British Airways will increase staffing at its hub in London’s Heathrow Airport by 5% to minimize the risk of any disruption in the peak summer season. The carrier, owned by IAG SA, expects this summer to be its busiest since the pandemic and will hire about 350 new workers to fill customer service and ground handling roles, a spokesperson for the airline said. The airline is also upgrading some of its computers and other technology at the hub. The airline is adding people as part of a broader transformation plan being implemented by Chief Executive Officer Sean Doyle. BA improved its on-time performance in the first quarter, Doyle said at the IATA annual meeting in Dubai. BA laid off thousands of staff during the Covid pandemic and struggled to rehire as travel rebounded sharply in the subsequent years. It has also struggled with creaking IT systems repeatedly failing in the busiest months, stranding passengers with last minute flight cancellations. While it is building a new IT system, that upgrade will not be fully rolled out by this summer so the extra staff are key to ensuring operations run smoothly, the spokesman said.<br/>
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A suspected drone came within 50 feet of crashing into a British Airways plane as it departed Heathrow for India, a report has revealed. The incident on February 26 at 10,500 feet could be the highest-ever near miss recorded between a BA plane and a drone. The near miss just before 2.50pm involved a Boeing B787-8 Dreamliner carrying more than 200 passengers, according to an aviation safety report. The flight had departed Heathrow minutes earlier for Chennai in India. The UK Airprox Board, which reviews safety incidents, rated the near-miss as a Category A risk, the riskiest level. A report said the pilot “looked up to see an object approaching dead-ahead.” “They were confused as it was not an aircraft or a bird, and they were startled,” the report said. “The object was closing rapidly, and then clearly apparent as a medium sized quadcopter with four downward facing blue lights. It approached almost head-on, slightly to the right-hand side.” The pilot informed air traffic control, who reported the pilot was seeing a drone with blue lights “straight down the middle”. The controller informed pilots of aircraft on the same flightpath so they could keep an eye out for the drone. Drones are normally legally restricted to flying at a maximum height of just 400ft. The report concluded: “The Board considered that the pilot’s overall account of the incident portrayed a situation where … a definite risk of collision had existed.”<br/>
Airline Cathay Pacific is looking to add more destinations on China's Belt and Road project, CEO Ronald Lam said on Sunday, after a new route to Riyadh starts up later this year. Lam also said Hong Kong's flagship airline, which made heavy losses and layoffs during the pandemic, is on track to reach 100% of its pre-pandemic passenger flights by the first quarter of 2025, having reached 80% of capacity within the second quarter of this year. Cathay had aimed to reach 100% capacity by the end of 2024, but in March moved the target back three months. The airline reported its first annual profit in four years in March, however executives said they expect yields to normalise this year as the post-pandemic global imbalance between supply of flights and travel demand that drove up ticket prices and airline yields diminishes as airlines add capacity. "Indeed we're seeing that this year ... the yield has been normalizing gradually coming down from last year. In particular, the supply and demand balancing is going quicker on the regional, the short haul routes," Lam told reporters during an airline conference in Dubai. The carrier restored capacity more slowly after the pandemic than its closest rival, Singapore Airlines, because it faced tighter quarantine rules for longer, and needed to hire more staff to bring back services.<br/>
The boss of Qantas Airways has acknowledged the “anger” of thousands of customers who were sold tickets for already-canceled flights. “Everyone feels pain at the anger,” Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson told CNN’s Richard Quest in an exclusive interview at an airline industry conference in Dubai Monday. “It’s not just me; (it’s) 25,000 people that work for us as well. Because not only (did) we let our customers down, we let our people down.” Last August, Australian regulators accused Qantas in a lawsuit of selling tickets for more than 8,000 flights that the airline had already canceled — affecting more than 86,000 customers. Qantas agreed last month to pay 120m Australian dollars ($79m) to settle the lawsuit. Of that, about 20m Australian dollars ($13.3m) will go to the affected customers. The remaining 100m Australian dollars ($66.5m) is a fine — the biggest ever for an Australian airline, according to Reuters. Hudson, who took the helm at Qantas in September, soon after the lawsuit was filed, told Quest the airline is focused on repairing its relationships with passengers and staff. She has “spent a lot of time listening” to the concerns of customers and staff, she said. The airline is investing in improving the in-flight experience, including the food it serves and the Wi-Fi service it offers.<br/>
Certification has been achieved for the third centre fuel tank in the Airbus A350-1000s that will operate Qantas’s ultra-long-range ‘Project Sunrise’ flights. Speaking during a roundtable discussion at the IATA AGM meeting in Dubai on 4 June, Qantas International chief executive Cam Wallace confirmed the development, which relates to the part of the twinjet that is unique to the carrier’s requirements. “The certification of the third centre fuel tank has happened, so that’s now been concluded,” he states. Airbus said in February that a six-month delay in the delivery of the aircraft was related to a regulator request for a redesign of the extra tank.<br/>Qantas expects deliveries of the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97-powered aircraft to begin in the third quarter of 2026. Wallace confirms that Sydney-London and Sydney-New York are under consideration as the launch services for what will be a premium-dense product offering. He further notes that the carrier has plenty of experience in 15-hour-plus flights with its existing services from Perth. “We want to be famous for being the ultra-long-haul non-stop leader and we’re very confident about the proposition,” he states. <br/>