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Federal airport security officials unveiled passenger self-screening lanes Wednesday at busy Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, with plans to test it for use in other cities around the country. “How do we step into the future? This is a step,” said a system designer, Dimitri Kusnezov, science and technology under secretary at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “The interface with people makes all the difference.” The TSA checkpoint — initially only in Las Vegas, only for TSA PreCheck customers and only using the English language — incorporates a screen with do-it-yourself instructions telling people how to smoothly pass themselves and their carry-on luggage through pre-flight screening with little or no help from uniformed TSA officers. “We want to avoid passengers having to be patted down,” said John Fortune, program manager of the Department of Homeland Security’s “Screening at Speed” program and a developer with Kusnezov of the prototype. Instead of a boxy belt-fed device using a stack of gray trays, the futuristic-looking baggage and personal belongings inspection system looks like a scaled-down starship medical magnetic resonance imaging machine. It uses an automated bin return that sanitizes trays with germ-killing ultraviolet light between users.<br/>

Lobbying groups representing airlines, hotels and restaurants on Wednesday warned that changes proposed by Alphabet's Google to comply with European Union (EU) landmark rules may drive users to large online search services at their expense. The comments from Airlines for Europe group that has Air France KLM and British Airways owner IAG as members, hotel group Hotrec, European Hotel Forum, Eurocommerce, Ecommerce Europe and Independent Retail Europe came after Google rolled out changes for app developers and users. Google together with five other tech giants have to be fully compliant with a list of dos and don'ts set out under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on Mar 7. "It should not lead to situations where the economic power of large online intermediaries is further entrenched and where consumers are not presented with a variety of choices," the groups said in a joint statement about the planned changes. Some of the companies could lose as much as 50% of their online traffic and possibly millions of euros in revenue due to Google's changes to its search results, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Google declined to comment. In its blog post on Monday, it said changes to search results give large intermediaries and aggregators more traffic and less for hotels, airlines, merchants and restaurants.<br/>

The European Union on Wednesday agreed on a deal to unjam air traffic reform in a bid to bring order to the mosaic of airspace regulations that is blamed for chronic delays and unnecessary emissions across Europe. The Belgian EU presidency said on Wednesday that negotiators from the European Council presidency and European Parliament had reached provisional agreement on reforming the "Single European Sky", aiming to increase capacity, lower costs and increase the air traffic control system's adaptability, while also trying to reduce aviation's environmental impact. The deal comes after decades of foot-dragging, political divisions and union opposition, and still needs to be approved by the Council and the European Parliament. The deal "will enable major progress in reducing CO2 emissions from the aviation sector, and will also give member states more tools to limit the nuisance generated by aeronautical activity," Georges Gilkinet, the Belgian minister for mobility, said. Under the agreement, member states will set up national supervisory authorities to assess air traffic control's structure and financial sustainability. Member states can merge economic and safety oversight functions in the same administrative entity, cutting red tape and conforming to common organisational models. The new regulation will incentivise the use of the most fuel-efficient routing and increased use of alternative clean propulsion technologies, enabling air traffic network manager Eurocontrol to make more sustainable and efficient use of the airspace, the statement said.<br/>

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt provided a boon to motorists and prompted the airline industry to warn of higher fares with the transportation measures he announced in the Budget. In a bid to ease cost-of-living pressures in the run-up to the general election expected later this year, Hunt said he would maintain the 5p cut on fuel duty and freeze the charge for another 12 months. It is the 14th consecutive year in which the level of the duty has not been increased. But motoring groups criticised a “missed opportunity” to incentivise uptake of electric vehicles, which has slowed, and pointed out that petrol prices had risen to an “unheard of” level. In contrast, air passenger duty will be increased for non-economy travel to account for higher inflation in recent years. For premium travel on flights over 5,500 miles, the levy will go up to GBP224 from GBP200. For flights between 2,001 and 5,500 miles, the duty will rise from GBP191 to GBP216, while the tax on journeys of less than 2,000 miles will rise from GBP26 to GBP28. Airlines have reported a boom in business and first-class flying since the end of the pandemic, as high-spending holidaymakers make up for a decline in corporate travel. But industry bosses accused the government of breaking a promise not to discourage people from flying by raising taxes on the sector. “The prime minister has broken the pledge he made . . . not to raise taxes on flying,” said Willie Walsh, former British Airways boss and head of global airline lobby group Iata. “It’s a short-sighted cash-grab of a government that has run out of ideas, competence and basic integrity.”<br/>

London Southend Airport is set to be taken over by a private equity firm from the United States. The owner of the facility, Esken, said it started a process to sell its aviation business in June 2023. US private equity giant Carlyle confirmed it would take an 82.5% stake in the airport earlier, while Esken would keep 17.5%. Esken said it agreed to the proposal to settle its £193.75m ($246,499m) debt to Carlyle Global Infrastructure Fund. "The company has agreed to accede to that recapitalisation proposal in relation to LSA," it said to shareholders on Wednesday. "This will therefore proceed on a consensual basis, rather than through a contested court process, which could be potentially destructive for all stakeholders."<br/>

