International airlines have suspended more flights to Lebanon amid an Israeli bombardment that authorities said had killed almost 560 people since Monday. The United Arab Emirates-based airline Emirates announced the temporary suspension of its flights to Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday. Its sister airline flydubai also cancelled flights to Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday. Emirates said in a statement: “The safety of our crew and customers is of utmost importance and will not be compromised.” Qatar Airways, which operates two flights a day to the Lebanese capital, also cancelled services for two days. “Due to the ongoing situation in Lebanon, Qatar Airways has temporarily suspended flights to and from Beirut Rafic Hariri international airport until September 25,” it said. The Israeli military carried out airstrikes against the Lebanese Hezbollah militia on Monday in what Lebanese authorities described as the country’s deadliest day in decades. Air France on Tuesday extended the suspension of its Beirut flights until 1 October, which a spokesperson told AFP was due to the “security situation”. Flights to and from the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, suspended by Air France last week, were operating normally after resuming at the weekend, the spokesperson added.<br/>
general
Lawmakers on Tuesday grilled an executive from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike about a widespread technology outage this summer that crippled global travel, hobbled government agencies and sent major companies scrambling to get their operations back online. The outage was caused by a faulty update sent to CrowdStrike software running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Devices went spiraling, unable to properly restart unless someone removed the flawed file from their systems. Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior vice president of counter adversary operations, told members of a House Homeland Security subcommittee that the company had instituted new safeguards to ensure that such a failure couldn’t happen again. Lawmakers pushed Meyers to explain why the error had happened in the first place and how the company planned to answer for the outage’s harm to consumers. “I want to make sure that you all know what happened, can explain it, and then how you’re making sure it’s not going to happen again,” said Representative Andrew Garbarino, Republican of New York. The July incident underscored how dependent modern commerce and communications have become on just a handful of large technology companies. Travelers were stranded as airlines canceled flights. Emergency services were disrupted as 911 operators found that their systems had failed. Hospitals paused some of their services. Tuesday’s hearing pointed to the persistent questions that governments have about the power and influence of tech companies that dominate the modern internet era. Lawmakers around the world have created recent laws to regulate how companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, do business. They have accused the companies of entrenching themselves by shutting out smaller competitors, and have set new rules for how social media platforms handle content.<br/>
Travelers hoping to head in or out of Florida or around the Gulf of Mexico this week may need to rethink their plans as Tropical Storm Helene approaches. “Helene is expected to rapidly intensify over the eastern Gulf of Mexico and be a major hurricane when it approaches the northeastern Gulf Coast on Thursday,” the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday. Airlines are already issuing travel waivers, allowing impacted customers to rebook flights without penalties. However, cities, dates and terms vary widely. Story lists what some of America’s largest airlines are offering customers ahead of Helene’s arrival. <br/>
The company that runs Hamilton's airport says it will spend C$400m in upgrades for passenger and cargo transportation over the next 49 years. The City of Hamilton announced Tuesday that TradePort International Corporation, which through a long-term lease owns John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport, will expand passenger terminals, upgrade cargo facilities and airplane taxiways, and achieve net-zero carbon by 2030. "This investment marks a significant milestone in Hamilton's future," said Mayor Andrea Horwath in a statement. "Our airport is a vital transportation hub and a key driver of our community's economic growth and job creation." TradePort is a subsidiary of Vantage Group, which invests, develops and manages airports internationally. The city said, through the new agreement with TradePort and Vantage Group, it will receive annual payments and increased revenue sharing, but didn't specify by how much. <br/>
Boeing is giving the union representing striking factory workers more time to consider a revised contract offer with bigger pay increases and more bonus money, but it was unclear Tuesday whether the union would schedule a ratification vote on the proposal. On picket lines in the Pacific Northwest, strikers said the company’s latest offer wasn't good enough. Both the union and many of its members complained about the way Boeing bypassed the union in publicizing the offer, with some workers saying it was an unfair attempt to make them look greedy. Boeing's new “best and final” offer includes pay raises of 30% over four years, up from 25% in a deal that 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers overwhelmingly rejected when they voted to strike. The union originally demanded 40% over three years. In the face of opposition from the union, Boeing backed down Tuesday from a demand that workers vote on the new offer by Friday night, but the company still wants a vote. “This strike is affecting our team and our communities, and we believe our employees should have the opportunity to vote on our offer that makes significant improvements in wages and benefits,” the company said in a statement. The new offer seemed to have little support among strikers. <br/>
