general

Exasperation trumped exuberance at aviation’s largest annual trade expo, as airline executives lamented a shortage of Boeing Co. and Airbus SE aircraft that’s shown no signs of letting up. The planemaking duopoly is still struggling to recover from a Covid-19 pandemic that ripped through the supply chain, forcing suppliers to shed workers with decades of experience. Airbus has put the brakes on an ambitious production ramp-up, while an in-flight fuselage blowout on a 737 Max in January tipped Boeing into a crisis that’s sapped output. Airlines eager to grow are instead having to pare back. “This is a moment of pure frustration,” FlyDubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith said at the Farnborough Airshow outside of London. The budget carrier has received just four of the more than 10 Max aircraft that were scheduled to arrive in 2024, and was told last week that no more are coming for the rest of this year. Deliveries for 2025 are unclear. “Whatever patience we had, this was too much,” Al Ghaith said. “This will have a major effect on operations.” In conversations with airline customers, “top of mind remains getting aircraft,” said John Plueger, the veteran CEO of Air Lease Corp., a major aircraft lessor. “Not getting them on time, but just getting them.” <br/>

Ten people were injured and nearly 1,000 were evacuated after an escalator caught fire at Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday morning, airport officials said. The escalator, in Concourse C of Terminal 8, started emitting smoke around 7:15 a.m., according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport. The Fire Department and Port Authority police officers responded, and about 990 travelers were taken by bus to other areas of the terminal, according to the Port Authority. Eight of the injured people were hospitalized for “evaluation,” the Fire Department said; their injuries were not life-threatening. Terminal operations resumed later in the morning. The cause of the fire was under investigation, officials said. Eleven U.S. and international airlines, including American Airlines, British Airways and Japan Airways, use Terminal 8. American Airlines said that three of its 89 total departing flights from the airport on Wednesday had been canceled because of the evacuation. Departures from the airport were delayed by up to an hour and 30 minutes because of the weather on Wednesday evening, according to FlightAware, a company that tracks flight information. It was unclear whether any of the delays were related to the earlier fire.<br/>

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday it had struck a deal with an employee union to ensure that air-traffic controllers receive additional rest as the agency deals with a staffing shortage.<br/>Under current rules, controllers handling active airplanes must get an eight- or nine-hour break between shifts in most instances. The FAA said controllers will receive 10 hours off duty between shifts and 12 hours off before and after midnight shifts when the new rules take effect with 2025 schedules to be negotiated under the deal with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Controllers will have limits on the number of consecutive overtime assignments. The FAA delayed in May those rules that had been set to take effect in mid-July, due to discussions between the FAA and NATCA. "The science is clear that controller fatigue is a public-safety issue, and it must be addressed," FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said. Whitaker commissioned an independent panel last year to assess controller fatigue, which in April called for mandatory rest periods after raising "serious concerns." The National Transportation Safety Board has opened investigations into a half dozen near-miss incidents since January 2023 that raised concerns about aviation safety and the strain on understaffed air traffic control. NATCA President Rich Santa said the union has expressed concerns about controller fatigue for years. "We are happy to join with the FAA to implement changes that will begin to provide relief to this understaffed workforce," he said.<br/>

A group of protesters blocked the ramp to the departures area at Trudeau International Airport for several hours on Wednesday, causing a traffic backlog in the area. Three of the protesters, who were carrying a sign that said "oil kills," glued themselves to the ground and refused to move. The group Last Generation Canada said in an Instagram post that the protest was one of several undertaken simultaneously at airports in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Norway, Switzerland, Austria and Finland. "We are part of an international uprising to end oil by 2030," the group's post said. "We are demanding our government endorse the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty proposal and implement a national firefighting agency." Montreal police said the airport requested assistance around 10:30 a.m. When officers arrived on the scene, they found six protesters shouting environmental slogans. Three of them left, but the other three glued themselves to the ground. Long lines of traffic extended away from the airport for several kilometres. A spokesperson for the airport said "a concerted action by a group of individuals is causing delays in accessing the YUL airport site," but added that the site was still accessible and there was no impact on flight operations.<br/>

A UK initiative to promote green jet fuel will need to be taken up around the world - and built on - if the technology is to have any chance of delivering its promise of radically cleaner flying, airline executives warned at the Farnborough Airshow. Last week, Britain's new Labour government announced plans to introduce a price guarantee for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to incentivise producers to open more plants and build infrastructure to ramp up the fuel's production. Two decades after airlines pledged to switch to biofuels, SAF accounts for just 0.2% of the jet fuel market. The aviation industry says this will need to rise to 65% by 2050 if it is to reach "net zero" carbon emissions by then. Airlines and SAF producers have been caught in a paralysing blame game for years. Airlines say they want more green fuel, while SAF producers say they can't make more until airlines agree to pay the market price. SAF currently costs up to five times more than traditional jet fuel. Julie Kitcher, chief sustainability officer at Airbus, said more solid investment plans and bolder financing from across the sector would help bring the industry to scale and boost supply. Policy support, such as the UK's mechanism or Singapore's SAF levy, can take the cost burden off airlines, if crafted constructively, Kitcher and other executives said. "It's really about back to basics ... it's about going through the value chain of the whole aviation system and everybody taking a share, because we won't get there without it," she said.<br/>

