A US Senate panel on Monday announced an investigation into airline fees for baggage, seat selection, ticket changes and other services, demanding justifications from the CEOs of five major carriers for these charges that generate billions of dollars in annual revenue for them. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said these fees are often hidden from and confusing to consumers. Blumenthal said he wrote the CEs of American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta, Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines seeking a detailed breakdown on how much they collect from each fee, the reason for them and the costs to supply each service. Between 2018 and 2022, total revenue across major US airlines from baggage fees increased from $4.9b to $6.8b, the senator said. Blumenthal also cited a report by a travel consultancy that found that eight leading US airlines last year collected an estimated $4.2b in fees for seat selection. "US airlines increasingly charge ancillary fees that obscure the actual cost of air travel," Blumenthal said in the letters. "These itemized fees are often not disclosed to customers until well into the ticket purchasing process or after a ticket has been purchased, making it difficult for customers to know the true, total cost of a ticket and comparison shop prior to purchase," Blumenthal added. American, Delta and United referred questions about the Senate investigation to Airlines for America, an industry trade group, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Spirit and Frontier did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Airline CEOs in 2018 lobbied against bipartisan legislation to mandate "reasonable and proportional" baggage and change fees and convinced Congress to drop the plan.<br/>
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Air controllers in France walked out on Monday, causing flights to be canceled across the country, local media reported. Workers are protesting the adoption of a draft law to regulate the services during social movements and strikes, the daily Le Figaro said. The French Directorate General for Civil Aviation had previously warned passengers of flight cancelations, noting that the strike would affect airports of Paris-Orly (25%), Toulouse-Blagnac (25%), Bordeaux-Merignac and Marseille-Provence (20%). Flights are at risk of being canceled or delayed until Tuesday at 6.00 a.m. local time (0500GMT), the directorate said. Parliament adopted the draft law last Wednesday despite left-wing opposition that sees the legislation as a threat to the right to walk out. According to the draft law, all air workers whose absence would directly affect the realization of flights must individually declare their participation in a strike two days prior.<br/>
London Heathrow airport is reviewing its long-term expansion options, including the possibility of reigniting plans to build a third runway. Plans were in place for the expansion of the UK hub pre-Covid, but were shelved amid the devastating impact of the pandemic on airline traffic. Speaking at the Airlines 2023 conference in London today, Heathrow chief strategy officer Chris Annetts said that under new CE Thomas Woldbye, options for long-term capacity growth at the hub are again being considered. “The question is how do you deliver [airport expansion] and when does it come,” he states. “That’s the big question that we’re now discussing with Thomas joining us about a month ago. “We are now actively reviewing that and trying to work out the answer to that question.” Acknowledging that “expansion as a programme has a lot of baggage with it”, Annetts nevertheless says that the need for more airport capacity in the UK is demonstrated by “long-term demand forecasts that still look broadly the same as they did pre-Covid”. Heathrow has “plenty of room to grow in the short to medium term” with its current two-runway system, but fulfilling the UK’s “full growth potential” would require projects such as Heathrow’s third runway and the use of a second runway at Gatwick, he suggests. UK transport minister Mark Harper said of a potential third runway at the British Airways hub: “If Heathrow want to bring forward a proposal, that will obviously get looked at in the proper way. I can’t set out a view either way.” Harper notes that as transport secretary, he would “effectively be the planning authority” for the project.<br/>
China will launch a series of pilot projects to spur domestic production and consumption of biodiesel, the National Energy Administration (NEA) has said, beefing up environmental efforts in an area where the country lags other big economies. Sparse policy support has kept consumption of biodiesel, a low-carbon alternative to petroleum diesel made from feedstocks such as palm oil and used cooking oil (UCO), low in China, compared to the the European Union and the United States. In a document issued on Monday, the NEA urged local authorities to carry out demonstration projects in several areas of the biodiesel industry, and advised regional governments to provide financial support. "We will expand the application scenarios of domestic biodiesel," the NEA said, adding that it aimed to evolve a development path that could be replicated to furnish a basis for continued promotion of green liquid fuels. Such efforts include integration of the UCO feedstock supply chain and distribution of the fuel at highway gas stations. It also pledged to promote inclusion of biodiesel in a voluntary national certified emission reduction mechanism. The NEA did not provide details on financing and timelines, however. Biodiesel produced from UCO has slightly lower energy content than petroleum diesel but cuts greenhouse gas pollution by as much as 83%, a study in 2022 by the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States showed.<br/>