Boeing's critics often claim that two deadly jetliner crashes a few years ago and the blowout of a section of a third plane in January made clear that the aircraft manufacturer cut corners during production and put profits above safety. The head of the FAA, Boeing's regulator, said Tuesday that while it is not his job to assess Boeing's finances, giving too little attention to safety has not turned out well for the company. “Even if profits were your No. 1 goal, safety really needs to be your No. 1 goal because it's hard to be profitable if you're not safe, and I think Boeing certainly has learned that," FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said during a U.S. House subcommittee hearing. “Whatever money might have been saved has certainly been lost in the fallout.” The observation might have been an understatement. Boeing has lost more than $25b since the start of 2019 and fallen far behind rival Airbus in orders and deliveries of planes to airline customers. A strike by the factory workers who assemble the company's best-selling planes is further weighing on Boeing's output and finances. Striking Boeing workers were back on picket lines in the Pacific Northwest a day after Boeing announced a “best and final offer” for a contract that wold include bigger pay increases and more bonus money than were in a proposal that union members overwhelmingly rejected earlier this month. Boeing pitched the new offer directly to workers, circumventing negotiators for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Regional union leaders, who endorsed the original contract offer that rank-and-file members rejected, reacted angrily to the presentation of the new offer and said they would not call a ratification vote before a Friday night deadline the company set.<br/>
The head of the Federal Aviation Administration told a U.S. House subcommittee on Tuesday that safety culture improvements at Boeing may take three to five years to complete. "It is not a six-month program - it is a three-year to five-year program," FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said at a two-hour hearing, adding he has spoken to Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg and the company's board of directors about the need for safety culture reforms. He said Boeing has made significant improvement in the short term. "On culture it is a long-term project .... There is progress but they are not where they need to be." Congress is holding two days of hearings on Boeing and the company's safety turnaround efforts with a Senate panel taking up the issue on Wednesday. In June, Whitaker said the agency was "too hands off" in oversight of Boeing before the January mid-air emergency in a new Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 and faulted its prior audits. Boeing faces Justice Department and FAA probes into the Alaska incident. Boeing has no choice but to make improvements, Whitaker said. "There has to be culture change or they won't be able to go back to producing aircraft at the level they want," Whitaker said, adding the planemaker plans to hold a new safety training program.<br/>
Airline association IATA forecasts an average of $128 billion in annual capital expenditure will be needed for the airline industry to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. It made the prediction as it released new finance and policy road maps during its World Sustainability Symposium event in Miami on 24 September, where it insisted that the air transport industry’s energy transition is feasible, but only if stakeholders – and governments in particular – collaborate and act with greater urgency. Describing the $128 billion forecast as a “best-case scenario”, IATA notes that it is “significantly less” than total investments in solar and wind energy markets between 2004 and 2022, which it puts at around $280 billion. The capital will fund building new facilities, including the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) refineries that are central to the sector’s net-zero road map, IATA says.<br/>
Shell insists that it paused building work at its 820,000 tonne/year biofuel refinery in Rotterdam “for the right reasons”, even as the airline industry laments the lack of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) available today. Speaking during IATA’s World Sustainability Symposium in Miami on 24 September, Shell Aviation president Raman Ojha says the business remains committed to helping the aviation sector’s energy transition, but that work in the Netherlands was paused in July “to assess the situation and begin the journey again”. That decision – and similar moves from other legacy energy businesses – drew the ire of IATA director general Willie Walsh, who said in Miami: “We should be shining a spotlight on these producers because they have to be part of the solution. “To see them talk about their commitment to green energy but not deliver on it is very frustrating for the industry.” Still, despite being unable to comment on when construction in Rotterdam might recommence, Ojha insists Shell is “definitely fully committed” to the aviation sector’s net-zero effort.<br/>And he cites three “right reasons” for the construction pause. “Number one is we are trying to understand the complexity of construction that we are undertaking,” Ojha says. “We have also taken a pause to identify levers that can help us reduce the cost. Three… is to ensure that the SAF we deliver is economically viable.” His comments came after IATA expressed concern during the symposium about the lack of progress on the development of a global SAF industry, with airline leaders calling on governments to do more to incentivise a ramping up of the sector.<br/>