One of the biggest things air travellers fear as they drag their suitcases through sprawling airports to check-ins, is that their bags won’t join them at the other end. Bags are mishandled at the rate of 40 per minute, worldwide. So imagine a day, when passengers are freed from that hassle. We’ll still have luggage, but the difference is we won’t be lugging it around ourselves. Susan Baer, an international aviation consultant, said she believes that day is not that far off. Baer sees someone, perhaps working for Uber or TaskRabbit, arriving at your home on the day you’re travelling. They take your bag to the airport, put it on a flight, or perhaps use FedEx or UPS to get it to your destination. The biggest challenge is whether regulators will be comfortable letting the bags leave our sides. <br/>
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Intelligence agencies should support an EU effort to provide airlines with more timely information about the risk from flights near war zones, a task force set up in the wake of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine said Thursday. The panel also called for EASA to set up a system for sharing information on flying near conflict zones. It would contain threat information or EU risk assessments and try to address shortcomings that the panel found with a similar UN-backed information dissemination effort. Airlines should use the information to formulate their flight plans and share their own risk assessments with their national authorities and, ideally, with the European network, the European task force said. <br/>
Boeing and Airbus say they expect Indian carriers to order up to 1740 aircraft over the next 20 years, as manufacturers eye one of the world's fastest-growing aviation markets to offset any weaker sales elsewhere. Boeing said falling fuel prices, increasing numbers of Indians wealthy enough to travel by air and improved airport infrastructure would boost orders. The company expects airlines to buy 1740 planes worth US$240b by 2034, its senior VP for Asia-Pacific and India sales said. Airbus, at the same event, said it forecasts India will require more than 1,600 passenger and freight aircraft, three-quarters of them narrow-body jets, over the next 20 years, offering $224b worth of business. Aircraft executives are looking to India to support sales after global economic uncertainty overshadowed recent aviation shows in Singapore and Dubai. <br/>