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Airways break up on whether or not to require workers to get Covid photographs

Airlines split on whether to require employees to get Covid shots

A Southwest Airlines jet lands at Midway International Airport in Chicago, Illinois on January 28, 2021.

Scott Olson | Getty Images

U.S. airlines are increasingly divided over whether their flight attendants, pilots and other employees should be vaccinated against Covid-19.

United Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines announced this month that their U.S. employees, a total of around 73,000 people, will need to be vaccinated against the virus. Alaska Airlines is considering a similar mandate for its 20,000 or so employees if the Food and Drug Administration grants full approval to one of the vaccines, a move expected next month.

Other airlines, including Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue Airways, have repeatedly said that they are encouraging but do not require staff to be vaccinated. However, Delta Air Lines requires that new employees be vaccinated.

Pilot unions for these airlines say vaccines should remain voluntary for their members. Following announcements by United and Hawaiian, airline unions that do not require vaccines said pilots expressed concern about what would happen if their airlines followed suit.

Delta variant

The concerns highlight potential challenges carriers could face in also mandating vaccinations. The airlines are all struggling with the recent increase in Covid cases in the US, as the Delta variant prevails and weighs on the demand for air travel – just as the ailing industry began to gain a foothold again.

More than a dozen large US companies have prescribed Covid vaccines for some or all of their employees.

A mandate “could bring an airline into conflict with its unions,” said Ben Baldanza, former CEO of Spirit Airlines.

However, higher Covid cases could affect airline reliability if enough employees are sick, at a time when they are already few and far between.

“You don’t want to touch the third rail, but you want to make sure you have an operation,” said Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former airline manager.

The latest announcements of vaccine mandates or their lack of vaccine mandates by the airlines have received criticism and praise from both sides on social media. Baldanza said he doesn’t think vaccine status will be a determining factor in booking flights.

Infections are increasing

At the same time, some unions argue that airlines could do more to boost vaccination rates, or urge pilots to use incentives such as extra vaccination time off, especially as the fast-spreading Delta variant is driving the new Covid-19 infections.

The Allied Pilots Association, which represents about 15,000 pilots at American Airlines on Thursday, told members that weekly cases of Covid-19 among pilots have hit an “all-time high,” rising to 36 in the first week of August, double that number as before three weeks earlier.

According to the union, five pilots were hospitalized for Covid-19 on August 12.

“It’s worth noting that none of these pilots have been vaccinated against the virus,” the union’s aero-medical group said.

About 60% of American Airlines pilots are vaccinated, according to a union announcement earlier this month. More than 90% of United pilots are vaccinated, the airline said. United previously offered flight attendants and pilots incentives to get vaccinated.

Encouraging, not demanding

Southwest Airlines reiterated to staff last week that it has not changed its stance on encouraging, but not requiring, staff to be vaccinated.

But Southwest Airlines Pilots Association president Casey Murray last week called on the company to discuss its vaccine plans and stated in a letter to the airline that its current policy is “obviously not set in stone”.

Murray told CNBC that some pilots have told the union that they are concerned about possible side effects from the gunshots, including long-term side effects that may take a while to show up and subsequent loss of paid sick leave or even their medical clearance issued to the Flying is required. The Senior Medical Advisor to the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that “almost all” long-term vaccine side effects occur within the first two months of being vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Murray said the number of Covid cases among pilots is increasing but declined to provide numbers.

Corporate incentives

He said the company should establish guidelines and incentives that could include paying a federally mandated 48-hour wait for pilots to fly before they can fly after each dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

“Talking to the company will go a long way towards allaying those fears,” he said.

Murray noted in his letter that Southwest did not offer pilots incentives to vaccinate as Delta, American, and United did, such as extra time off or extra pay. Offering around $ 15 worth of points on an internal platform was “undoubtedly less effective than the real incentives negotiated by the other airlines with their unions,” he wrote to the company, according to a person familiar with the matter .

“Now that we are facing the escalation of the Delta variant crisis, this will prove significant,” he said.

Ed Bastian, Delta CEO, said last week a vaccine mandate would likely not increase vaccine rates, which he believes already account for about 75% of the company’s roughly 75,000 employees. He said five to ten percent of employees likely have a medical or religious exception for a vaccine.

Voluntary vaccinations

The Atlanta-based airline announced to the Air Line Pilots Association last week of its intention to keep vaccines voluntary, according to a union memo.

