general

Tel Aviv is becoming off limits for a growing number of airlines as the conflict enters its fourth day and the Israeli government vows to respond aggressively to the Hamas attacks. Finnair Oyj will cancel all flights to Tel Aviv until March 30 next year, it said on the X, the platform previously known as Twitter. Discount carrier EasyJet said Tuesday that it had suspended flights to and from Tel Aviv and would monitor the situation, “with a view to resuming some services when we can.” Both carriers follow Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Air France-KLM and the three big US airlines that stopped services yesterday. Delta Air Lines Inc on Monday suspended Tel Aviv flights through Oct. 31 in what it said was “a difficult decision” while promising to help customers book with partners. The suspensions complicate efforts for foreign tourists and business travelers to leave Israel while also creating a bottleneck for Israeli citizens looking to return home. Airlines still operating to Tel Aviv are rejigging their schedules to allow crews to fly straight back and not have to spend the night in the city. British Airways said it had a service departing Heathrow for Tel Aviv this morning but that its teams were continuing to monitor the situation. It has adjusted its departure times so flights leave London Heathrow in the morning rather than late afternoon. Virgin Atlantic is also still flying some services but has extended its rebooking policy so that customers who don’t wish to fly can rebook or get a full refund until Nov. 4. Gulf carriers Emirates and FlyDubai as well as Turkish Airlines and local rival Pegasus are also still flying, according to FlightRadar24 data. Tel Aviv marks “a small part of European networks in general,” said Alex Irving, an analyst at Bernstein. However airlines do more business into the broader Middle East region meaning the potential for more disruption if the conflict spreads, he said. <br/>

Securing direct flights from Israel to the UK has become increasingly difficult with more airlines cancelling flights after the Hamas attacks. Virgin is now operating one flight to and from Tel Aviv a day instead of two and BA is flying one round trip. EasyJet, Ryanair, Wizz Air, Air France, Lufthansa and Emirates have suspended flights from Israel into the UK. One travel agent said he been "inundated" with calls from people trying to get flights back to the UK. Jeremy Segel, director of West End Travel, which specialises in trips to Israel, said many flights were booked up with only the "odd seat" available. He arrived back in the UK on Monday with his family which were part of 44-strong group who journeyed to celebrate the Jewish festival of Sukkot. While his BA flight was delayed, Segel said people were "panicking" in Ben Gurion Airport as they learned of flights being cancelled. At one stage, "everyone started running" in the airport over a false alarm of an attack. "People are very nervous, people are very defensive," he said. BA's website shows that its earliest flight to the UK from Ben Gurion Airport is on Monday 16 October and a one-way ticket costing more than GBP1,300. For the following Monday, a ticket is about GBP226. Virgin Atlantic and Israel's national carrier El Al - which is still operating two flights daily to London Heathrow and two to Luton Airport - have no availability on their UK-bound services until next week. Several airlines have introduced flexible booking policies and allowed customers to change travel dates for free.<br/>

Hurricane Lidia slammed into Mexico's Pacific coast late on Tuesday as an "extremely dangerous storm", bringing powerful wind and lashing rain and killing at least one person, though it weakened to a Category 2 storm as it barreled inland. In Puerto Vallarta, residents boarded up windows and dragged sacks of sand from the beach to reinforce flood barriers on their storefronts, and the airport said it would shut down until 8 a.m. (1400 GMT) on Wednesday.<br/>

Mexico’s government said changing the fee structure under which the country’s privately-run airports operate will reduce service costs and help drive down the price of airline tickets. In the first public comments after unilaterally restructuring the way operators charge services last week, the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the new rules aim to “reduce the costs of airport services that impact the cost of airfares, to the benefit of users.” “The measure, to be acted on immediately, is of public interest and seeks to reduce the cost of regulated airport services,” according to a statement from Mexico’s Transportation and Communications Ministry late Monday. The release didn’t provide details of the magnitude of the fee reduction. The decision by the Lopez Obrador administration last week to change the fee structure sent stocks tumbling and added pressure to the peso, with shares of the publicly-traded airport operators falling as much as 44% on Thursday before recovering part of the losses. In Monday’s statement, the ministry said it met with representatives of the operators to study the new structure governing airport service costs. It has taken into consideration proposals from operators Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste SAB, Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico SAB and Grupo Aeroportuario del Centro Norte SAB, it said. The government also said it seeks to guarantee the quality of airport services and offer certainty to airport concessions.<br/>

The Quebec government quietly reduced the number of $500-or-less airline tickets available under its regional air fare subsidy program (PAAR) by more than 30% for 2023-2024 back in April. The program was designed to encourage tourism across all regions of Quebec, with the ultimate goal of improving flight reliability and supply. But a year after the the PAAR began in 2022, fewer than half of the 98,800 round-trip tickets for $500 were used, according to Radio-Canada. The government therefore lowered the number of available round trips to 67,500 between April 2023 and March 2024 in order to adjust to demand. Nicolas Vigneault, a spokesperson for the government's Transport Ministry, says he does not see this as a failure of the program. "It's still too early to measure the effectiveness [of the PAAR]," he said. The 98,800 tickets subsidized by the government last year were "not a target" and therefore did not have to be sold in their entirety. "The program achieved its objective of making affordable airline tickets available on targeted routes," Vigneault said. According to those in the industry, the solution to increasing the program's popularity lies in revising its criteria. "We need to look at all the parameters we can modify to further boost this program," said Yani Gagnon, co-owner and vice-president of Pascan Aviation, one of the airlines participating in the PAAR. Gagnon says he has already informed the government of a number of possible solutions he considers "promising".<br/>

