When the Northwest Arkansas National Airport Regional Airport Authority voted in September to remove its only moving sidewalk from the terminal, it joined the latest in a growing list of airports that have decided passengers will just have to use their own two feet to get to gates. According to the airport, the people mover was more of a headache than help for travelers. “When it was working, it would break down constantly,” said Olivia Tyler, Northwest Arkansas National Airport Regional Airport Authority spokeswoman. “I can’t remember the last time it worked,” she said, adding that the obsolete walkway was also taking up a lot of space. The plan is for the walkway to be removed and replaced with terrazzo flooring and more chairs. “We are growing at an incredible rate. We needed to have more additional seating,” Tyler said. The sidewalk removal is part of the airport’s more considerable terminal modernization plan. Tyler says the airport attracts an outsized number of business travelers, with Walmart, trucking giant J.B. Hunt, and Tyson Foods all headquartered in the area. Those travelers need to get their gates fast and the moving sidewalk wasn’t doing it. “I don’t think it will be anything to miss; there is a lot of real estate we could be using to benefit passengers,” Tyler said. Airports in Chicago, Las Vegas, Orlando, Dallas and Cincinnati, among others, have removed all or some of their moving sidewalks in recent years. But the consensus isn’t clear, other airports – Tampa, Denver, and Norfolk , for instance – are adding or upgrading them.<br/>
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The extra screening measures imposed earlier this week on people travelling to India have now been lifted, says the office of Transport Minister Anita Anand. On Monday, Anand said in a news statement that, "out of an abundance of caution," her ministry would temporarily implement additional security screening for travellers to India. A government official told CBC News the additional measures would be conducted by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), the agency responsible for screening passengers and their baggage before they enter restricted areas in airports. The official spoke on background because they weren't authorized to share the details publicly. Last month, an Air India flight from New Delhi to Chicago was diverted to Iqaluit because of a bomb scare. No bomb was found on board. Anand's announcement on Monday came a month after the RCMP linked agents of the Indian government to widespread crimes in Canada, including acts of murder, extortion and intimidation. Canada expelled six Indian diplomats in October on the same day RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme spoke of "well over a dozen" credible and imminent threats to members of the South Asian community, specifically Sikh members of the pro-Khalistan movement.<br/>
London’s Gatwick airport has reponed a terminal after a security alert earlier forced its evacuation, causing travel disruption for thousands of people. Police sent an explosives disposal team to deal with a “suspected prohibited item” discovered in luggage at the airport’s south terminal earlier on Friday. “The earlier security alert has now been resolved and cleared by police,” Gatwick said in a statement. “The South Terminal is reopening to staff and will be open to passengers shortly.” Gatwick said some flights were cancelled and others were delayed by the incident. Passengers were advised to contact their airlines for any updates on flights. In videos posted on social media, thousands of passengers were seen outside the terminal and the surrounding area after the terminal shut for several hours. Emergency foil blankets were distributed to some of the passengers who were waiting in the cold, according to social media pictures. The incident disrupted weekend travel plans for thousands of passengers, with more than 600 flights due to land or take off on Friday from Gatwick, amounting to more than 121,000 passenger seats, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium. Speaking to Al Jazeera earlier from Gatwick, passenger Laurens Cook said there was “pandemonium in the air and everyone was rushing” when people were asked to clear out. “We were moved to our departure gate and are sitting here waiting with no information on if our flight will take off or not. We have no idea when we are going to leave … nobody has disembarked from planes either,” Cook said.<br/>
Birmingham, Bristol and London City airports have reportedly been put up for sale by their Canadian pension fund owner as it looks to cash in on a resurgence in air travel after the pandemic. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) is said to be in talks over a potential sale of its stakes in the UK airports to minority shareholders. The portfolio, which also includes Copenhagen and Brussels airports, is estimated to be worth more than GBP10b. The minority shareholders have the right of first refusal for 30 days, but the move could prompt those smaller stakeholders to sell up instead. OTPP, which holds stakes ranging from 25% to 70% in each airport, has started to approach potential outside bidders including the Australian investor Macquarie in case smaller investors decline the offer, according to the Sunday Times, which first reported the sale talks. Since the Covid pandemic, when travel restrictions grounded planes worldwide, airports have started to recover from the disruption, including Heathrow, which returned to profit in February and hit record weekly passengers in July. The revival has sparked interest from other investors, including rival Canadian pension funds. PSP Investments, which manages the retirement funds for the Canadian armed forces and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, bought the operator of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports from Ferrovial and Macquarie in a £1.5bn deal earlier this month.<br/>