“We understand that Covid vaccinations have become an emotional issue,” said the pilots union. “Although an overwhelming majority of the pilot group chose the Covid vaccine, please don’t let this issue become a distraction on the flight deck.”

JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes said the New York airline is “reviewing” a vaccination mandate and debating with unions and employees, but the company is “right now” strongly encouraging employees to get vaccinated.

“I think it’s better that people get vaccinated because they want to get vaccinated,” Hayes said in an interview last week. “I think once the US government [fully] approved [the vaccines]”I think that will bring a huge increase in the number of people being vaccinated.” Pfizer and Moderna both received conditional approval to distribute their vaccines in an emergency in December, pending full approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Pfizer’s Covid vaccine is expected to receive full approval in a few weeks.

The union that represents the JetBlue pilots said: “We are certainly all ready for the COVID-19 pandemic to come to an end, but there shouldn’t be any rash decisions that affect our pilots and their ability to make private medical decisions with theirs Meeting healthcare providers, potentially compromising consultation, “the Air Line Pilots Association’s JetBlue chapter wrote to members last week.

Frontier Airlines said its employees who refuse to be vaccinated would instead have to test regularly for Covid. United, on the other hand, said employees will be fired if they refuse to get the syringes, although there are exceptions for medical or religious reasons.

More incentives

Mike Klemm, president of the International Association of Machinists District 141, which, among other things, represents around 28,000 customer and ramp service employees at United, estimates that around a third of them are rejecting the mandate.

“That 35% is much louder than the 65%,” he said, adding that while United asked for a lawsuit against the company, it was “in their legal right.”

United is offering a day off for vaccinated workers, but Klemm said it should offer more.

“If they increased the incentive, more people would be attracted to get the vaccine,” he said. “I understand what the company is trying to do, but they should have just given incentives … instead of intimidating people.”

United CEO Scott Kirby told CNN last week that most of the feedback he has received from employees on the move has been positive.

“It’s a highly explosive decision,” said aeronautical advisor Mann. “One way or another, you invite criticism.”

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Alaska Airways is contemplating Covid vaccine mandates for workers

Alaska Airlines is considering Covid vaccine mandates for staff

Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 taking off from LAX.

PG | Getty Images

Alaska Airlines announced Wednesday that it is considering making Covid-19 vaccines mandatory for employees, according to a company memo that CNBC viewed.

The policy change would make the Seattle-based airline the newest airline to require vaccines for its employees. On Friday, United Airlines became the first major US airline to require vaccines for its employees. Frontier Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines have since issued similar requirements.

Alaska, which has about 20,000 employees, said if it did make vaccines mandatory it would after the Food and Drug Administration fully approved one of the vaccines currently available under emergency approval.

Airline executives recently raised concerns about the rapidly spreading Delta variant of Covid. Southwest Airlines lowered its revenue and profit forecasts on Wednesday and made the spread of the variant due to weaker bookings and increased cancellations.

Delta, Southwest, and American have encouraged, but not mandated, employee vaccination.

“As an employer with a duty to protect you, and given the contagion and health risks of the COVID-19 virus and its variants, we have the right to make that decision and ask you for information about your vaccine status,” Alaska employees said . It was said that there would be exemptions for religious or medical reasons, similar to other companies.

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Airways shares, Boeing tumble amid uptick in Covid circumstances

Airline, travel stocks slip after U.S. recommends pause in J&J Covid vaccine

Passengers board an American Airlines flight at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia on April 11, 2021.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

The demand for travel has risen sharply since spring. Delta and American both saw positive outlook thanks to a jump booking last week. The Transportation Security Administration screened nearly 2.23 million people at U.S. airports on Sunday, most since February 28, 2020, weeks before the World Health Organization declared Covid a pandemic.

But concerns about the rapidly spreading Delta variant of Covid, now the dominant variety in the US, weighed on the market across the board on Monday. Travel stocks, which are sensitive to the number of cases and related restrictions, fell more sharply than other sectors.

The trend also raises questions about international travel. International and business travel were largely missed in the recent rebound in airline bookings, although executives said earlier this month that they have started to rebound. The United States still bans most non-US citizens from entering the European Union, the United Kingdom, India, and other nations, despite the travel industry’s repeated pushing for the Biden government to lift some of these rules.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Monday urged individuals to “avoid traveling to the UK” and raised their recommendation to “Level 4,” the agency’s highest. It was said that if people have to travel there they should be fully vaccinated.

