A hangar at Boise Airport in Idaho collapsed on Wednesday, killing three people and injuring nine others, according to officials. The privately owned building was under construction when it collapsed at approximately 5 p.m. local time , the City of Boise said in a statement. The three people killed died at the scene, and five of the wounded are in a critical condition, the city said. The coroner’s office will publicly identify the victims after next of kin have been notified, it added. All victims have been accounted for, Aaron Hummel, the division chief of operations for Boise Fire Department, said during a Wednesday news conference. The cause for the collapse was not yet clear, Hummel said, adding that an investigation was ongoing. The collapse did not affect air operations, officials said. “Tonight, there was a catastrophic collapse of a metal structure at a construction site. First responders found a hectic scene and worked to secure and rescue victims,” Hummel said in the statement.<br/>
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The Montreal Saint-Hubert Longueuil Airport unveiled its new name Thursday. From now on, it will be known as Aéroport métropolitain de Montréal, a designation that executives believe embodies the transformation of the airport, inaugurated in 1927, towards its commercial aviation goal. Aéroport métropolitain de Montréal will bear the abbreviation MET, management says, to promote brand recognition and accessibility. They add that construction on the new terminal is progressing well. It is slated to open in the summer of 2025, with airlines set to serve the whole country. According to MET management, it will be one of the largest airports in Canada. Executives note with the rebranding, Montreal will join the world's largest metropolises by taking advantage of numerous airports when it comes to meeting its population's needs. In February 2023, the airport announced a partnership with Porter Airlines to build a commercial terminal with an annual capacity of 4m passengers.<br/>
A meeting that was scheduled to happen between Brazil's government, local airlines and state-run oil firm Petrobras on Thursday has been canceled, Mines and Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira said. The meeting was part of efforts by the Brazilian government to make air travel more affordable and would involve Petrobras as the company sells jet fuel, whose prices carriers say are excessively high in Brazil. This Thursday Petrobras lowered the jet fuel prices to distributors by an average of 0.4%, as part of a routine tweak based on factors including oil prices and exchange rates. The meeting was to be held a week after Brazilian airline Gol filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. Since last year Petrobras has already lowered prices by around 41%, the company's CE Jean Paul Prates told local newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo on Wednesday. According to the CEO, the firm cannot artificially lower prices with "the stroke of a pen", as doing so would be tantamount to Petrobras creating a subsidy for the sector.<br/>
Security screeners began a one-day walkout at 11 of Germany’s busiest airports on Thursday, bringing departures to a virtual standstill, scuttling travel plans for an expected 200,000 people and adding to the chaos caused by public-sector strikes. Airports serving Berlin, Hamburg and Stuttgart canceled all departures in anticipation of the work stoppage, while others — including Frankfurt’s airport, the biggest in Germany — were trying to keep some flights in the air but warned of significant delays and cancellations. Wolfgang Pieper, a lead negotiator for Verdi, the public sector union behind the strike, said that the work of airport security staff “must remain financially attractive so that the urgently needed skilled workers can be recruited and retained.” Screeners are demanding an hourly raise of E2.80, or about $3, a 14% increase for a starting salary. The federal association of aviation security businesses, which represents employers, called the demands “utopian.” It has offered a 4% increase this year, followed by a 3% rise next year. In Frankfurt, roughly a third of the 1,120 planned flights were canceled. “If you are trying to depart locally, you won’t make it on the plane,” said Dieter Hulick, a spokesman for the airport, who noted that most connecting flights would be possible, even if there was a slightly longer wait than usual. In Düsseldorf, only a third of the scheduled flights took off. And in the cavernous departure hall of Berlin’s newly built BER airport, a few stranded passengers waited while rearranging their plans. Arrivals from abroad were mostly not affected, but the one-day strike created headaches for large numbers of air travelers within Germany, the latest to be affected by a flurry of industrial action in the country in past weeks.<br/>
The Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) “could have and should have” made its application to increase the hub’s passenger cap from 32m to 40m much earlier than last December, according to Aer Lingus. In its submission concerning DAA’s bid to increase the cap as part of its so-called infrastructure application (IA), Aer Lingus has called on Fingal Co Council to grant an immediate interim increase in the passenger cap at Dublin Airport pending a decision on the application. In the submission, the carrier’s director of corporate affairs Niall Timlin warned “there is significant national economic risk from the existing 32m per annum passenger cap” and the current limit “is no longer fit for purpose”. Timlin also points out that it is concerning that Dublin Airport “significantly delayed” making its IA to raise the passenger cap to 40m until December 2023 despite initial approval and funding in the 2019 regulatory decision by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA).<br/>
French nationals will no longer be allowed to fly into Niger, airline sources said Thursday. "According to the Nigerien authorities, any passenger of French nationality is no longer authorised to enter Nigerien territory," said an internal Air Burkina note seen by AFP, adding "as a consequence they will not be accepted aboard our flights" to the capital Niamey.<br/>