India’s travel landscape is changing as the country emerges as a powerhouse in the tourism sector. Their willingness to spend big while traveling is going, but research shows that most Indians are traveling domestically — not overseas. Indian travelers took 1.7b leisure trips in 2022 but most never left the country, and only about 1% traveled abroad, according to Booking.com and McKinsey. Indian travelers are projected to be taking 5b leisure trips by 2030, and 99% of those will be within the country as well, said the report published October. The world’s most populous country is set to be the fourth-largest global travel spenders by 2030, largely due to a growing middle-income population that will see household earnings grow by $35,000 annually by that time. In addition, the population is young, with the median age at 27.6, “more than ten years younger than that of most major economies,” McKinsey said on its website. “What’s more, consumption of goods and services, including leisure and recreation, is forecast to double by 2030.” Spending on travel and tourism is predicted to hit $410b — a surge of more than 170% from $150b in 2019, the report showed. According to the “How India travels 2023” report, about 2,000 Indians and 42,000 global tourists between 18 and 54 years booked leisure travel trips in 2022 and plan to do the same this year. New Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai retained the top four spots since the previous study in 2015 — Kochi is the only new city on the list. “India’s travel ecosystem is maturing and there are multiple government schemes that are making the country more connected and ensuring it develops into a tourist hub,” Kanika Kalra, managing partner at McKinsey Mumbai, told CNBC.<br/>
Some residents of a remote Papua New Guinea island were preparing on Tuesday to evacuate from the vicinity of an erupting volcano that shot a cloud of ash into the sky forcing the cancellation of some flights. Teams had been sent to the Mount Ulawun area on New Britain island to coordinate an evacuation after it began erupting on Monday, state broadcaster NBC PNG reported senior disaster management official Clement Bailey as saying. Flights from the island's Hoskins airport had been cancelled, the broadcaster said, adding that the volcano was still erupting. Papua New Guinea is on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a horse-shoe shaped band of volcanoes and fault lines circling the edges of the Pacific Ocean.<br/>
Neste could have excess SAF production capacity by 2028 and requires more certainty about long-term demand to justify investment after that point, a senior executive at the refiner said on Monday. Neste aims to ramp up its production of renewable fuels to over 6m tonnes by 2026 from 4.5m this year, 33% of which will be SAF, vice president of renewable aviation Jonathan Wood told an aviation sustainability conference in Dublin. He said that meant Neste alone would have enough capacity to meet the initial amount of SAF mandated by the European Union from 2025 to 2029, but it was crucial suppliers see "a pathway to demand growing beyond that", including from passengers. The EU has adopted rules requiring flights departing from EU airports to carry a progressively increasing amount of SAF, which has net-zero or lower CO2 emissions than fossil fuel kerosene, starting with 2% of total fuel from 2025. "To make any further investments, we need to have demand certainty... We have to find other mechanisms to help stimulate demand further because only then will it be possible to justify the internal investments," Wood said. "Right now we could be even in five years time actually having more SAF production capacity than we actually have demand" and end up producing renewable diesel instead of aviation fuel. The EU proposal aims to increase both demand for and supply of SAF, which is currently produced in tiny quantities and is far more expensive than conventional aviation fuels. Executives from Norwegian Air, British Airways-owner IAG and Icelandair said the EU needed to adopt measures beyond mandates, including helping fund the scaling of SAF beyond 2030 and contributing towards lowering the price gap between conventional and alternative fuels.<br/>
