Airlines on both sides of the Atlantic are bracing for their busiest Christmas season as tens of millions of passengers take to the skies. In the UK, carriers will fly 6.1mn seats between December 20 and January 2, a 5% increase on the previous record set in 2019, according to aviation data company Cirium. The most popular international destinations for UK departures are Amsterdam, Dublin, Geneva, Paris and Tenerife. Across the Atlantic, a record 54mn passengers are forecast to fly on US carriers between December 19 and January 6, according to trade group Airlines for America (A4A). US airlines are offering 140,000 more seats each day than they did during the 2023 holiday period, A4A added. Orlando, Las Vegas, Cancún, Fort Lauderdale and Honolulu are among the popular destinations. The record Christmas is the closing chapter on a busy year for airlines in the UK and US, and reflects the sustained strong demand for travel since the pandemic ended. Airline bosses believe consumers are prioritising holidays and travel over other discretionary spending, even following several years of high inflation. Still, ticket prices have fallen in many leading markets in 2024, and some airlines including Ryanair, Europe’s largest, reported a drop in profit over the summer.<br/>
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Airport security at Los Angeles International Airport had to call in the bomb squad after x-raying a passenger’s bag to find it was full of prohibited items. The female passenger, hoping to travel to Philadelphia, arrived at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint at Terminal 4 at around 10 pm on December 15. A TSA officer flagged the bag for a check after seeing multiple prohibited items on the x-ray image. When the bag was opened with the passenger present, the TSA officer was shocked to find two replica firearms, three knives and a canister of pepper spray. There were also 82 consumer-grade fireworks which the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad was called in to dispose of. “The sheer number of prohibited items discovered in a single carry-on bag is extremely concerning,” said Jason Pantages, TSA federal security director for LAX. “We are in the midst of the holiday travel season when security checkpoints will be busy everywhere. Let this incident serve as a reminder to all travellers to double-check the contents of your bag prior to coming to the airport.” TSA notified the Los Angeles World Airport police department and LAWA officers responded to the security checkpoint and interviewed the passenger. The LAWA bomb squad also responded and confiscated the fireworks.<br/>
Proposed changes to Canada's passenger rights charter will perpetuate loopholes that allow airlines to forego compensating travellers whose flights are disrupted, say airline experts. Ottawa has proposed an update to rules surrounding airlines' obligations when a flight is delayed or cancelled by designating certain factors outside a carrier's control, such as weather that could affect flight safety, as "exceptional circumstances." Under the amended rules, airlines are still generally not required to provide compensation for inconveniences to passengers in situations involving such factors, though there are some exceptions. But Air Passenger Rights advocacy group president Gabor Lukacs called the weekend announcement of the proposal "deceptive" and said that Transport Canada is actually "preserving the status quo." He said that under the newly outlined rules, which are now open to a 75-day feedback period, around half of flight delays and more than two-thirds of cancellations would still not qualify for compensation. Previously, Canada's passenger rights charter — which took effect in 2019 — divided flight disruptions into three categories: those caused by factors within the carrier’s control, disruptions within the carrier’s control but required for safety purposes, and those outside the airline's control. Passengers had only been entitled to compensation in the first of those categories.<br/>
Alphabet's Google's proposed changes to its search results to comply with EU tech legislation has received the thumbs up from lobbying group Airlines for Europe whose members include Air France KLM and Lufthansa. Google has announced a series of changes in search result formats in recent months following conflicting demands from price-comparison sites, hotels, airlines and small retailers, with the latest tweaks announced last month. It is trying to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which prohibits it from favouring its own products and services on its platform or risk fines as much as 10% of its global annual turnover. "In the spirit of finding a DMA-compliant solution in a timely fashion, the airline industry has shown it is willing to compromise," Airlines for Europe said in a letter to the European Commission dated Dec. 20 and seen by Reuters. The airline group expressed support for the horizontal layout for same sized boxes for airlines and comparison sites in search results as well as the colour blue to distinguish them from other elements. But it said prices displayed in search results should be the same in the graphic as those in the boxes. It also expressed concerns about Google's proposal for a purely indicative date rather than specific dates for consumers looking to book flights. "Characteristics such as dates are an integral part of the general search process of consumers looking for air travel and the switch to a purely indicative date will downgrade their experience significantly," the group.<br/>
Passengers travelling to Belfast City Airport have been making their way home for Christmas despite disruption. The airport reopened to flights on Monday, a day after its runway closed when a plane was damaged in a "hard landing". The plane, operated by Emerald Airlines for Aer Lingus, had travelled from Edinburgh to Belfast with four crew and no passengers on board. A number of flights had been cancelled on Monday morning, with routes affected including those to Birmingham, Leeds Bradford and London City airports. The aircraft had to be recovered from the runway after the emergency incident which began at about 16:00 GMT on Sunday. Pictures from the scene suggest the plane's nose wheel collapsed during landing but no injuries were reported among the onboard crew. The incident is being investigated by the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB). The plane was a positioning flight. This is when nearly-empty planes are flown to the airport of its next flight without any passengers on board. An airport spokesperson said: "Passengers impacted by Sunday's runway closure, or those due to travel today should check the status of their flight with the airline before making their way to the airport."<br/>
