Travelers heading home after the Thanksgiving holiday set a record on Sunday, as airport officers screened more than 3m people. The TSA said Monday that it handled 3.09m travelers on Sunday, breaking the previous record by about 74,000. That mark was set on July 7, also a Sunday after a holiday. Hundreds of thousands of travelers were delayed or had their flights canceled. Airlines canceled about 120 U.S. flights — not an unusually high number — and more than 6,800 flights were delayed, according to FlightAware. The largest numbers of delays were at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Monday was also expected to be a busy day. By midday, there were about 80 canceled flights and more than 2,000 delays. Amtrak rail service between Philadelphia and New York was temporarily stopped Monday because of damage to overhead electrical wires. And some travelers trying to return home faced delays on the roads. Traffic at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport came to a standstill Sunday evening, with the airport using social media to tell motorists to avoid one of the two main entrance roads. Some people posted on X that they missed their flights because of the gridlock. A DFW Airport spokesperson attributed the gridlock to “the high volume of holiday traffic in a compressed time frame.” She said the airport deployed extra police officers to help get traffic moving. The TSA had predicted that Thanksgiving week air travel would rise 6% over the same days last year, fitting a pattern of record travel in 2024.<br/>
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Denmark’s finance ministry has reached a conditional agreement with Danish pension fund ATP to buy a further 59.4% of the shares in Copenhagen Airports for around 32b Danish crowns ($4.52b), boosting the group’s shares. If the deal goes through, the Danish state will own 98.6% of the company, which owns and operates Denmark’s biggest airport among other things, although it could eventually reduce this to 50.1% over time, the ministry said in a statement. Shares in the listed company rose 13.1% by 1129 GMT. “This will ensure that the airport will continue to have a responsible and long-term group of owners in the future,” Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen said. “We will secure a good framework for the airport as a central Danish infrastructure and one of Denmark’s largest workplaces,” he added. The purchase agreement had been made on market terms, and the implementation was conditional on obtaining relevant regulatory approvals among other things, the ministry said.<br/>
Airport chaos caused by a computer shutdown has led to reduced homeworking at the UK's air traffic control service. More than 700,000 passengers suffered cancellations and delays in August 2023. An engineer was unable to correct the fault from home and arrived at work more than three hours after the incident began, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) previously reported. NATS said it had rostered more engineers to work on site during busy periods. A single flight from Los Angeles to Paris triggered the failure at 08:30 BST on Monday 28 August, the CAA previously said. The air traffic control system was confused by a duplicate code - DVL - representing both Deauville in France and Devil's Lake in North Dakota, USA, the authority reported. The senior engineer, who was working from home on the bank holiday, arrived at NATS headquarters in Swanwick, Hampshire, shortly before 12:00, the CAA said. His efforts to resolve the problem on site were also unsuccessful. The system was eventually restored at 14:30 after its manufacturer, Frequentis Comsoft, found the fault. In its final report on the incident, the CAA said NATS should have more engineers on site in the summer months.<br/>
Airbus deliveries rose sharply in November to more than 80 jets as the planemaker recovered from a downturn and made progress towards year-end targets, industry sources said. The world's largest planemaker declined comment on the monthly deliveries, which are due to be announced on Dec. 6 following a routine internal audit. Airbus is officially targeting 2024 deliveries of "around 770" jets but most analysts do not expect it to reach that headline figure after supply problems, and are instead focusing on a figure closer to 750 given some flexibility in the wording.<br/>After a mid-year profit warning, driven in part by a shortfall in engine supplies, deliveries spiked in November after engine maker CFM and Airbus reached a deal over short-term engine supplies, first reported by Reuters last week. Industry sources said deliveries jumped around 25% in November from the same month last year to top 80, bringing deliveries this year to around 640 and leaving some 110 to go. In December last year, Airbus delivered 112 jets. If confirmed, it would be the highest November tally since 2018, when Airbus delivered 89 jets in the penultimate month.<br/>
Most of the world's airlines are not doing enough to switch to sustainable jet fuel, according to a study by Brussels-based advocacy group Transport and Environment, which also found too little investment by oil producers in the transition. The comments come as the airline sector calls for more production of the fuel, which can be made from materials such as wood chips and used cooking oil. "Unfortunately, airlines at the moment are not on the trajectory to have meaningful emissions reduction because they're not buying enough sustainable aviation fuel," Transport and Environment aviation policy manager Francesco Catte said. As it stands, SAF makes up about 1% of aviation fuel use on the global market, which needs to increase for airlines to meet carbon emission reduction targets. The fuel can cost between two to five times more than regular jet fuel. A lack of investment by major oil players, who have the capital to build SAF processing facilities, is hampering the market's growth, the study says. In its ranking, Transport and Environment pointed to Air France-KLM, United Airlines, and Norwegian as some of the airlines that have taken tangible steps to buy sustainable jet fuel, particularly its synthetic, cleaner burning version. But 87% are failing to make meaningful efforts, the ranking shows, and even those who are trying could miss their own targets without more investment. Airlines such as Italy's ITA Airways and Portugal's TAP have done very little to secure SAF in the coming years, the ranking shows. A TAP spokesperson said the airline was the first to fly in Portugal with SAF in July 2022, "and is committed to flying with 10% SAF in 2030".<br/>