Some pandemic rules are returning due to the increase in cases. The Los Angeles District reintroduced a mask mandate for indoor use last week, including for people who have been vaccinated, as the number of Covid-19 cases has increased there. The Southern Nevada Health District, which includes Las Vegas, also urges everyone to wear masks indoors as cases increase across the state.

According to a CNBC analysis of the data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, cases in the United States rose about 66% over the past week to a seven-day average of about 32,300 new cases per day.

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United Airways Desires to Carry Again Supersonic Air Journey

United Airlines Wants to Bring Back Supersonic Air Travel

The era of supersonic commercial flights came to an end when the Concorde completed its last trip between New York and London in 2003, but the allure of ultrafast air travel never quite died out.

President Biden mused about supersonic flights when discussing his infrastructure plan in April. And on Thursday, United Airlines said it was ordering 15 jets that can travel faster than the speed of sound from Boom Supersonic, a start-up in Denver. The airline said it had an option to increase its order by up to 35 planes.

Boom, which has raised $270 million from venture capital firms and other investors, said it planned to introduce aircraft in 2025 and start flight tests in 2026. It expects the plane, which it calls the Overture, to carry passengers before the end of the decade.

But the start-up’s plans have already slipped at least once, and it will have to overcome many obstacles, including securing approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and regulators in other countries. Even established manufacturers have stumbled when introducing new or redesigned planes. Boeing’s 737 Max was grounded for nearly two years after two crashes.

The deal is United’s latest attempt to position itself as a risk taker shaking up an industry that is just getting back on its feet after a devastating pandemic. The airline announced a $20 million investment in an electric air taxi start-up, Archer, in February, and it is working on a “steady drumbeat” of more such bets, said Michael Leskinen, who heads corporate development at United.

“We are really confident in the future,” Mr. Leskinen said. “Aerospace takes a long time to innovate. And so if you don’t start setting these opportunities out now, you will have missed them.”

United and Boom would not disclose financial details, including the cost of each plane, but Mr. Leskinen said the economics should be about the same as a new Boeing 787, a wide-body plane that airlines typically use on international routes. United has committed to buying the planes if Boom manages to produce them, secure regulatory approvals and hit other targets, like meeting its sustainability requirements.

Boom also plans to make planes for Japan Airlines, an investor in the company.

What is not clear is whether Boom has solved the problems that forced British Airways and Air France to stop using the Concorde on trans-Atlantic flights — high costs, safety concerns and flagging demand.

“There was no airline interest,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and consultant, said about why supersonic flights languished. “And a big part of the lack of airline interest was there were no engines that were commercially available that would allow a supersonic jet to be economically viable.”

Two decades later, some start-up companies, including Boom and Spike Aerospace, are pushing ahead with new designs and plans.

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June 2, 2021, 4:35 p.m. ET

Boom, which is working with Rolls-Royce, the British jet engine maker, said its plane would be more efficient than the Concorde; United estimates it will be 75 percent more efficient. Boom’s planes will not be as noisy as the Concorde because their engines will create a sonic boom only when flying over water “when there’s no one to hear it,” said Boom’s chief executive, Blake Scholl, who previously worked at Amazon and Groupon.

In recent years, many people have also grown increasingly concerned about air travel’s contribution to climate change. Supersonic jets are expected to use more fuel than regular jets per passenger per mile, according to experts.

Mr. Scholl said the engines on Boom’s planes would rely entirely on sustainable aviation fuel, which can be made from waste, plants and other organic matter. Experts say such fuel could reduce emissions, but its supply is limited, it is expensive and its use does not eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

United said it was too early to know how much it would charge for the flights, which it would run out of its hubs in Newark and San Francisco to start. But another big question mark about the plane is how many people will be willing to spend the thousands of dollars that each ticket on a supersonic flight is likely to cost.

United has long focused on business travelers, including by adding flights to Israel, China and other destinations popular with executives and by offering more business class seats on its planes. Mr. Leskinen called the idea of supersonic travel a “really powerful tool for business.”

“You can have a business meeting and still be home to have dinner with your family,” he said.

But corporate and international travel is expected to rebound slowly from the pandemic, and some experts say it might not recover fully for years because companies have realized that they can be effective without as many in-person meetings.

“The key to the success of supersonic transportation is the overlooked, underappreciated corporate travel manager, who is probably relegated to one of the worst offices in his or her company — and his primary task is to minimize corporate spending on business travel,” said Mr. Harteveldt.