Virgin and Qantas both flew services from earthquake-stricken Vanuatu on Sunday after Port Vila reopened its airport. Both carriers operated 737s to Brisbane, with further Virgin and Jetstar aircraft due to depart the capital today. The commercial relief flights came alongside a RAAF Globemaster III and C-130J Hercules working to bring 568 holidaymakers, workers and other returnees back home to Australia. It comes after a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck Port Vila on Tuesday, killing at least 16 people and injuring 200. The relief situation was further complicated by a smaller earthquake hitting the country’s main island on Sunday, though no Tsunami warning was triggered. Australia has already launched a $2m response package, including a 64-person disaster assistance team, while the UN has separately co-ordinated a humanitarian flight to deliver telecoms equipment and medical supplies. “My message to the people of Vanuatu is Australia is here to help,” said Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong. “This immediate package of support will ensure those in urgent need receive lifesaving assistance.” A state of emergency is still in place across the island nation, with a seven-day dusk-to-dawn curfew in parts of Port Vila scheduled to end on 24 December.<br/>
Spilled drinks, crunched laptop screens and crushed knees. A new video shows the reasons why reclining your seat on airplanes morphed from an acceptable practice into a top irritant for many air passengers. The video is part of an ad campaign launched in late November by the furniture company La-Z-Boy, which includes a petition imploring travelers to “Do the upright thing. Don’t recline when you fly.” The petition had more than 186,000 signatures as of Monday, a La-Z-Boy representative told CNBC Travel. The tongue-in-cheek campaign by the company, known for its plush oversized reclining chairs, touches on an increasingly hot-button issue, one stoked by growing passenger sizes and dwindling seat pitches. Unlike drunkenness and hygiene issues — such as clipping fingernails and taking off shoes — which are widely disdained by fellow passengers, opinions on seat reclining mainly fall into two camps: those who say don’t do it, and others who argue the recline button exists for a reason. (A third, more nuanced position deems reclining acceptable on long-haul or night flights.) La-Z-Boy’s campaign places the company firmly in the “never recline” camp, with the petition stating that “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” Another video in the campaign shows how one reclined seat can ripple through the aircraft like falling dominos, eventually ending in the last row of the plane — a row both disliked for lacking the option to recline and lauded for being one of the few spaces in the plane where one can recline with impunity, depending on the aircraft.<br/>
Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd. is making overtures to airlines from Indonesia to Kazakhstan, according to people familiar with the matter, as the planemaker seeks to secure its first international customers for its single-aisle C919 jet. The charm offensive by Comac, as it’s better known, has seen executives hold talks with high-level airline officials including Garuda’s new CEO Wamildan Tsani Panjaitan, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak publicly. Garuda is understood to be in the market for as many as 70 new aircraft and is also talking to Boeing Co. and Airbus SE, the two incumbents that control most of the supply of commercial jets for the global aviation market. The prospects of Comac securing orders for its C919 plane have risen with worsening aircraft delivery delays — exacerbated by supply-chain issues and at Boeing, a production halt due to a major worker strike — as demand for many Boeing and Airbus models are sold out until the end of the decade. Comac has also recently engaged with Kazakhstan’s SCAT Airlines and Angkor Air in Cambodia, and has lobbied the Indonesian government to secure a marque deal, the people said. It was to have a large presence at the Bali International Air Show in September but ultimately didn’t show up, one person said. Representatives for Comac didn’t respond to a request for comment. Garuda, SCAT Airlines and Angkor Air also didn’t respond to requests for comment. Angkor Air counts Chinese company Xing Gang Investment Group as a shareholder. Indonesia represents a big opportunity for Comac and the new administration, led by President Prabowo Subianto, is keen to revitalize Garuda, the nation’s loss-making flag carrier, and expand its international route network, people familiar with the government’s thinking said.<br/>
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg has tapped Ann Schmidt to be chief communications and brand officer in the latest executive appointment since Ortberg took over as CE in August. He announced her appointment on Monday in a memo to employees viewed by Reuters. Schmidt has been the interim head of communications since her predecessor, Brian Besanceney, retired on Oct. 1. In the past five years, several crises - two fatal crashes, safety and quality lapses, criminal investigations, financial losses and a seven-week-long strike - have tarnished the company's legacy. In October, Ortberg told investment analysts that Boeing has lost its iconic status and needs a "fundamental culture change." On Friday, he told employees in a memo that Chief Information Officer Susan Doniz had left the company. Dennis Eng is filling in as interim CIO. Earlier this month, Boeing’s chief lobbyist, Ziad “Z” Ojakli, left the company. In September, the head of Boeing defense, space and security, Ted Colbert, left. The division's COO, Steve Parker, was named to temporarily head BDS.<br/>
A trio of leading US air taxi companies moved forward this week on plans to certificate, manufacture and commercialise a new class of electric aircraft. Leading the charge was Joby Aviation, which said on 20 December that it has entered the final phase of certificating its electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft with the Federal Aviation Administration. Santa Cruz-based Joby said that recent type inspection authorisation (TIA) testing involved FAA pilots “evaluating human factors and safety using Joby’s simulator”, the start- up says. The simulator incorporated an FAA-conforming flight deck, Joby says. The start-up is targeting TIA flight testing in 2025, with its first FAA-conforming aircraft currently being assembled at its facility in Marina, California. “As well as continuing the ‘for credit’ testing of components, aerostructures and systems that is already underway, we are targeting the start of TIA flight testing in 2025 with our first FAA-conforming aircraft, which is currently being built,” says CE JoeBen Bevirt. Earlier this week, Joby said that it had completed for-credit static load testing on its aircraft’s tail structure, the first major aerostructure on Joby’s aircraft to receive the FAA’s blessing.<br/>