in the history of Teamsters at UPS, according to the union. “Teamsters have set a new standard and raised the bar for pay, benefits and working conditions in the package delivery industry. This is the template for how workers should be paid and protected nationwide, and nonunion companies like Amazon better pay attention,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said. UPS and the Teamsters union, which represents about 340,000 workers at the delivery giant, reached a preliminary deal last month, narrowly averting a strike that could have rippled across the US economy as the previous contract expiration on July 31 approached. UPS moves $3.8b worth of goods a day, which is about 5% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. The parties had until July 31, when the previous labor contract was set to expire, to reach a deal and avoid a work stoppage. Workers began voting on the new contract Aug. 2. It’s the single-largest collective bargaining agreement reached in the private sector, according to the union. Part-time workers will make no less than $21 an hour, up from a minimum of $15.50 currently, according to the union. Part-time pay was a sticking point during labor negotiations. Full-time workers will average $49 an hour. Current workers will get $2.75 more an hour this year and $7.50 an hour more over the five-year contract.<br/>