If flights save a third of the travel time but also cost a third more, travel managers may end up saying, “I don’t know if we can justify that,” he said.

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2 Airways Will Postpone Serving Alcohol Amid Surge of In-Flight Violence

2 Airlines Will Postpone Serving Alcohol Amid Surge of In-Flight Violence

Two major airlines, American and Southwest, have postponed plans to resume serving alcohol on flights in an effort to stop a surge of unruly and sometimes violent behavior by passengers who have shoved, struck and yelled at flight attendants.

Both airlines announced the policies this week after the latest assault was captured on a widely watched video that showed a woman punching a flight attendant in the face on a Southwest Airlines flight from Sacramento to San Diego on Sunday.

The flight attendant lost two teeth in the assault, according to her union, and the passenger, who was identified by the police as Vyvianna Quinonez, 28, has been charged with battery causing serious bodily injury. She has also been barred for life from flying Southwest, the airline said.

It was not immediately clear if Ms. Quinonez had a lawyer, and she did not respond on Saturday to messages left at a number listed under her name.

Since Jan. 1, the Federal Aviation Administration has received about 2,500 reports of unruly behavior by passengers, including about 1,900 reports of passengers refusing to comply with a federal mandate that they wear masks on planes.

The agency said that in the past it did not track reports of unruly passengers because the numbers had been fairly consistent over the years, but that it began receiving reports of a “significant increase” in disruptive behavior starting in late 2020.

“We have just never seen anything like this,” Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said during an online meeting with federal aviation officials on Wednesday. “We’ve never seen it so bad.”

Southwest Airlines issued a statement on Friday citing the “recent uptick industrywide of incidents in-flight involving disruptive passengers” as it announced that it had paused plans to resume serving alcohol on flights.

“We realize this decision will be disappointing for some customers, but we feel it to be the right decision now in the interest of safety and comfort of all onboard,” the statement said.

American Airlines announced a similar policy on Saturday.

It said that alcohol sales, which had been suspended in the main cabin since late March 2020, would remain suspended through Sept. 13, when a federal mandate requiring passengers to wear masks on airplanes, buses and trains is set to expire.

In a memo, American said it recognized that “alcohol can contribute to atypical behavior from customers onboard and we owe it to our crew not to potentially exacerbate what can already be a new and stressful situation for our customers.”

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May 28, 2021, 12:54 p.m. ET

“Over the past week we’ve seen some of these stressors create deeply disturbing situations on board aircraft,” said the memo, which was issued to American’s flight attendants on Saturday. “Let me be clear: American Airlines will not tolerate assault or mistreatment of our crews.”

American said that alcohol would continue to be served in first class and business class, but only during the flight and not before departure.

The changes came after Lyn Montgomery, the president of Transport Workers Union Local 556, which represents flight attendants on Southwest Airlines, urged the airline’s chief executive, Gary Kelly, to stop the “abuse” employees have been facing.

“We ask that you take a strong stance to ensure that unruly passengers are not welcome to travel with us, period, full stop,” she wrote in a letter to Mr. Kelly on Monday. “Flight crews must feel safe and supported when reporting to work.”

The changes also came after the F.A.A. said on Monday that it had proposed fines of $9,000 to $15,000 for five passengers who had exhibited disruptive behavior on flights.

One of those passengers was in the main cabin of a JetBlue flight in February. She yelled obscenities and pushed a flight attendant who took away champagne and food that had been brought to her by a passenger in first class, the F.A.A. said.

Another passenger on a JetBlue flight in January ignored instructions to stop drinking alcohol and yelled at crew members after they told him to stop talking on his cellphone, the agency said.

In January, a passenger on Alaska Airlines shoved a flight attendant who was walking down the aisle and documenting which passengers were wearing masks, the F.A.A. said.

Steve Dickson, the F.A.A. administrator, said in a videotaped statement that the agency has a “zero-tolerance policy” for passengers who cause disturbances on flights or fail to obey instructions from the flight crew.

Passengers, regardless of their vaccination status, must wear masks on planes and in airports, he said.

“But this isn’t just about face masks,” Mr. Dickson said. “We’ve seen incidents related to alcohol, violence toward flight attendants and abusive behavior in general.”

Those who violate the rules, he said, may be subject to fines and jail time. As a former commercial airline captain, Mr. Dickson said, he knows that disruptive passengers can pose a safety risk.

