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Europe aviation officials and the airline industry are teaming up to curb the threat posed by jamming, instances where the satellite signals planes rely on for navigation are drowned out or disrupted. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the International Air Transport Association, a trade group, hosted a meeting in Cologne on Thursday, where officials from airlines, manufacturers, suppliers and other industry participants met to discuss ways to reduce the risks. Incidents of jamming and spoofing — where false signals are sent — are on the rise due to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as combatants seek to divert enemy aircraft. The practices can inadvertently affect commercial jets, and risk pushing them off course into dangerous conflict zones. “We have seen a sharp rise in attacks on these systems, which poses a safety risk,” said EASA Acting Executive Director Luc Tytgat. “We immediately need to ensure that pilots and crews can identify the risks and know how to react and land safely.” The US FAA recently warned of increased interference with signals in “conflict zones and areas of heightened tensions.” Incidents in the Middle East include a case where a business jet almost entered Israeli airspace without warning. The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority has also warned about disruptions to aircrafts’ Global Navigation Satellite Systems.<br/>

Climate activist Greta Thunberg joined a march in southern England on Saturday to protest the use of private jets and the expansion of an airport. Hundreds of local residents and activists holding banners and placards that read “Ban Private Jets” marched to Farnborough Airport, which mostly serves private aircraft. Some beat drums while others lit pink smoke flares. The airport, located in Hampshire County about 40 miles southwest of London, applied last year to increase its maximum number of flights from 50,000 to 70,000 a year. Groups working to fight climate change, including the organizer of Saturday’s protest, Extinction Rebellion, say private jets are much more polluting than commercial passenger airliners. Flights to and from Farnborough Airport carried an average of 2½ passengers per flight in 2022, the group said. “It is clear that private jets are incompatible with ensuring present and future living conditions on this planet,” Thunberg said in a video that Extinction Rebellion posted on social media. “We’re not going to let this continue. We’re not going to let the rich few who are responsible for the majority of aviation emissions get away with sacrificing people and the planet,” she added.<br/>

India’s tourism sector is set for a boom as more travelers take trips around the country for religious purposes. The South Asian country with the world’s largest Hindu population could see an additional 50m to 100m tourists a year on account of the new Ram Mandir — a temple in the northern city of Ayodhya inaugurated on Monday — according to Jefferies. This expected footfall in the new temple will be much higher than the annual numbers for the Taj Mahal (6.5m) in India, Rome’s Vatican City (9m) and the Mecca in Saudi Arabia (20m), the note showed. Other religious sights in India such as the Tirupati Temple in Andhra Pradesh — 25m visitors annually — and the Vaishno Devi Temple in Jammu and Kashmir — 8m visitors per year — also hold a strong spiritual, historical and cultural significance in India, the investment bank said. Religious tourism is still the biggest segment of tourism in India … the creation of a new religious tourist centre (Ayodhya) with improved connectivity and infrastructure can create a meaningfully large economic impact,” Jefferies highlighted. Indian media reported that around half a million people visited the Ram temple on its opening day which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The YouTube broadcast of the opening ceremony on Modi’s channel alone received more than 11m views. The world’s most populous country is set to be the fourth-largest global spender on travel by 2030, with travel and tourism predicted to become a $410b market — a surge of more than 170% from $150b in 2019, Booking.com data showed. <br/>

Building the world’s biggest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, demanded a factory of equal stature. But the double-decker airliner was a commercial failure and the 50-hectare Jean-Luc Lagardère centre in the French city of Toulouse produced the last of the model in 2021. Three years on, a facility with a central hangar that can shelter 500 tennis courts under a 46m-high ceiling has roared back to life with renewed purpose: helping the European plane maker fulfil a 7,197-strong backlog for its best-selling A320 series of smaller, single-aisle jets. By 2026, Lagardère will be one of 10 final assembly lines working at a pace of about 75 planes a month. While Airbus’s production lines are humming, its arch-rival Boeing is engulfed in crisis. The dramatic mid-air blowout of a door plug on the fuselage, the plane’s main body, during an Alaska Airlines flight on January 5 has cast a shadow over Boeing’s 737 Max series — a direct competitor to Airbus’s A320 and the American company’s biggest source of revenue in its commercial aircraft business. It was the latest incident in a series of setbacks for the US group. In 2018 and 2019, the 737 Max 8 was involved in two crashes that collectively killed 346 people. This time it is the Max 9, a longer version of the plane, that is in focus. US regulators, which had grounded some of the Max 9s, last week cleared them to fly again. But investigations continue into the manufacturing processes at Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which builds the Max fuselages. Pledges by senior managers, including CE Dave Calhoun, to improve quality and engineering processes have fallen short. The decision by the FAA to freeze the group’s plans to increase production of its Max fleet will hit Boeing’s financial targets.<br/>

The financiers behind the world's airline industry are gathering for the first time since a mid-air cabin blowout tipped Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab into a new safety crisis, amid signs of wider disruption to the $150b jet industry. Lessors, bankers and airlines meeting in Dublin - home to a booming global air finance sector - will contemplate the supply consequences of a recent partial grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX 9, following the Alaska Airlines incident earlier in January. For months, aviation has been struggling to keep pace with a post-pandemic travel boom because of labour and parts shortages.<br/>But widespread outrage over the near-disaster that led to an emergency landing with a gap in the side of an aircraft, though no major injuries, has added a new layer of regulatory risk. "Demand is more or less a slam dunk; the question is when does the supply catch up?" Rob Morris, head of global consultancy at Ascend by Cirium, told Reuters ahead of the week-long Airline Economics conference starting on Monday. "We have estimated 2026 or 2027, but there must be a risk on the downside now because of the MAX." The FAA last week took the unusual step of ordering Boeing to stop increasing 737 MAX production until questions over its quality controls have been addressed. It has given no indication how long the limit may last. But when it is lifted, industry experts say regulators are expected to add checks that may dampen predictions for industrial growth.<br/>

Avolon has predicted that “structural undersupply” of aircraft will endure until the end of the decade, as the impact of the pandemic and airframer struggles to ramp-up production weigh on availability for years to come. The Irish lessor’s observations – made in its 2024 outlook, which was released on 26 January – chime with those from many airline leaders regarding industry-wide supply-side constraints, which are clashing with strong and growing passenger demand for air travel. Crucially, Avolon suggests, some 3,400 aircraft were not built as a result of the pandemic and production challenges since. Amid that dynamic, Avolon’s view is that the aircraft order cycle “likely peaked in 2023”, as carriers and lessors scrambled to secure delivery slots through to the end of the decade and, in some cases, beyond. Those that are yet to commit to new orders, “risk lower growth rates and declining market share”, Avolon suggests. That dynamic affects narrowbody and widebody aircraft, it says, and means that the value of already delivered aircraft is rising, alongside their service lives. The return to service of older aircraft types such as the Airbus A330ceo and A380 reflects this development, it says. The market for new widebody aircraft is likely to remain tighter for longer, it adds, given “fewer widebodies will be built this decade than the last”. That is particularly noteworthy, it suggests, given the continued growth in international travel demand and congestion at many airports.<br/>