London’s Gatwick airport shut down operations Wednesday night after reports of two drones flying over the airfield, a modern-day menace that the aviation industry is struggling to manage. The airport and local police are investigating the incident, Gatwick said in a statement on its twitter account. The closure led to the diversion of more than two dozen incoming flights, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24. Unmanned aerial vehicles and laser pointers are increasingly becoming a safety threat for aircraft, prompting regulators to come up with new rules against operating the devices near airfields. “In the past, trying to skirt around birds was hard enough and now you’ve got a different kind of bird made out of metal or plastic,” said Mohshin Aziz, an aviation analyst at Maybank Investment Bank Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur. “A drone strike is far, far more damaging than a bird strike.” Gatwick is allowed to operate a limited number of services at night, according to its website. On average, the airfield has 45 to 50 flights a night in the summer and 18 to 20 in the winter, it said. London is served by about half a dozen airports.<br/>
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The EU set out short-term measures Wednesday to limit disruption to air traffic, financial services and trade if Britain left the bloc without a deal next March. However, in a sign that a no-deal Brexit would not be business as usual, there would be new checks to currently frictionless trade, which could lead to tail-backs near ports and delays to deliveries. Every shipment of live animals or animal products from Britain would face controls at EU borders and Britons would lose the right to travel with their pets using EU pet passports. The EC, which presented the plans, also warned of higher charges for using credit or debit cards because EU rules limiting such fees would no longer apply. Asked if the European Union was offering Britain a relatively attractive no-deal option, Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told a news conference the measures were simply designed to limit disruption. The Commission's measures cover transport, financial services, customs and border checks, taxation and climate change and will need to be backed by the European Parliament and the 27 countries remaining in the EU. The EU executive proposed allowing British airlines to fly to and from EU airports for 12 months, assuming Britain offered equivalent rights to EU airlines.<br/>
A no-deal Brexit could cause the cancellation of thousands of flights between the UK and the EU next year, because departures would be capped at 2018 levels. Disappointed passengers who thought they had firm bookings to Spain, Portugal, Italy, Croatia, Greece and other destinations could find their tickets cancelled. While the cost would be automatically refunded, they would then need to compete for scarce seats and could face higher fares. The crucial condition in the European legislation reads: “The total seasonal capacity to be provided by UK air carriers for routes between the United Kingdom and each member state shall not exceed the total number of frequencies operated by those carriers on those routes during respectively the IATA winter and summer seasons of the year of 2018.” In other words: the number of flights from the UK to each member state cannot increase from the levels prevailing this summer. If there were 200 weekly flights on UK airlines between Britain and Cyprus in 2018, no British carrier could add departures. Air travel from the UK to the EU was expected to expand significantly next year, with British Airways, easyJet and Jet2 among the British carriers announcing dozens of new routes and increased frequencies, amounting to thousands of extra flights in summer 2019 and the winter season 2019-20.<br/>
A record-breaking 112.5m Americans will travel during the December holiday season, a 4.4% increase over last year, according to AAA predictions. That's more than one-third of all Americans who will be travelling, and it's the highest number since AAA has been tracking holiday travel. For the more than 102m people who are driving, global mobility analytics company INRIX estimates that travel times in the busiest US cities could be as much as four times longer than normal. Those cities include New York City, Washington, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago. AAA Travel says the holiday travel period starts Saturday, December 22, 2018, and ends Tuesday, January 1, 2019. Nearly 46m passengers will travel on US airlines during the airlines' holiday period, a 5.2% increase over 2017, according to Airlines for America, the US airline trade group. The airlines have an expanded definition of that travel time: the 18 days from Thursday, December 20, through Sunday, January 6. "With airfares at historic lows, travellers are choosing to fly on US airlines in record numbers, especially during the busy holiday season," A4A VP John Heimlich said. The airlines expect daily passenger volume to range from 2.1 to 2.9m, with Friday, December 21, Thursday, December 20, and Wednesday, December 26, predicted to be the busiest travel days. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are expected to be the lightest travel days.<br/>
Airfares in the fast-growing Indian market are 10 to 15% lower than breakeven levels for airlines, a Boeing executive said, as the planemaker raised its long-term jet order forecast for the nation to a record despite market challenges. Major Indian carriers Jet Airways, IndiGo and SpiceJet were all in the red in the September quarter as high oil prices, a weak rupee and intense price competition eroded their margins. It is important for the sustainability of the sector that airlines show more discipline in pricing fares, Dinesh Keskar, senior VP, Asia Pacific and India sales at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said Wednesday. “Double-digit growth coupled with losses is what I am concerned about,” he said. “I will forego 2 to 3% growth for making money rather than filling up my airplane at rock-bottom prices and never making money.” To date, however, the lack of profitability has not affected deliveries to Boeing clients, which include cash-strapped Jet Airways and budget carrier SpiceJet, Keskar said. India’s passenger traffic has risen at around 20% in recent years, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets. Boeing expects the country to become the third-largest commercial aviation market by the early 2020s. Boeing sees Indian carriers ordering a record of up to 2,300 new planes worth $320b from global planemakers over the next 20 years to 2037, about 9.5% more than its previous prediction of 2,100 jets until 2036 made last year.<br/>