Airlines large and small struggled to cope when demand roared back after the pandemic. But their problems have been a boon for the $110bn industry that keeps the world’s aircraft in the skies. A shortage of new planes caused by supply chain issues and a jump in labour costs has led to airlines spending more on maintenance and repairs than ever before as they keep their existing aircraft in the air for longer. “The [maintenance] market is incredibly strong,” said Eric Mendelson, co-president of Heico, a Florida-based company that is one of the world’s leading independent suppliers of replacement parts. “I’ve been at the company for 34 years and I have never seen a demand environment like we are in today.” Labour and raw material shortages have hampered the large manufacturers Airbus and Boeing and their plans to meet demand for new planes, while problems on some engines have added to the challenges in the supply chain. Maintenance spending had historically been 8 to 10% of an airline’s cost structure, said Kevin Michaels, head of Michigan-based consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory. This year, however, he estimated that the world’s airlines would spend more than $110bn on maintenance, including labour and material, or about 14% of total revenues. “It’s the highest we’ve seen it.” Michaels said three factors were driving the higher spend: airlines investing in discretionary maintenance that had been deferred during the Covid-19 pandemic; older aircraft due for retirement having to fly longer than expected given issues with new generations of engines, as well as supply chain constraints; and inflation as the cost of labour and parts had risen. While most of the supply chain crisis had been “about the manufacturing side of things this is the first time we’ve had a supply chain crisis that is really impacting the whole after-market in maintenance, repair and overhaul”, Michaels said. “It’s new territory.”<br/>
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A vehicle fatally struck a person on the tarmac of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, officials said Tuesday, the second fatal incident this year involving a worker at the airport in the Texas capital. The person was identified as an airport employee but authorities did not immediately release details about how the collision on Tuesday occurred. Firefighters and police responded to the scene, according to Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services. The airport said in a statement that flights were not impacted. During the busy summer months, the airport had more than 2m monthly passengers. The Austin Police Department said in an email that the investigation was ongoing and no other details were available. In April, an American Airlines employee died after driving a service vehicle that struck a jet bridge. Work around commercial airplanes has resulted in other fatal injuries in recent years. At the Austin airport in 2020, a man was fatally struck by a Southwest Airlines jet on a runway. Police later ruled his death a suicide and officials said the man was not authorized to be on the runway.<br/>
A pilot has been indicted for allegedly threatening to shoot the plane’s captain if the captain diverted the flight because of a passenger who needed medical attention. A grand jury in Utah issued the indictment against Jonathan J. Dunn on Oct. 18 over an incident that happened in August 2022, charging him with interference with a flight crew, according to federal court records. The Transportation Department’s inspector general’s office said in an email sent Tuesday that Dunn was the first officer, or co-pilot, on the flight and was authorized to carry a gun under a program run by the TSAThe inspector general described Dunn as a California pilot. It did not identify the airline on which the incident occurred, saying only that it was a commercial airline flight. The office did not give the flight’s intended route, or whether it was diverted. The inspector general said it was working with the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration on the investigation. The two-page indictment in federal district court in Utah says only that Dunn “did use a dangerous weapon in assaulting and intimidating the crew member.” It did not indicate the airline either, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake City declined to comment beyond the information in the indictment. Interference with a flight crew is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.<br/>
Belgian transport workers' unions on Tuesday called on their members to refuse to handle military equipment being sent to Israel to battle Hamas gunmen. The ACV Puls, BTB, BBTK and ACV-Transcom unions said in a joint statement that airport workers have seen arms shipments. "While a genocide is under way in Palestine, workers at various airports in Belgium are seeing arms shipments in the direction of the war zone," the statement said. Israel says it is targeting Hamas military operations and not civilians in Gaza. A Belgian government spokesperson declined to comment on whether arms were shipped to the region via Belgium. The unions said that loading or offloading these weapons would mean contributing to supplying organisations that kill innocent people. "We, several unions active in ground logistics, call on our members not to handle any flights that ship military equipment to Palestine/Israel, like there were clear agreements and rules at the start of the conflict with Russia and Ukraine," the unions said.<br/>
A bid by Stansted Airport to massively expand its terminal to improve passengers' experience has been approved. In a decision on Tuesday, the Planning Inspectorate said a move to extend the airport’s terminal to provide more capacity would have “very significant economic benefits.” The scheme will add a three-bay extension to the airport's terminal building for a bigger departures lounge, more shops and restaurants, more check-in desks, and a larger security hall with “next-generation” scanners. The airport said it would create up to 5,000 new jobs. In approving the extension, planning inspector Cullum Parker said the changes were sought to help increase the terminal’s capacity to serve the airport’s permitted limit of 43m passengers a year. Gareth Powell, the airport’s managing director, said it hoped the move would help attract more airlines to operate from the airport to a wider range of destinations. “Stansted is now entering a new phase in its history, as we look to serve more passengers than ever before,” said Powell. “Our unique and growing route network, and easy access to and from London and the east of England, is a fantastic platform to build on. We know Stansted will have a critical role to play in serving the future capacity needs of London.” Stansted served more than 26m passengers in the last 12 months, and is the third largest airport serving London. The proposals were backed by Essex County Council, which said it would be likely to “enhance the passenger experience” and “attract a greater diversity of air routes provided at London Stansted.”<br/>
