Airline passengers face the prospect of delayed and canceled flights for years to come as staffing challenges continue to plague the industry, according to a survey. About 55% of the 150 senior airline and airport executives surveyed by the travel software company Amadeus expect disruption to remain elevated in the coming years, while just 37% see a return to pre-Covid levels, the survey said. Staff turnover was exacerbated by the massive job cuts during the pandemic, which led to a shortage of experienced workers as travel sharply rebounded. Over the summer peak season in 2022 and 2023, airlines were forced to trim back schedules, while airports limited flights to cope with the surge in demand. “We lost the expertise, the people who knew exactly what to do because they’ve seen that scenario before,” said Guy Kavanagh, head of flight operations at Amadeus. “The demand is back but the capabilities aren’t there so we see disruption increasing and that’s likely to continue.” The shortages are seen throughout the aviation ecosystem, from ground handling services to flight crews. Post-pandemic staff turnover is much higher and the industry is less attractive to young workers starting their careers, according to Christos Pantazis, ground operations director at Goldair Handling. Flights across Germany’s major hubs were disrupted for a day last week, after security staff walked out over pay and working conditions. Ground staff at Deutsche Lufthansa AG are set to strike this Wednesday over similar demands. Airlines face expensive bills for disrupted services. Passengers whose flights start or end in the European Union are entitled to compensation of between E250 to E600 in the event of delays, cancellation or denied boarding, under the so-called EU261 rules. SAS estimates disruption is responsible for 8-10% for its costs, according to Michael Lindborg, the carrier’s vice president for airline solutions. <br/>
general
The consortium behind an airport overhaul in the Montreal area has shored up funding for the effort thanks to a C$90m loan from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. The Crown corporation, which backs revenue-generating projects deemed in the public interest, says it has reached a deal with the partnership of Porter Aviation Holdings Inc. and Macquarie Asset Management. The owner of regional carrier Porter Airlines and the subsidiary of Australia’s biggest investment bank are working with the Montreal Metropolitan Airport to develop a new terminal, which broke ground in August. Formerly known as the Montreal Saint-Hubert airport, the site is on track to grow from a small airport to a commercial aviation hub, comparable to Toronto’s Billy Bishop but farther from downtown, in the suburbs south of Montreal. The nine-gate terminal would serve up to 4m passengers a year and provide another airport for the rapidly expanding Porter in Canada’s second-biggest city. The expected completion date has been pushed back to fall 2025 from late 2024, with Porter planning to fly to major Canadian cities and local carrier Pascan Aviation focusing on regional flights.<br/>
Freezing rain, snow and ice have snarled traffic in central, eastern and southern China as millions of people travel home ahead of the Spring Festival holiday in the blistering cold that has swept through parts of the country over the past week. Southern Hunan and central Hubei provinces bore the brunt of the severe weather, which deteriorated over the weekend, slowing highway traffic to a crawl, cancelling hundreds of trains and delaying flights. The disruptions coincide with the biggest mass travel migration in the world as people across the country flock home to see their families for the Chinese New Year holiday, which officially begins on Saturday. Over the past few days, videos across Chinese social media showed images of people stranded on trains and trapped in cars on snowy highways in several cities, including Jingzhou in the south of Hubei.<br/>The severe weather is expected for another few days, according to China National Emergency Broadcasting. Several cities upgraded weather advisories and emergency response plans.<br/>
Work on the HK$141.5b ($18.1b) upgrade of Hong Kong International Airport progressed steadily “on all fronts” during the pandemic and the government is still targeting completion in 2024, the city’s Transport and Logistics Bureau said. “The new third runway has already been commissioned in November 2022 as scheduled, while the reconfiguration of the center runway is underway as planned,” Lam Sai-hung, the secretary for Transport and Logistics, said in a letter addressed to Bloomberg News. While the target is to complete the three runway system passenger facilities in 2024, the Airport Authority Hong Kong “will take into account the actual passenger demand in rolling out the commissioning of passenger facilities, such as the expanded T2 and T2 Concourse,” Lam added. Bloomberg reported last week that Hong Kong’s airport expansion will likely be delayed until at least the end of 2025, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Traffic at HKIA, once one of the busiest airports in the world by international passenger traffic, has recovered to about 80% of pre-pandemic levels and is expected to fully recover by the end of 2024. That’s the hope for another of Asia’s main aviation hubs, with Singapore’s transport ministry saying Tuesday that Changi Airport’s passenger volumes should also reach pre-Covid levels some time this year.<br/>