From the “Walkie Talkie” skyscraper in London, to the Carrasco International Airport in Uruguay, New York-based firm Rafael Viñoly Architects’ portfolio consists of hundreds of projects spanning five continents. The latest addition, announced in January, will be a new international terminal at the Aeroporto Amerigo Vespucci in Florence, the capital of the Italian region of Tuscany. The structure will serve “as a new landmark for the city’s sustainable future,” according to the firm, and as an homage to the region’s wine-producing heritage, it will have a vineyard on the roof. “The concept of the building is to recreate the most quintessential Tuscan landscape, which is the vineyard — and then to peel one end of the vineyard up from the floor to create a slope, and slide an airport underneath that slope,” says Román Viñoly, director of Rafael Viñoly Architects. Set to be completed in two phases, anticipated for 2026 and 2035, Viñoly says sustainability is at the heart of the new structure, calling it a “moral responsibility of anybody building anything.” The construction sector and the built environment are responsible for 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Meanwhile about 2.5% of all emissions is produced by commercial aviation. Efforts to reduce this impact have often focused on innovations in plane fuel, including fuel made from cooking oil, and even sewage, but this new project turns the attention to the operation and construction of the airport itself.<br/>

Aviation firefighters are threatening to walk off the job at airports across the country over the Easter long weekend, jeopardising the travel plans of thousands of domestic and international holidaymakers. On Thursday, Airservices Australia staff aligned with the United Firefighters Union of Australia’s Aviation Branch (UFUAV) are set to vote on whether to pursue industrial action over the peak holiday period as a wage dispute comes to a head. The two parties have been in negotiations relating to a demanded pay rise of 20% over three years since September, in the face of what the union claims are critical understaffing issues. The UFUAV says firefighters have been burdened and fatigued at work due to regularly being short staffed and their ability to meet their safety obligations has been hampered as a result. Airservices has rejected the claims, insisting it has maintained minimum staffing requirements and already negotiated in good faith with staff by offering them a 11.2% wage increase amounting to $32m, in line with a new blanket deal set out by the Australian Public Service Commission. Airservices has rejected the claims, insisting it has maintained minimum staffing requirements and already negotiated in good faith with staff by offering them a 11.2% wage increase amounting to $32m, in line with a new blanket deal set out by the Australian Public Service Commission.<br/>

Boeing has not met federal regulators’ request for a list of employees who worked on a door panel that blew out mid-flight, the US’s top accident investigator testified to Congress on Wednesday. Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told members of the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation that investigators were seeking the names of 25 people who work on that part of the 737 Max. But Boeing had yet to provide the list, she said, two months after a dangerous incident on an Alaska Airlines flight. “Boeing has not provided us with the documents and information . . . requested numerous times over the last two months,” she said. “We have subpoena authority, and we are not afraid to use it,” she added later. “We hope it doesn’t come to that. But it does concern us we don’t have certain information.” Boeing said it had “deep respect” for the NTSB and had worked “proactively and transparently” with the agency since the January incident. “Early in the investigation, we provided the NTSB with names of Boeing employees, including door specialists, who we believed would have relevant information,” the company said. “We have now provided the full list of individuals on the 737 door team, in response to a recent request.” A person familiar with the matter said the NTSB had requested the 25 names over the weekend, and Boeing had provided the list on Wednesday, after Homendy’s testimony. A preliminary report from the NTSB last month found the door that blew out at 16,000 feet on an Alaska Airlines flight lacked four bolts meant to secure it in place. The fuselage containing the door panel arrived damaged at Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington, from its supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, forcing workers to open the door plug to make repairs. The bolts were not put back in place. Boeing CE Dave Calhoun acknowledged in January that the company had made a mistake. At a meeting for employees five days after the incident, he said Boeing was working with the NTSB to establish the cause of the incident and pledged “100% and complete transparency every step of the way”.<br/>

Boeing on Wednesday provided US regulators with the names of employees on its 737 MAX door team after lawmakers and a federal safety official sharply criticized the planemaker's failure to do so at a Senate hearing. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy had said earlier on Wednesday that Boeing had failed to supply the employee names and some key records sought in the agency's ongoing investigation into the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 mid-air cabin door plug emergency. Homendy said at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing that investigators sought the names of the 25 people who work on door plugs at a Boeing facility in Renton, Washington, and had begun a week of interviews on Sunday. "It is absurd that two months later we don't have it," she said. Boeing said on Wednesday that soon after the incident it had provided the NTSB with the names of some of its employees, including door specialists it believed would have relevant information. After Homendy's comments on Wednesday, Boeing provided the employee list, a NTSB spokesperson said, saying the agency received the names around 2 p.m. ET (1900 GMT). "We have now provided the full list of individuals on the 737 door team, in response to a recent request," the planemaker said, adding, "if the door plug removal was undocumented there would be no documentation to share. We will continue to cooperate fully and transparently with the NTSB’s investigation.”<br/>