Storm Bert battered Britain with snow, rain and strong winds on Saturday, killing one person and closing several railway lines, bridges and roads. The storm also hit Ireland, flooding roads in the west and cutting power to tens of thousands of customers. The runway at the Newcastle airport in northeast England was covered in snow, briefly disrupting flights.<br/>
Thai Immigration Police on Nov 22 arrested a Singaporean man for allegedly falsely reporting an explosive on an aircraft at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok. The man was arrested at the passenger terminal of the airport in the evening. He was also found to have overstayed his visa by 28 days, police told a press event on Nov 23. Police said an airport official received an anonymous telephone call at 2.47pm on Nov 21, claiming that there was an explosive on an AirAsia plane departing to Hat Yai, Songkhla province. Investigators found that flight FD 3114, with 162 passengers and six crew members, was preparing to take off to Hat Yai. The airport promptly stopped the take-off, evacuated the passengers, and brought the plane back to its bay for inspection. After finding no suspicious object on the plane or among passengers, officials called off the emergency situation at 7.30pm. The incident severely affected the airport’s flight schedule and passengers’ travel, an airport official said. Police on Nov 22 tracked down the phone number and found that the caller was still at Don Mueang. They arrested Ho at the passenger terminal at around 7pm. The suspect reportedly confessed that he made the call because he was under stress due to a family problem. He was sent to Don Mueang police station to be charged with overstaying in the kingdom. <br/>
Australia’s aviation sector is still lagging pre-COVID levels overall despite continued growth. According to data released this month by analyst OAG, half of the biggest 20 aviation markets – including Australia – are yet to reach 2019 levels of seat capacity, with Australia still 2.7% below 2019 even as it grew by 4% compared to 2023. Australia’s region, Southwest Pacific, is one of four that has “effectively stagnated” and remains below 2019, down 4.5%; it is, however, the region that has seen the best recovery of the four, ahead of Eastern Europe (down 8.6%), South East Asia (down 13.1%), and Southern Africa (down 17%). Global airline capacity overall grew 6.4% year-on-year in 2024, though is still only 2.4% above 2019 levels. “In the Southwest Pacific, modest capacity cuts versus 2019 from a range of airlines including Qantas, Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia – some of which are supply and maintenance related – continue to draw back capacity growth,” wrote OAG’s chief analyst, John Grant. “In South East Asia the much-discussed Chinese international market recovery lingers, while in Eastern Europe the ongoing situation in Ukraine is an unfortunate example of how vulnerable the sector is to other events, although capacity growth this year has been more encouraging. Southern Africa with a 17% reduction in capacity versus 2019 has seen the loss of two of its largest airlines but ironically from an integrity of service and financial viability standpoint, is in a better position than pre-pandemic.”<br/>
A new aircraft model that entered service this month is poised to change the way we fly – and weaken the dominance of mega-airports such as Heathrow in the process. On the face of it, Airbus’s A321 XLR is indistinguishable from others in the company’s single-aisle jet family – the type of plane you’d board for a short flight to Europe. But hidden within its hold is a huge fuel tank that can keep the plane in the air for another hour and half, or 700 nautical miles (1296km), compared to short-haul jets. That allows it to connect cities up to 4700 nautical miles apart – further than London to Delhi – and gives the XLR its name: Extra Long Range. Flight times will stretch to 10, or even 11, hours. What is most special about the XLR, however, is that it can span the globe despite being a narrow-body plane of a size that would normally serve locations only a few hours apart. That makes it suited to serving far-flung destinations from airports that would struggle to fill the larger planes usually deployed for long haul. It is this combination of range and size that makes the XLR unique, and has won it more than 500 orders from airlines. The XLR’s first customer, Iberia of Spain, began operations on November 14 with services from Madrid to Boston, while the second, Ireland’s Aer Lingus, plans to use its first planes for flights from Dublin to Nashville and Indianapolis. Flying from Manchester or Edinburgh to Seattle and Portland on the US West Coast would also be well within the XLR’s capabilities. Industry watchers predict such non-stop services would be popular with travellers, shaving hours off today’s indirect routes that currently mean people who live outside of major capitals often have to travel to these cities’ airports first before completing their onward journey.<br/>