Heathrow is preparing to announce a fresh blueprint for a third runway for the Labour government’s approval as record passenger numbers “strain its system to the maximum”. The UK’s biggest airport served almost 40m passengers in the first half of 2024, culminating in its busiest day ever on 30 June. Its CE, Thomas Woldbye, said the London hub would surpass that daily total again this week, and had been encouraged by the new government’s words on aviation and growth. Woldbye said the airport was looking to get “more capacity out of the existing infrastructure” while also working on new runway plans. “We will have a blueprint that includes a third runway, and a blueprint that doesn’t, because at the end of the day, there are still many external dependencies for a third runway,” he said. “I think London needs the additional capacity a third runway would provide.” Woldbye added: “The most urgent is to look at what can we do on capacity within our two runways, because that is what’s facing us tomorrow and the next many years, because a third runway will not be here this year or in the next five or maybe even 10 years. “We are not ready yet with the concrete decisions on how should that look and what would it be, but we are happy to talk to government about expansion plans. We’re happy that they see the value of aviation overall, and Heathrow in particular.”<br/>

Heavy rain from Typhoon Gaemi has flooded the Philippine capital of Manila and nearby cities, forcing authorities to shut schools and offices and cancel flights on Wednesday and declare a state of calamity in a region that is home to 13m people. The storm, which is strengthening as it gusts toward Taiwan, did not make landfall in the Philippines but has intensified seasonal monsoon rains, causing landslides and flooding over the past few days. At least 12 people have died and more than 600,000 are displaced due to the storm, known locally as Typhoon Carina, the national disaster agency said. Water in some areas is neck-high. The Philippine Coast Guard said 260 passengers and 16 vessels were stranded in ports, and airlines canceled 114 flights out of Manila on Wednesday, the airport authority said. The financial markets were also closed. President Ferdinand Marcos told the disaster relief agencies to provide assistance and prepare supplies for isolated communities during a briefing on Wednesday, and the mayors of 16 cities in the Greater Manila region have asked for emergency funding, officials said.<br/>

The Department of Transportation (DoTr) on Wednesday said it is considering offering 27 airports for redevelopment via public-private partnerships (PPP). “We have currently 27 other airports undergoing PPP screening by our partners from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and International Finance Corp.,” Transportation Undersecretary Timothy John R. Batan said during a post-State of the Nation Address (SONA) briefing Wednesday. “Davao Airport is next, it is the fourth largest airport that we have. The PPP process for that is now ongoing,” Batan said. In June, PPP Center said that it delisted the unsolicited proposal for the development, operations, and management of the Davao International Airport, which likely signals that the Transportation department is looking to go the solicited route for the project. Earlier this year, the DoTr said it is setting aside P14b to upgrade and modernize regional airports. It is also seeking PPP-led upgrades for Iloilo, Bohol, Puerto Princesa and Siargao.<br/>

Boeing finalized a guilty plea to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and agreed to pay at least $243.6m after breaching a 2021 agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, according to a court filing on Wednesday. The planemaker allowed potentially risky work at its factories and did not ensure key airplane record keeping was accurate or complete, the Justice Department said as it outlined why it believed the planemaker had violated the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. Boeing on July 7 agreed in principle to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration after the government said the planemaker knowingly made false representations about key software for the 737 MAX. Boeing confirmed on Wednesday that it had filed a detailed plea agreement with the Justice Department. "We will continue to work transparently with our regulators as we take significant actions across Boeing to further strengthen our safety, quality and compliance programs," the company said. The Justice Department said in May that Boeing had breached its obligations in the agreement that shielded the planemaker from criminal prosecution stemming from misrepresentations about a key software feature tied to fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The finding was made in the wake of a January in-flight panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX that exposed continuing safety and quality issues at Boeing, just two days before the 2021 agreement shielding it from prosecution over the previous fatal crashes expired.<br/>

Airbus SE said any potential slowdown in demand will provide some breathing space as it struggles to ramp up production and deliver its growing backlog of planes. While the European plane maker hasn’t yet seen any of its customers seeking to push back deliveries of jets, any such deferrals would actually be welcome, according to Christian Scherer, the chief executive officer of Airbus’s commercial aircraft unit. “In the near term, a little relief would actually be welcome,@ Scherer said in an interview at the Farnborough International Air Show, joking that “regrettably our backlog is extremely strong.” “If there was some weakening of the backlog, it will help us shorten the delays,” Airbus has sought to ramp up output from the depths of the pandemic but was forced to revise its earnings and production goals last month, partly because the company is having trouble getting its supply chain back on track. The bestselling A321neo model is now sold out until 2031 and the advanced, long-haul A350 model is unavailable until 2030, Scherer said. <br/>