National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy will tell lawmakers she is committed to winning approval of safety recommendations and scrutinizing federal agencies. The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing Wednesday on President Joe Biden's nomination of Homendy to serve a new term heading the board that investigates air, rail, marine, pipeline and highway accidents. "On scene, my most important duty is to brief the families on what is often the worst day of their lives. It's why I fight so hard for NTSB safety recommendations," Homendy will say, according to her written testimony pledging to continue serving "as a fierce advocate for improving transportation safety." Homendy was the on-scene board member for last month's Baltimore bridge collapse and the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines tab Boeing 737 MAX 9 mid-air emergency prompted by a door panel blowout. Homendy, who has served on the board since 2018 and has been chair since August 2021, previously was a senior legislative staffer working on transportation issues. She will tell senators the NTSB in 2023 hired 71 people after hiring just 7 in 2017 boosting its headcount to 430. The NTSB has 2,200 domestic and 450 foreign cases annually in every mode of transportation, her testimony seen by Reuters says.<br/>
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US airlines are seeking another year of voluntary flight reductions at some of the nation’s most congested airports as the industry struggles with an ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers. If the request is granted by federal aviation regulators, airlines could reduce flights at all three major New York City-area airports as well as Ronald Reagan Washington National until October 2025 without risk of losing their valuable airport flight slots. Currently, the program is scheduled to expire this October. Airlines for America, the trade group for major carriers, made the request in a letter to the US Transportation Department and the FAA. The flight reductions, first put in place in May 2023, followed a dramatic upswing in delays and cancellations as traffic surged back after the pandemic at the same time the US was hit by a wave of controller retirements. Air traffic in the northeastern US is particularly critical because disruptions there can easily cause a domino effect across the entire US airspace. “We still have a shortage of air traffic controllers, so it’s still an incredibly challenging environment,” Peter Carter, Delta Air Lines Inc.’s executive vice president of external affairs, said on a conference call Wednesday. “Absent the waivers, I think we’d have some real challenges as an industry in New York.” Delta, American Airlines Group Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc. and JetBlue Airways Corp. are among carriers affected by the decision. While some progress was made in increasing the FAA workforce last year, current and future staffing levels are “neither adequate to give consumers the travel experience they deserve, nor are they able to maximize the efficiency of the New York City airspace,” A4A, as the group is known, said in the letter.<br/>
The union representing workers who prepare meals for in-flight service for multiple airlines at Toronto Pearson International Airport says staff could walk off the job as early as next week, a move that they say could leave many flights without food or beverages. Teamsters Local Union 647, which represents more than 800 workers with airline catering company Gate Gourmet, said employees could go on strike as early as April 16. “We are in a cost-of-living crisis, but Gate Gourmet is ignoring their employees’ families’ basic needs and won’t agree to pay workers a living wage. We’re going on strike unless this company steps up to the plate and finally acknowledges how expensive life has gotten,” lead union negotiator and president of Teamsters Local Union 647, Martin Cerqua, said in a written statement released Tuesday. In a statement, a spokesperson for Gate Gourmet Canada said negotiations are ongoing with the union about wages and benefits and safety. "Gate Gourmet Canada continues to engage in good faith discussions with the Union to make improvements for our employees in Toronto across wages and benefits, as we have in the past, to ensure we continue to meet market standards. Safety is our number one priority in the workplace, and we continuously evaluate staffing levels and operational procedures to ensure alignment with business demands and mitigate the risk of injury," the statement read.<br/>
Chile aims to start producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in a large plant by 2030 and use the fuel made from oils, fats, and biological and municipal waste for half of its aviation needs by 2050, a government report released on Wednesday said. The "2050 SAF Roadmap" report was presented by Fernanda Cabañas, program coordinator for Chile's public-private "Clean Flight" project that aims to decarbonize the country's airline industry, at an aviation conference in Santiago. Chile expects air traffic to double by 2040 and SAF is essential in helping the country meet its decarbonization goals, the report said. SAF can be mixed with conventional jet fuel to reduce emissions by up to 80% without engine modifications. "More than 50% of carbon emissions reductions are going to be done through SAF," Cabanas said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference. "It plays a predominant role in our net zero goals." No estimates are available on how much the factory would produce in 2030, Cabanas said. Airlines are rushing to purchase SAF to meet sustainability goals but supply is scarce and production methods are costly, so the fuel costs three to five times more than traditional jet fuel. Cabañas noted strong competition in the region for SAF sources, and said the program had met with local forestry, agriculture and hydrogen industry representatives to determine how much raw material they could supply.<br/>