A refurbished refinery in Singapore is about to become one of the world’s biggest sources of sustainable aviation fuel, with capacity to produce up to 1m tons per year. Finnish renewable energy giant Neste, the world’s largest producer of the fuel, has completed a E1.6b expansion of its multi-purpose plant in the Asian city-state, enabling a tenfold boost in SAF output from the previous 100,000 tons. Production will begin within weeks and ramp up in the first half of 2024. For now, however, very little will flow to Asia Pacific airlines. Although the plant is well positioned to supply them, many APAC carriers are waiting for their governments to introduce policies which incentivise SAF production and use by driving up demand while bringing prices down. So most of the Singapore SAF will go to North America or Europe where demand is already high, buoyed by incentives to procure the fuel, escalating SAF-jet fuel blending mandates, or in-house decarbonisation targets of individual airlines. “There’s no shortcut jump to a desired future,” says Sami Jauhiainen, the company’s vice-president Asia Pacific, and acting executive vice-president of renewable aviation. “You have to start with the fundamentals and policies to create demand and de-risk investments.” And in many Asia-Pacific markets, he says, “we are still missing the ignition.” But change is coming across the region, collectively the world’s biggest air transport market, sweeping south and east from the Indian subcontinent, through China, north and south Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific island nations. Although APAC countries lag others in embracing SAF, they are increasing their ambitions and committing to or indicating intent to accelerate decarbonisation of their skies. From 2030, Japan will mandate 10% SAF content in aviation fuel. In addition to imports, local production is progressing via multiple pathways, with strong support from the nation’s biggest carriers, Japan Airlines (JAL) and ANA. New Zealand is also getting active. Its recently-defeated government flagged SAF mandates, and partnered with Air New Zealand to commence trials with two US-based companies, waste-to-fuel start-up Fulcrum BioEnergy and alcohol-to-jet producer LanzaJet. Story has more.<br/>
Aircraft lessor SMBC Aviation Capital has signed a contract to purchase 60 medium-haul passenger jets, Nikkei has learned, as the company bets on air travel's continued post-pandemic recovery. The company is purchasing Airbus' A320neo, whose high fuel efficiency has made it an attractive model for airlines. The purchase, thought to be worth more than 500b yen (around $3.4b) based on the A320neo's market price, will be financed through bank loans and bond issues. SMBC Aviation Capital, which counts Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. among its shareholders, is the world's second-largest aircraft leasing company. It contributed almost 20b yen to Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group's profits during the April to September period of this year. Airlines are increasingly moving towards leasing aircraft rather than owning them, with around 47% of passenger aircraft currently owned by leasing companies. Although the recent rise in interest rates will push up the cost of funds needed for SMBC Aviation Capital's purchase, the burden for the company is expected to be limited as payments for the order will be made in installments. The company also aims to gain an advantage in price negotiations given the large size of the order. Single-aisle narrow-body jets like the A320neo are popular on domestic routes and account for just under 70% of the passenger jets in use around the world. The average market lease fee for SMBC Aviation Capital's A320neos is estimated to be around $280,000 to $380,000 per month. The high number of airlines using the A320neo will make it easier to secure buyers when the company ultimately decides to sell, making the model a highly liquid asset. SMBC Aviation Capital also ordered 25 medium-haul Boeing jets in September, an order worth approximately 200b yen based on market price. With the new purchase, the company's fleet will grow to around 1,000 aircraft. Although the number falls short of industry leader AerCap's more than 2,000 aircraft, SMBC Aviation Capital is boosting its status as a specialist in medium-haul aircraft. This latest purchase is its first move to significantly expand its fleet since the pandemic.<br/>
Quebec expects to be in the black when it exits its minority stake at the end of the decade in Airbus's now money-losing A220 narrowbody jet program, the Canadian province's economy minister told Reuters. Quebec holds a 25% stake in the jet, which has faced scrutiny as Airbus struggles to contain costs on parts. Airbus has also faced delays in ramping up production toward its latest target of 14 planes per month by 2026. Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said the program, which was supposed to make money in 2025, should be in the black between 12 to 18 months later given strong market demand. Aerospace is a key industry in predominately French-speaking Quebec. In 2022, Quebec invested $300m in the program, following an earlier $1b lifeline to the plane's original manufacturer Bombardier in 2016. Last year's agreement would allow the province to stay in the deal until it is bought out by Airbus in 2030. "I think we're going to recuperate at least all of our money, if not more," Fitzgibbon said in an interview on Friday. "But the idea is that we're not going to lose money.” The A220, which has roughly 110 or 130 seats depending on the model, is produced both in Mobile, Alabama, and in Mirabel, Quebec. Airbus has said it plans to raise Mirabel production to 10 A220s a month, with four jets a month in Mobile. The planemaker created the Mobile production line for US customers to avoid a trade dispute with Boeing when it took over the plane from Canada's Bombardier in 2018.<br/>