unaligned

Hazmat-clad officials rushed on board a Ryanair flight moments before it departed from London Stansted to remove a passenger who had tested positive for coronavirus. On Wednesday night, a passenger received a text from test and trace minutes before departure informing him that he had Covid-19. He and the passenger he was travelling with were then taken off the plane before it was due to fly to Pisa in Italy. The pair were moved to the airport’s isolation area, where they were met by health authorities. Their seats and the overhead cabin bins were then disinfected, with the plane finally leaving over an hour behind schedule. Ryanair said: “The passenger and his travel companion were immediately offloaded and taken to a Stansted airport isolation area where they were assisted by local public health authorities. Since this passenger and his companion had complied fully with Ryanair health regulations, they were both wearing masks at all times at Stansted Airport and for the very short period (less than 10 minutes) they were seated on the aircraft prior to departure. There was little if any risk of Covid-19 transmission to other passengers or crew members as all of whom were also wearing face masks at all times."<br/>

Virgin Atlantic will in December start services between Britain and Pakistan, where local airlines face a ban on flying to most European destinations due to a scandal over unqualified pilots. Virgi said its flights will go on sale next month, becoming the second western carrier after British Airways to serve destinations in the country. “We’re thrilled to announce that from December, we’ll be flying direct to Pakistan,” said a tweet from Virgin, whose trade creditors on Tuesday voted in favour of a GBP1.2b rescue plan. “We’ll have flights from Heathrow to both Lahore and Islamabad, plus direct service from Manchester to Islamabad,” the tweet said. Pakistan grounded 262 pilots for “dubious” qualifications late June, prompted by a preliminary report into a crash in Karachi in May that found the pilots didn’t follow standard procedures and disregarded alarms. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency banned two Pakistani airlines from flying to the bloc for six months, while Britain and the US have also revoked landing rights for PIA. The ban has given openings to players like Virgin to vie with PIA on some of the world’s most lucrative routes, though PIA has resumed flights to the UK using a plane leased from Portugal-based Hi Fly.<br/>

Israel’s government has asked the country’s airlines to submit bids for a special flight to carry an Israeli delegation and top aides to U.S. President Donald Trump to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) next week, an aviation source said on Thursday. Israel and the UAE agreed to normalise relations under a U.S.-brokered deal announced on Aug. 13, and talks on cementing the agreement are due to be held on Monday in Abu Dhabi. El Al and smaller rival Israir both submitted bids for what would be the first flight by an Israeli commercial carrier to the Gulf state, the source said, and a decision is expected later on Thursday.<br/>

WestJet is taking tough new measures beginning next week against passengers who refuse to comply with federal masking rules on flights. The airline says it will go as far as booting passengers off flights who consistently refuse to wear a mask or face covering while on board. "If the plane has not left the ... [ground] and somebody refused to wear a mask, we will return to the gate," WestJet president and CEO Ed Sims said. Sims said in "extreme circumstances" — if passengers continue to ignore masking rules — the plane will turn around and return to its point of origin. Transport Canada requires everyone over the age of two wear a mask on board all flights. A recent order added that only those with an official doctor's note are exempt from mandatory masking. WestJet says it hopes to avoid the extreme measures of ejecting non-compliant passengers seen with increasingly regularity on US carriers. "I have an obligation and a duty of care to our staff," Sims said. "I also have an obligation to every other guest. So my focus is on the 99 per cent of guests who continue to wear masks."<br/>

A British-Israeli woman is suing easyJet after the low-cost airline asked her to move seats on a flight from Tel Aviv to London following objections from strictly-Orthodox Jewish men who refused to sit next to a female passenger. Melanie Wolfson, 38, is claiming 66,438 shekels (almost GBP15,000) compensation in a lawsuit filed on her behalf by the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), which won a similar case in 2017 brought against El Al. Wolfson, a professional fundraiser who moved to Israel 13 years ago and lives in Tel Aviv, is also asking that easyJet bans its cabin crew from asking women to switch seats because of their gender. According to the lawsuit, Wolfson paid extra for an aisle seat on her flight last October. A strictly-Orthodox man and his son, who were sitting in the row when she arrived, asked Wolfson to switch seats with a man a few rows ahead. Wolfson says she was “insulted and humiliated” by the request. “It was the first time in my adult life that I was discriminated against for being a woman,” she said. “I would not have had any problem whatsoever switching seats if it were to allow members of a family or friends to sit together, but the fact that I was being asked to do this because I was a woman was why I refused.”<br/>