The US government has slapped economic sanctions on a top Venezuelan aviation official who also heads state-owned airline Conviasa, part of a broader move targeting officials the USA deems as enabling the illegitimate government of president Nicolas Maduro. Conviasa president Ramon Celestino Velasquez Araguayan, who has also been Venezuela’s minister of transportation since May 2023, is among eight Venezuelan officials hit with new US sanctions, the US Department of the Treasury said on 10 January. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls the eight officials “Maduro-aligned individuals supporting Maduro’s illegitimate assertion of authority and repressive acts in Venezuela”. Those officials “lead key economic and security agencies enabling Nicolas Maduro’s repression and subversion of democracy in Venezuela”, adds the Treasury department. The seven other newly sanctioned Venezuelan leaders include the head of the country’s state-owned oil company, a minister of interior policy, and five police and military officials. US citizens are now prohibited from conducting business with those people and from involvement in transactions involving their property.<br/>
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Airbus is expecting to deliver its first Pratt & Whitney-powered A321XLR shortly, to budget carrier Wizz Air, which has 47 on order. Speaking during a briefing on 9 January, commercial aircraft chief Christian Scherer referred to the initial delivery to Iberia in late October and the subsequent handovers to Aer Lingus in December. Both carriers’ XLRs are fitted with CFM International Leap-1A engines. Scherer says the first PW1100G-powered XLR delivery for Wizz Air is “imminent”. The carrier initially selected the Pratt & Whitney engine for its A321neo fleet in 2016. Wizz intends to open a London Gatwick-Jeddah route with the XLR from March this year. Pratt & Whitney parent RTX says 13 customers have chosen the powerplant for a total of 217 A321XLRs. The US FAA certified the engine for the twinjet on 12 December. The XLR was launched “on speculation”, Scherer points out, without orders as a precondition for board approval. Some 500 XLRs have been ordered worldwide since the long-range variant was unveiled at the Paris air show in 2019.<br/>
Latvian carrier Air Baltic has shown off the colour scheme which will feature on its latest Airbus A220-300, delivery of which will bring its fleet of the type to 50. Air Baltic will receive the aircraft (MSN55329, YL-ABX), which underwent 18 days of painting at Montreal Mirabel, in February. The twinjet’s livery was determined by a public design contest in late 2023, with the successful entry drawn from a total of 840. “This striking livery portrays an artistic depiction of a girl soaring through the clouds with long, flowing hair crowned by a traditional wreath and proudly featuring the Latvian flag,” says the airline. “The design also incorporates several other elements that are inspired by the rich heritage and nature of the Baltic region – a ladybird, a swallow, and a stork.” Air Baltic initially ordered 20 of the aircraft and expanded this to 50 in 2018, when the twinjet was still known as the Bombardier CS300. Airbus took over the programme and Air Baltic has since raised its order total to 90. Air Baltic has also expanded its A220 training capabilities – as previously reported by FlightGlobal – with the introduction of a second full-flight simulator at its Riga facility.<br/>
Flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air plane that crashed in South Korea in December, killing 179 people, stopped recording about four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at Muan airport, the transport ministry said. Authorities investigating the disaster, the worst plane crash on South Korean soil, plan to analyse what caused the black boxes to stop recording, the ministry said. The voice recorder was initially analysed in South Korea, and, when data was found to be missing, was then sent to a US National Transportation Safety Board laboratory, the ministry said. The damaged flight data recorder was taken to the US for analysis in cooperation with the US safety regulator, the ministry said. Jeju Air flight 7C2216, which departed the Thai capital, Bangkok, for Muan in south-western South Korea, belly-landed and overshot the regional airport’s runway, exploding into flames after hitting an embankment. The pilots told air traffic control the aircraft had suffered a bird strike and declared an emergency about four minutes before it crashed. Two injured crew members, sitting in the tail section, were rescued. Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, said the discovery of the missing data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggested all power including backup may have been cut, which is rare.<br/>
State-run Pakistan International Airlines resumed direct flights to Europe on Friday following a decision by the European Union’s aviation safety agency to lift a four-year ban over safety standards, officials said. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed the resumption, saying it would help improve the airline’s image. The flight from Islamabad to Paris was fully booked with more than 300 passengers, the airline said. Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif inaugurated the twice-a-week flights and vowed that PIA will expand its operations to other European countries soon. Asif said in a speech that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency had imposed the ban on PIA’s operations to Europe because of an “irresponsible statement” by a former aviation minister. The curb on PIA was imposed in 2020 after 97 people died when a PIA plane crashed in Karachi in southern Pakistan. Then-Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said an investigation into the crash found that nearly a third of Pakistani pilots had cheated on their pilot’s exams. A government probe later concluded that the crash was caused by pilot error.<br/>