India’s aviation sector faced a number of challenges at the start of 2024, including severe fog-induced flight delays, cancellations, and substantial penalties imposed on airline operators. While some industry participants expressed concern that these were signs of deeper systemic issues, analysts said they should not cloud an otherwise bright long-term outlook for the sector. India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), on January 24 fined Air India, a former national carrier now owned by the Tata conglomerate, 10.1m rupees (US$135,000) for safety protocol violations in relation to their long-range and critical-terrain routes. The penalty follows similar action against major carriers IndiGo and SpiceJet last month for various offences, including pilot shortages and security violations. Cold weather and fog in northern India also resulted in flight cancellations and significant delays of hundreds of passenger flights at the beginning of the year. A pilot from a national pilots’ association, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed concern about the sector’s lack of professionalism, citing systemic issues such as inadequate technological upgrades, constant pilot fatigue, and a limited understanding of safety regulations. “Indian aviation is a ticking time bomb. We’re just inches from a major aviation disaster, given how pilots are treated and how passenger planes are operated,” said the senior pilot, who has been operating commercial flights for over 15 years. “One doesn’t need to wait for a major incident for a wake-up call. The recent episodes highlight serious systemic problems,” he said.<br/>
Korea and Indonesia have agreed to allow airlines to freely operate flights between their regional airports, Seoul's transport ministry said Friday. In their latest bilateral aviation talks Wednesday, the two sides agreed to free up flight routes between six regional cities of both countries, the ministry said. According to the agreement, airlines can now freely operate flights between airports in six Korean cities — Busan, Daegu, Cheongju, Jeju, Muan and Yangyang — and Indonesia's Batam, Manado, Lombok, Yogyakarta, Balikpapan and Kertajati. The two sides also agreed to establish two new flight routes between Korea's Incheon and Indonesia's Batam and Manado, as well as two additional routes connecting regional cities in Korea to Jakarta and Bali. They also agreed to allow airlines of both countries to freely forge code-sharing deals involving flights to Indonesia's popular tourist destination of Bali. The ministry said the agreement is expected to alleviate the current inconveniences of having to depart only from Incheon for direct flights to Indonesia while contributing to the vitalization of regional airports in Korea.<br/>
A former Boeing manager says he would “absolutely not” fly on one of its 737 Max planes as the aircraft maker faces heightened scrutiny after a cabin panel blowout. The section of an Alaska Airlines flight that blew out mid-flight earlier this month. The company has been fighting to reassure regulators, airlines and passengers since a brand-new 737 Max 9 jet was forced into an emergency landing last month. The dramatic incident during an Alaska Airlines flight – which prompted 171 Max 9 jets to be grounded for several weeks – has sparked the biggest safety crisis for Boeing since the crashes of two of its Max 8 jets, in 2018 and 2019, in which 346 people were killed. “I would absolutely not fly a Max airplane,” Ed Pierson, a former senior manager on Boeing’s 737 program, told the LA Times. “I’ve worked in the factory where they were built, and I saw the pressure employees were under to rush the planes out the door. I tried to get them to shut down before the first crash.” Pierson, who left Boeing in 2018 and is now executive director at the Foundation for Aviation Safety, expressed concern about the way in which regulators permitted the Max 9 to return to service last week. He told ABC7 San Francisco: “If you had a new car that had a part fall off of it and you had to pull over to the side of the road, and then you went to the shop, and the mechanic said, ‘Hey, I’m finding some other things wrong with it, but here you go, ready to go get out on the road,’ you would probably have some questions about [whether] anything else [has] been missed. So that’s a concern that we’ve had.”<br/>
The second-hand market for airplanes is booming due to a chronic shortage that has persisted since the pandemic - and fears are growing that Boeing's latest crisis could tighten the squeeze in coming months. The industry is already some 3,000 planes short of what it planned pre-COVID due to pandemic disruption and other bottlenecks at Boeing and Airbus, leasing firm Avolon says. Now, curbs on Boeing production in the wake of a mid-air blowout, opens new tab add to pressures forcing airlines to fly older planes for longer - from engine shortages to supply chains and an abrupt snapback in travel in many parts of the world. "It just compounds the supply shortage and it pushes back the date when we may return to a balanced market," said analyst George Dimitroff of the aviation analytics company Cirium, who sees strains until at least 2027. Carriers are paying higher prices to ensure they have a big enough fleet to keep up with demand, which airlines group IATA expects to reach a record 4.7b passengers in 2024. The supply crunch has been a hot topic at a major meeting in Dublin, home to many of the top lessors, this week. "We've seen a strong increase in values because of the shortage of new kit," Aengus Kelly, said CEO of AerCap, the world's largest trader and lessor of aircraft. In a break from usual patterns, some airlines are buying the planes they had been renting rather than negotiating lease extensions, he said on the sidelines of the Airline Economics conference. That's a sign that "airlines know that the issues that we have are not going to get solved anytime soon," he added.<br/>