Luton Airport outside London said it suspended flights through at least midday Wednesday after a parking garage collapsed because of a fire overnight. The fire, which began on Tuesday evening, led to a “partial structural collapse” at Terminal Car Park 2, the airport operator said on its website. Luton is the fourth-largest airport serving London, operating flights for mostly discount airlines. Firefighters were still battling the blaze early Wednesday, and the airport advised passengers to not head to the airport until further notice.<br/>

Israel's parliamentary finance committee said on Tuesday it would debate on Thursday the approval of state guarantees for providing war risk insurance for Israeli airlines. Due to the outbreak of war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas over the weekend, the insurance companies insuring flag carrier El Al Airlines, Israir and Arkia have said that terms of their policies indicated that within seven days of notification, insurance companies are entitled to cancel insurance policies. In order to maintain flights, the government has asked the finance committee to provide insurance companies a state guarantee of $5b to cover their obligations and costs for war risk policies. Given the sensitive nature of the matter, Israel's accountant general requested the committee's discussion be confidential. While many global airlines have cancelled flights to Tel Aviv, Israel's three carriers are still flying, adding flights to bring back Israelis who are stranded - some of whom are returning back as reserves in the military.<br/>

Vietnamese police have arrested two men and a woman for smuggling hundreds of Apple iPhones into the country, with one of the suspects using his job as an aircraft technician to avoid customs inspection, local media reported on Monday. Le Van Ngoc, 43, and Nguyen Anh Tuan, 33, were arrested, with Ngoc’s wife, 29, also charged with acting as an accomplice to assist the smuggling, the police said on Sunday. Tuan was arrested at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, after he flew in from Thailand with 12 new iPhone 14 Pro Max devices that were not declared to customs officials, the police said. Investigations revealed that he had been colluding with Ngoc, a technician in charge of aircraft maintenance with the Vietnam Airlines Engineering Company, to smuggle more than 600 similar phones worth 20b dong (S$1.12m) over an undisclosed period of time. Ngoc would let Tuan know his work roster at the airport, information that Tuan would use to book flights from Thailand to the Vietnamese city. Upon touching down at the airport, Tuan would hand a batch of phones bought from Thailand to the aircraft technician, who would hide it in his tool bag while he performed his plane maintenance duties.<br/>

Boeing deliveries of new airline jets slumped in Q3 as the company struggled with production problems that are cutting into its ability to generate cash. Boeing said Tuesday that it delivered 27 planes in September, including 15 of its best-seller, the 737 Max. That was far behind European rival Airbus, which delivered 55 planes last month. It brought the Arlington, Virginia, company’s quarterly total to 105 deliveries, down from 112 in the same period last year. Boeing gets the largest share of the purchase price when it delivers planes, so the dip hurts cash flow. The pace of Max deliveries is also falling short of the company’s goal of producing 38 new 737s per month. Production and deliveries of the Max and the 787 Dreamliner have been affected by production flaws, notably at Spirit AeroSystems, which builds the fuselages for many Boeing planes. In the most recent example, the companies said in August that improperly drilled fastener holes would delay deliveries of 737s. Despite the production stumbles, strong demand from airlines such as United continued to bolster orders for new Boeing jets. The company said that after cancellations it received orders for 214 planes in September. Boeing’s orders beat Airbus, which said Monday that it took 23 net new orders in September. Boeing is scheduled to report Q3 financial results on Oct. 25.<br/>

Boeing Tuesday opened a technology and engineering center in Brazil, aiming to expand its global footprint and take advantage of expertise in a country it sees leading sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production. The move comes more than three years after it pulled out of a billion-dollar deal to buy the commercial division of local planemaker Embraer. Boeing sees both firms aligned in the goal of developing Brazil's aerospace ecosystem. "This is very much a logical place for us to invest," said Brendan Nelson, global president responsible for strategy and operations outside the US. Brazil, he said, has highly trained engineers and is well placed to lead the sector's decarbonization efforts. "This investment is a long-term one," Nelson told Reuters. The airline industry has an ambitious goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, which the executive reiterated the planemaker is committed to, and Boeing says Brazil has the potential to become one of the major global players in the SAF market. The decarbonization target largely depends on the development and increased production of SAF from renewable resources such as vegetable oils or waste. Brazil is a global leader in biofuels like ethanol. The firm's new technology center in Sao Jose dos Campos, the town near Sao Paulo where Embraer is headquartered, employs about 500 people, according to Boeing, whose main Brazilian airline customer is Gol. The planemaker did not say how much it plans to invest in Brazil. Boeing's expansion in the South American nation led two domestic defense and aerospace industry groups to sue the U.S. company for hiring local talent, a move they see harming Brazil's industry. <br/>