International flights into Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong are set to jump in 2025, almost completing the cities’ recoveries to pre-pandemic totals. It’s a different story in the rest of the world as the industry navigates cost-of-living crises, broken supply chains and regional conflicts. Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd.’s services into Shanghai, China’s financial heart, are set to surge 48% to more than 4,000 in the 12 months through November next year, according to airline schedules compiled by Cirium. Air China Ltd., China Southern Airlines Co. and Hainan Airlines Holding Co. are among others planning to operate hundreds more overseas flights into Beijing versus the previous 12 months, the data show. With foreign visitor numbers to China still in the doldrums, Chinese carriers inevitably account for many of the additional international services. More Chinese citizens are venturing overseas and back following a post-Covid domestic travel boom. Meanwhile, international air traffic to established hubs such as London, Dubai and Doha will falter or even reverse next year, the schedules indicate. In New York, the volume of incoming overseas flights will decline in the year through November, the Cirium data show. That would be the first decrease since the pandemic halted global travel in 2020.<br/>
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Police are investigating a Christmas shooting at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix that left three people injured by gunfire and another person stabbed. Phoenix police said the evening shooting happened at around 9:45pm at an airport restaurant that is outside the security checkpoints in Terminal 4. An adult female and two adult males were shot, leaving the female with injuries police describe as life-threatening. The two men were in stable condition and expected to survive, police said in a statement. The man hospitalised with at least one stab wound was in stable condition. The group of people all knew each other and had a physical fight that led to one of them to pull a gun, police said. “I do believe that this was a family dispute that escalated,” Phoenix police Sgt. Mayra Reeson told reporters. After the gunfire, a man and a girl were detained in an airport parking garage nearby. Police did not immediately release information on possible charges. They were still investigating why the group was at the airport, and whether they were traveling or were there for some other reason. The gunfire led to the temporary closure of a security checkpoint in Terminal A, the closure of some restaurants and a pause in service at the terminal's PHX Sky Train station. “Of course this was scary, this was Christmas evening, everybody's trying to get home,” Reeson said.<br/>
Airports in the Russian cities of Moscow and Kaluga temporarily suspended operations on Thursday, with no clear reason given by authorities. The restrictions were later lifted. Operations were temporarily suspended at airports in the Russian capital Moscow and the nearby city of Kaluga, before being lifted a few hours later. The closures were reported by Rosaviatsia, Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency. The four airports affected were Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky. "To ensure the safety of flights of civil aircraft, temporary restrictions have been imposed on the operation of airports Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo, Zhukovsky and Kaluga," stated the agency. Earlier, Kazan International Airport also suspended all flights. Rosaviatsia spokesman Artem Korenyako said that the measures were taken to ensure the safety of civil aircraft flights.<br/>
Canada said on Thursday it was deeply concerned by reports that Russian air defense may have struck the Azerbaijan Airlines flight that crashed on Wednesday, and called on Moscow to allow for an open and transparent investigation into the incident. “Canada is deeply concerned by reports that Russian Air Defence Forces may have fired a missile on Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243 causing it to crash land,” the Canadian foreign ministry said in a statement on X. “We call on Russia to allow for an open and transparent investigation into the incident and to accept its findings,” the ministry said.<br/>
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other UN staff were at Yemen's international airport in Sanaa on Thursday during an Israeli air strike. In a social media post, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he and staff were about to board a plane when the airport came under aerial bombardment. "One of our plane's crew members was injured," he wrote, adding that two people at the airport were killed. The strikes - which also hit power stations and ports - have killed at least three people with more than a dozen injured, according to Houthi-run media. The Iran-backed rebel group described the attacks as "barbaric" after Israel claimed responsibility for the strikes.<br/>
China Eastern Airlines will launch the first commercial cross-border service using the Chinese-made C919 passenger jet between Shanghai and Hong Kong on Jan 1, state media reported on Thursday. Currently, the three big state-owned airlines all operate the C919, the narrow-body jet domestically developed by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), but they only fly within mainland China. The new daily return flights come as China seeks to secure the first international customer for the C919, a jet with the potential to rival the Boeing 737 Max and Airbus A320neo. China Eastern, the first to launch the C919, has a fleet of nine C919s that service various domestic routes.<br/>