The union for transport workers in Japan said it will push for more staff to assist air traffic controllers at the country’s main airports to strengthen safety measures in the aftermath of last month’s fatal accident at Tokyo Haneda airport. While some airports have such personnel, “they’re not enough” for tasks like double-checking communications between pilots and air traffic controllers, Masato Yamasaki, president of the Labor Union of MLIT, JMA and Affiliates said during a briefing Tuesday. “It’s important to assign more people to save the lives of passengers and crew,” Yamasaki said. The labor union has submitted its increase in staff request to the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau. Other demands that it’s making to the aviation bureau include providing stress management assistance to all airport office staff and urging the third-party committees that investigate the causes of accidents to more closely reflect the voices of on-the-ground staff. On Jan. 2, a De Havilland Canada Dash 8 collided with a much larger Airbus SE A350 operated by Japan Airlines Co. at Haneda airport, killing five of the six crew on the coast guard plane. All 379 people aboard JAL’s jetliner, which was just landing, were able to escape. <br/>
Singapore Changi Airport’s passenger volumes are expected to reach pre-pandemic levels in 2024, the country’s transport ministry said in a written response to parliamentary questions. Monthly passenger traffic recovered to around 90% of pre-Covid levels in December. For the full year of 2023, the airport handled 58.9m passenger movements, or 86% of traffic recorded in 2019, the ministry said. To meet longer term demand for air travel, the financial hub plans to start construction of a fifth airport terminal next year and expects it to be operational in mid-2030s, it added. <br/>
A 737 Max jet left a Boeing factory missing four bolts designed to secure a door panel that blew off in mid-flight last month, according to a preliminary report by a US regulator. The NTSB’s report on Tuesday is the first official account of how the door plug could have fallen out of the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines plane 16,000 feet over Oregon on January 5. The incident has raised questions about manufacturing and safety processes at Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which builds the Max fuselages. The NTSB said that “four bolts that prevent upward movement of the [door] plug were missing” before the plug detached from the plane. According to the report, the fuselage arrived at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington, in late August 2023. An inspection there uncovered five damaged rivets adjacent to the door plug that later blew out. In order for a team from Spirit to replace the rivets, the door plug was opened in September, according to the report. A photo shared via text message by Boeing employees after the rivet work showed the door plug later closed again without three of its bolts, while the location of the fourth bolt was obscured in the photo, according to the NTSB. Dave Calhoun, Boeing CE, said in a statement responding to the report that “whatever final conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened”. “An event like this must not happen on an aeroplane that leaves our factory. We simply must do better for our customers and their passengers.” Spirit said: “As we review the NTSB’s preliminary report, we remain focused on working closely with Boeing and our regulators on continuous improvement in our processes and meeting the highest standards of safety, quality and reliability.” The blowout has intensified scrutiny at Boeing, which had been recovering from two fatal crashes of 737 Max aircraft in 2018 and 2019. The NTSB said its investigation was still in the process of determining what documents were used to authorise the opening and closing of the door plug during the rivet replacement.<br/>
The new chief of the FAA said Tuesday that his agency is midway through a review of manufacturing at Boeing, but he already knows that changes must be made in how the government oversees the aircraft manufacturer. FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker suggested that Boeing — under pressure from airlines to produce large numbers of planes — is not paying enough attention to safety. Whitaker said that FAA has had two challenges since Jan. 5, when an emergency door panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner over Oregon. “One, what is wrong with this airplane? But two, what's going on with the production at Boeing?” Whitaker told a House subcommittee. “There have been issues in the past. They don't seem to be getting resolved, so we feel like we need to have a heightened level of oversight.” Whitaker, who took over the FAA about three months ago, was making his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the blowout over Oregon. Separately, investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were expected to release a preliminary report on last month's incident as early as Tuesday. Whitaker's testimony before a House Transportation subcommittee was wide-ranging. Leaders of the panel had spelled out questions they wanted answered, but few lawmakers stuck to the script — they asked about everything from the Max 9 incident to raising the retirement age for pilots to migrants being housed at airports. Whitaker said the FAA is halfway through a six-week audit that has involved placing “about two dozen” inspectors in Boeing's 737 plant in Renton, Washington, and “maybe half a dozen” at a Wichita, Kansas, plant where supplier Spirit AeroSystems makes the fuselages for 737s. The inspectors are looking for gaps in the quality of work during the manufacturing process that might have contributed to a door plug blowing off an Alaska Airlines Max 9 at 16,000 feet over Oregon.<br/>
