A plane taxiing for departure clipped another aircraft at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on Sunday evening, the FAA said Monday. No injuries were reported, both planes were of Boeing design, and the FAA says it will investigate the incident. The left wing tip of Flight 11 from ANA, a Japanese airline, struck the rear of Delta Air Lines Flight 2122 on Sunday around 6:30 p.m. Central Time, FAA spokesperson Tony Molinaro said. The All Nippon Airways flight was a Boeing 777, and the Delta Airlines aircraft was a Boeing 717. American aircraft manufacturer Boeing faces increasing scrutiny following a series of mechanical failures and subsequent grounding of its Boeing 737 Max 9 model after an emergency exit door failed and caused an emergency landing last week. It was not immediately clear what caused the incident on Sunday and whether it was related to a manufacturing flaw. Boeing representatives did not provide a comment on Monday regarding the collision at O'Hare and instead directed The Associated Press to speak with the airlines involved and the FAA. Delta spokesperson Emma Johnson said Monday afternoon by phone that an All Nippon Airways aircraft clipped a Delta plane while it was parking at a gate after arriving at O'Hare from Detroit. "Customers deplaned normally at the gate and the aircraft is being evaluated by Delta's maintenance technicians," the company said in an emailed statement. Raymond Bongalon, a customer service representative with ANA, said Monday afternoon that the airline could not yet provide any information on what happened.<br/>
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SAS Scandinavian Airlines will not resume two routes from secondary Scandinavian cities to New York Newark in northern summer 2024, after launching them in 2023. It only operated the services from Aalborg (Denmark) and Gothenburg (Sweden) from Apr-2023 until the end of Oct-2023. However, the broader picture for SAS in the market between Scandinavia and the United States is looking fairly solid. Compared with 2019 – before the COVID-19 pandemic, and before the withdrawal of the low cost competitor Norwegian Air Shuttle from all three Scandinavia-US markets – SAS now has more capacity and a higher seat share. It has increased its focus on its hub in Copenhagen, making Denmark-US even more dominant in the Scandinavia-US market than it already was. Norse Atlantic Airways has only partially replaced Norwegian's capacity, and only in Norway-US. Against this backdrop, the demise of SAS' two Newark routes after just one summer season can be viewed as mere tinkering.<br/>
Croatia Airlines will temporarily reduce frequencies on a handful of routes during February, which is considered the slowest month in the aviation industry, compared to its original plan. The reductions will only impact the carrier’s services from Zagreb, with a total of seven routes to see cuts. They include Vienna, Brussels, Sarajevo, Frankfurt, Munich, Skopje, and Zurich. The carrier has removed twelve weekly flights from its schedule, or around 7% of its weekly Zagreb operations. Vienna and Brussels will see the biggest reduction in flights with both to loose three weekly rotations. Sarajevo will be cut by two weekly frequencies in February, while all of the other abovementioned routes will see a reduction of one weekly flight. Changes remain possible.<br/>
China’s three largest carriers reported a significant rebound in passenger traffic in 2023, though they have yet to fully recover traffic to pre-pandemic levels seen in 2019. In traffic results released for 2023, the ‘Big Three’ – comprising Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines – saw slow recovery in their international traffic, most of which were still about half of 2019 levels. The data also shows that Air China and China Southern’s domestic traffic and passenger volumes also surpassed 2019 levels, while China Eastern only recovered domestic traffic levels. Air China carried 118.5m domestic passengers in 2023, about twice the number reported in 2022, and 28% higher compared to full-year results for 2019. The growth in domestic passengers made up for a slower recovery of international passenger numbers, which at 6.7mn was less than half of 2019’s numbers. Across its network, Air China carried more than 128m passengers, up about two-fold year on year, and 11% higher than 2019 levels. The Beijing-based operator also saw system-wide traffic and capacity double year on year, with the sharpest increases seen in the international network. While domestic RPKs surpassed pre-pandemic levels, system-wide traffic remained slightly below that of 2019. On the other hand, Air China’s overall capacity increased compared to pre-pandemic levels, despite international capacity being half of 2019’s. <br/>
From April, Air China will increase the number of its flights between Beijing and Budapest from two to three a week. Furthermore, Budapest Airport is also in talks with China Southern Airlines to further expand the connection between the two countries. The Chinese national airline launched a direct Budapest-Beijing flight in 2015, which was suspended during the COVID pandemic. Direct flights between the two capitals resumed in the summer of 2022, before being suspended again for a few months in March 2023. In June of last year, direct flights were reopened with two flights per week. Four major Chinese cities, Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Ningbo, are directly accessible from Budapest without a transfer.<br/>
As conditional approval for the merger of South Korea’s Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines is likely from the European antitrust authority, the sale of Asiana Airlines’ cargo business is expected to begin next month. According to industry sources on Monday, Korean Air plans to launch the sale of Asiana Airlines’ cargo unit immediately after receiving approval from the EC, which is expected as early as in early February. The sale of Asiana Airlines’ cargo unit was proposed by Korean Air as part of its revised remedy submitted to the European authority. Following Friday’s media report on the potential approval from the European authority for the merger of the two South Korean airlines, observers suggest that Korean Air and the European authority likely have reached some degree of agreement. Korean Air reportedly made multiple revisions of its proposed remedies until the end of last year, incorporating opinions from the EC since submitting its initial remedy plan in November. Market insiders expected that Korean Air is likely to distribute information memoranda (IM) to potential buyers and commence formal procedures in February. Korean Air has reportedly engaged with major candidates, including low-cost carriers, to assess market demand, with the goal of completing the sale within the year.<br/>
In December, Singapore Airlines Group once again significantly increased passenger traffic while constraining its available capacity, keeping its load factors close to 90%. The group, which includes Singapore Airlines and Scoot, reported year-on-year passenger growth of 24.4% and in December recovered to 94% of pre-pandemic levels. Last month, the Singapore Airlines Group gave the best indication so far that it is homing in on full recovery, with both Singapore Airlines and low-cost carrier Scoot carrying more passengers than they did in December 2019. The group was just 200,000 passengers away from 2019 levels, which listed separate numbers for Silk Air, which somewhat distorts the December result on an airline-by-airline basis. The number to focus on is the Singapore Airlines Group, which carried 3.344m passengers in December, a 24.4% increase on the 2.689m it carried in December 2022 and 94% of the 3.543m passengers in December 2019. By managing the balance between available capacity and passengers, the group has posted a load factor of 89.4%, compared to 89.7% in 2022 and 87.6% in 2019.<br/>
When Singapore’s public agencies and healthcare institutions faced manpower shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 2,000 Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group employees stepped up to serve as front-liners from March 2020. These included more than 900 cabin crew members, who helped to care for patients in healthcare institutions, such as hospitals, so nurses and other healthcare workers could focus on those who needed more complex care. Building on this experience, the Ministry of Health (MOH), the Public Service Division (PSD), and SIA Group inked an agreement on Jan 15 to collaborate on manpower planning and deployment for future national crises, they said in a joint statement. “The trilateral memorandum of understanding (MOU) strengthens our national collective resilience and agility to respond to future crises,” the statement added. The three organisations will collaborate by training and deploying cabin crew in support care roles in peacetime, as well as conducting tabletop exercises to put their crisis response protocols to the test, the statement said. Other than working in healthcare, SIA and Scoot employees also served as transport ambassadors, contact tracing executives and social service office processing officers during the pandemic. SIA CEO Goh Choon Phong said SIA Group worked with MOH and PSD during the pandemic to transition its employees to front-line roles as it had a surplus of manpower while public sector organisations were short of staff.<br/>