Russian airlines’ passenger traffic reached 10.18m people in September, Russian news agency RIA reported on Tuesday, up 1.7% year-on-year from 10.01m in the same month of 2022. <br/>
Russia has detained more than 80 people in connection with the antisemitic rioting on Sunday in which hundreds of young men stormed an international airport in Dagestan to stop Jews from disembarking from a flight from Tel Aviv. Five people have received jail sentences of six to 10 days for petty hooliganism, and federal investigators said they had opened a criminal case for mass rioting, which carries a maximum sentence of eight to 15 years in prison. It is not clear whether anyone has been charged in that case yet. The riots, which observers have compared to a tsarist-era pogrom, stood out for a lack of police response as the mob took control of the airfield and main terminal while riot police stood by. Clashes broke out later on Sunday evening, injuring dozens of people including two police officers. Police have now launched a delayed crackdown on the rioters, accompanied by fiery statements pinning blame on shadowy enemies from abroad. Video published on Tuesday showed riot police in helmets making an arrest in downtown Makhachkala, while a regional governor said the tempo of arrests would increase. “The arrests are accelerating … first they arrest 10 people, those people give some information, and then from that information we arrest more people,” said Sergei Melikov, the head of the Dagestan region, during a live radio show. The leader of neighbouring Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, said that anyone who joined an unsanctioned protest could be “shot in the head”.<br/>
Three airline members of the Arab Air Carriers Organization are to participate in pilot projects focused on sustainability management and digital identity, under a co-operation agreement with SITA. The agreement covering trials of the two technology solutions, which will take place over the next few months, was unveiled at the AACO conference in Riyadh on 31 October. SITA’s sustainability management project will use data to enable measurement and management of operational carbon footprint, while a digital identity solution aims to use biometric information to reduce manual passenger identification checks to a simple single digital one. “Airlines are also under growing pressure to meet corporate clients’ and passengers’ growing environmental expectations,” says SITA. It says its project seamlessly connects “diverse” data sources and uses predictive modelling to provide transparency on the issue for passenger benefit. Passenger identity verification is essential for security, states SITA, but the processes can be complex and – particularly if multiple checks are needed – viewed as an obstacle. It says its travel digital identity solution can match biometric data on documents to an ICAO-compliant digital identity on a mobile device.<br/>
One of the Middle East’s major travel hubs, Abu Dhabi International Airport, is getting a new name. From February 9, 2024, the airport will be officially known as Zayed International Airport, the Abu Dhabi government announced. Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and the name change was ordered by UAE president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. It is likely the new name is a tribute to his father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who was the founding president of the UAE. The airport has just opened its massive new US$3b (NZ$5b) terminal, known as Terminal A, which will be able to handle 45m travellers a year. Terminal A will be the new base for Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad, which operated the first commercial flight out of the terminal – EY224 to New Delhi – on October 31. In total, 28 airlines will operate from the terminal, which also featured in the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One movie earlier this year. The new building will also have 163 retail, food and beverage outlets, two spas, and a 138-room hotel for travellers with layovers to enjoy. An official opening ceremony for the new terminal will take place on February 9 – the same day from which the airport will start using its new name. The airport is the second-largest in the UAE after Dubai International Airport, which welcomed 66m passengers in 2022.<br/>
Travellers can immerse themselves in a towering multimedia digital waterfall display that is four-storey high and a landscaped garden at the upgraded Changi Airport Terminal 2 (T2), which fully reopened on Wednesday ahead of schedule. The centrepiece of the departure hall – the digital waterfall display The Wonderfall – stands at 14m tall and 17m wide, airport operator Changi Airport Group (CAG) said on Wednesday. Nestled in a vertical garden, the large multimedia wall features a “waterfall” cascading over large boulders. Every half-hour, a four-minute musical show will be screened at The Wonderfall across its 892-tile screen, with original music composed by Canadian pianist Jean-Michel Blais, CAG said. In the departure transit area after immigration sits Dreamscape, a new garden that combines digital content, plants and fish. Set against the backdrop of a digital “sky” ceiling emulating the airport’s weather conditions in real time, Dreamscape features more than 20,000 plants selected from 100 species, some of which are not commonly found in Singapore, noted CAG. With T2’s reopening after its expansion, which was originally set for completion in 2024, the terminal’s handling capacity has climbed from 23m to 28m passengers a year. This takes Changi Airport’s overall yearly capacity to 90m passengers.<br/>
Indonesia's President Joko Widodo on Wednesday broke ground on the construction of an airport in the country's new capital city, Nusantara. Jokowi, as the president is known, is this week expected to launch a total of 10 projects worth 12.5t rupiah ($783.85m) in Nusantara, which Indonesia is building from scratch amid the jungles of Borneo island. The 347-hectare airport is expected to be fully operational by December 2024, the president said, without detailing the total value of the project. The Southeast Asian country has struggled to attract private investment in the $32b city, a flagship project of Jokowi's aimed at moving the seat of government away from congested Jakarta. The country has allocated 40.6t rupiah for the construction of Nusantara in its 2024 budget. A consortium of Indonesian companies including energy firm Adaro, conglomerate Astra International, property firm Agung Sedayu Grup, and energy company Barito Pacific have invested about 20t rupiah in Nusantara. The consortium launched construction on a hotel in September this year. It is still unclear what other projects will be funded by that investment.<br/>