Boeing will look at the preliminary results from the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) investigation of the 737 MAX 9 blowout and decide whether to take more action around the door plug, a Boeing quality official said on Tuesday. A door plug that flew off an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 jet mid-flight on Jan. 5 appeared to be missing four key bolts, according to the NTSB's preliminary report released earlier on Tuesday. "We're going to look at the changes we've already put in place in our factories and other places around the plug specifically," Doug Ackerman, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president of supplier quality, said during an aerospace supply chain conference near Seattle. He added if Boeing found it had already made the changes needed to address the specific problems raised by the NTSB investigation, "we're going to look at other places where we need to apply the same rigor." The NTSB's initial findings show the door plug had to be removed and reinstalled at Boeing's factory in Renton, Washington, and included photo evidence the bolts required to hold the plug in place appeared to be missing. However, investigators did not weigh in on whether the reinstallation was performed by Boeing or supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which conducted repair work to nearby rivets. Ackerman declined to provide further comment on the NTSB findings, instead speaking broadly about the need to improve production quality throughout the supply chain. Boeing said on Sunday it would have to do more work on about 50 undelivered 737 MAX jets, potentially delaying some near-term deliveries, after Spirit discovered two mis-drilled holes on some fuselages. The overall production defect rate is "pretty steady" despite visible manufacturing errors that have forced additional work to correct them, Ackerman said, adding that most issues do not force Boeing to rework planes.<br/>
Spirit AeroSystems will invest in autonomous technology to limit any defects in its production of Boeing 737 fuselages, its CEO said Tuesday after a series of manufacturing problems and last month's mid-air blowout on a 737 MAX 9. Boeing and Spirit, which builds the entire 737 fuselage, are under scrutiny from investors, regulators and lawmakers after a door plug detached from a MAX 9 in flight. There were no serious injuries, but the U.S. FAA has barred U.S. planemaker Boeing from lifting its production of the 737 MAX. The U.S. NTSB will release its preliminary report into the Jan. 5 incident later on Tuesday. Spirit, which was already under the microscope for a series of manufacturing snafus related to the 737 MAX, last week identified a new quality issue concerning misdrilled holes on 737 window frames, which could force it and Boeing to undertake additional work on about 50 aircraft. Interim CEO Patrick Shanahan said on Tuesday that Spirit expects to have a repair plan identified within 72 hours. Spirit did not give a forecast for 2024, citing uncertainty on the timing of 737 MAX production increases and ongoing price negotiations with Airbus focused on the A220 program, which Shanahan said could conclude as early as this month.<br/>
The key supplier that builds most of the fuselage for Boeing Co.’s 737 Max aircraft plans to more closely link compensation for its top executives to the quality of its products in the wake of a near-disaster last month. “It will be significantly different, and the heaviest weighting will be on quality,” Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. CEO Pat Shanahan said of the company’s compensation plans on Tuesday. “We’re changing it fundamentally, and we’re now making sure that what we put in place works well and drives the right kind of behavior.” Shanahan didn’t disclose specifics, but the overhaul underscores how Spirit and its top customer Boeing are redoubling efforts to rebuild their reputations after a fuselage panel blew off a 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines. Speaking to analysts after reporting Q4 earnings, Shanahan said that Spirit was taking a “hard look” at its processes after the blowout and a string of other supplier missteps that hamstrung Boeing’s cash-cow 737 Max over the last year. Spirit took a number of steps within days of the Jan. 5 accident, adding inspections with Boeing patterned on those performed by airlines returning an aircraft to service, Shanahan said. The company also undertook a detailed review of the mid-entry door plug assembly and installation process with its largest customer. The National Transportation Safety Board is due to report preliminary findings in its probe of the accident on Tuesday. <br/>