The UK’s air traffic control provider, National Air Traffic Services, has appointed former Rolls-Royce CE Warren East to be its new chair as the company looks to recover from a difficult period, including a technical meltdown that caused major disruption last August. Nats on Wednesday announced that East would join the board as non-executive chair on September 1, replacing Paul Golby, who has served in the role for a decade. East, who was CE of Rolls-Royce between 2015 and 2022, will join at a sensitive time for Nats, which has come under severe pressure from airlines for its operational performance over the past 12 months. Most notably, the UK’s air traffic control system failed over the August bank holiday weekend last summer, affecting more than 700,000 passengers during one of the busiest travel periods of the year. An interim report commissioned by industry regulator the Civil Aviation Authority last month found that fixing the technical problem that caused the failure was “more protracted than it might otherwise have been” because some senior engineers were not in the office over the bank holiday. Airlines have been highly critical of Nats’ response to the meltdown and called for compensation from the company to cover their costs, while Ryanair CE Michael O’Leary has repeatedly called for Nats CE Martin Rolfe to resign or be sacked. Nats, which is a public-private partnership owned by a group of airlines — including British Airways and easyJet — pension funds and the UK government, runs the airspace over the UK and the eastern part of the Atlantic. It also provides air traffic control services at many of the UK’s major airports, including London Gatwick. Golby said he had served “through some of the most difficult times that Nats and the aviation sector as a whole have been through”, after overseeing the company through the Covid pandemic, when air traffic services remained open, and the subsequent recovery. <br/>
Airbus is incurring up-front costs as it prepares for higher jet production and plans a breathing space to absorb them once it reaches its output goal, its finance chief said on Wednesday. Airbus is targeting a roughly 50% increase in production of its A320neo cash-cow to 75 planes a month by 2026. But to lay the groundwork it has had to invest in thousands of new workers and is building two new assembly lines. "We want to pre-hire to be ready to achieve rate-75 in 2026. But of course the costs are hitting us now while the full efficiency only comes in 2026, and potentially 2027 when we are at a stable rate," CFO Thomas Toepfer said in an interview. Airbus is also building two new assembly lines. Industry sources told Reuters such spending has been running over-budget in the civil business for part of the first quarter. Toepfer declined to comment on first-quarter activity but said "acceleration" or ramp-up costs would pay off over time. In 2023, Airbus hired 13,000 people including 10,000 new posts. "Why is that? Because we do not want to create our own bottlenecks in a supply environment which is anyway challenging," Toepfer told Reuters. Airbus reaffirmed the 75-a-month target. "We are on the trajectory to reach the rate," Toepfer said.<br/>
China expects to make progress on an advanced aeroplane engine, a bigger commercial jet, and an amphibious search-and-rescue aircraft under a government plan to upgrade production equipment across industries through 2027 and improve the economy. A notice from seven central government departments calls for “promoting the aviation industry to comprehensively develop final assembly-integration capabilities and supply-chain-supporting capabilities for a large aircraft, a large amphibious aircraft, and an engine”. The March 27 notice calls for “updates and upgrades of high-end, advanced equipment” to reach those goals. China is working on its first home-grown turbofan commercial aircraft engine, the CJ1000, to reduce reliance on imports. The CJ1000’s developer, the Aero Engine Corporation of China, had expected to receive an airworthiness certification by 2025, but research reports have indicated that mechanical setbacks and a lack of experience in testing and assembly have held back development. “China definitely feels the urgency to develop its own aircraft engines,” said Liang Yan, chair of economics at US-based Willamette University, pointing to efforts by former US president Donald Trump to block exports of an American engine type to China. “With the new industrial policy and plan to boost new productive forces, I think various advanced manufacturing will accelerate and help aircraft,” Liang said. The C919 narrowbody airliner developed by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) still depends on foreign components, including for its engine produced by a joint venture between GE Aerospace of the US and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines.<br/>