“Flying is the safest mode of transportation,” he said, “and we intend to keep it that way.”

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Flying and Local weather: Airways Below Stress to Lower Emissions

Flying and Climate: Airlines Under Pressure to Cut Emissions

The worst of the pandemic may be over for airlines, but the industry faces another looming crisis: an accounting over its contribution to climate change.

The industry is under increasing pressure to do something to reduce and eventually eliminate emissions from travel, but it won’t be easy. Some solutions, like hydrogen fuel cells, are promising, but it’s unclear when they will be available, if ever. That leaves companies with few options: They can make tweaks to squeeze out efficiencies, wait for technology to improve or invest today to help make viable options for the future.

“It’s a big crisis, it’s a pressing crisis — a lot needs to be done soon,” said Jagoda Egeland, an aviation policy expert at the International Transport Forum, a unit of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “It’s a hard-to-abate sector. It will always emit some carbon.”

Experts say commercial air travel accounts for about 3 to 4 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. And while planes become more efficient with each new model, growing demand for flights is outpacing those advancements. The United Nations expects airplane emissions of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, to triple by 2050. Researchers at the International Council on Clean Transportation say emissions may grow even faster.

Before the pandemic, a “flying shame” movement, which aims to discourage air travel in favor of greener options like rail, was gaining ground globally thanks to Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate activist. There were early signs that it may have reduced air travel in Germany and Sweden. Now French lawmakers are considering a ban on short flights that can be replaced by train travel.

Investors are pushing businesses to disclose more about their efforts to lobby lawmakers on climate issues, too. And some large corporations, whose employees crisscross the globe and fill plush business class seats, are reviewing travel budgets to reduce expenses and emissions.

The urgency isn’t lost on the industry. Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, speaks often about the need to address climate change, but even he acknowledges that it will be difficult for the industry to clean up its act. He wants United and other airlines to try different things and see what works.

“It is the biggest long-term issue that our generation faces. It is the biggest risk to the globe,” Mr. Kirby said in a recent interview. “There are plenty of things we can compete on, but we all ought to be trying to make a difference on climate change.”

There are efforts to electrify small planes for short flights — including one backed by United — but doing the same for longer, larger flights will be tough, maybe impossible. Commercial planes like the Boeing 787 and Airbus A320, which can carry a few hundred passengers, require an immense amount of energy to reach cruising altitude — more energy than modern batteries can efficiently supply.

Someday, hydrogen fuel cells and synthetic jet fuel could help to decarbonize the industry, and pilot projects have already begun, mainly in Europe, where Airbus says it plans to build a zero-emission aircraft by 2035. Boeing has put its emphasis on developing more fuel-efficient planes and is committed to ensuring that all of its commercial planes can fly exclusively on “sustainable” jet fuel made from waste, plants and other organic matter.

At a petrochemical plant outside Houston, Neste U.S. and Texmark Chemicals are converting imported undistilled diesel into renewable jet fuels. The undistilled diesel is made from used cooking oil and waste from vegetable and animal processing plants.

Neste, a Finnish company, is the world’s largest producer of renewable jet fuel. Its U.S. customers include American Airlines, JetBlue and Delta Air Lines.

United, which buys renewable jet fuel from Fulcrum BioEnergy and World Energy, recently announced a deal with more than a dozen major corporate customers, including Deloitte, HP and Nike, that will result in the airline’s buying about 3.4 million gallons of sustainable fuel this year. American has an agreement to buy nine million gallons of such fuel over several years, and Delta says it plans to replace a tenth of its jet fuel with sustainable alternatives by 2030.

“There is huge growth potential for sustainable aviation fuel,” said Jeremy Baines, president of Neste U.S. “It’s a niche market today, but it’s growing very rapidly. Between today and 2023 we are going to increase our production at least 15-fold.”

Neste produces 35 million gallons of renewable aviation fuel and hopes to reach 515 million gallons annually by the end of 2023 by ramping up production at refineries in Singapore and Rotterdam, the Netherlands. That is enough to fuel close to 40,000 flights by wide-body aircraft between New York and London, or well over a year’s worth of prepandemic air travel between the two cities.

But it is important to put those numbers in perspective. U.S. airlines used more than 18 billion gallons of fuel in 2019, and the country as a whole consumes more than 100 billion gallons of petroleum products annually.

Rystad Energy, a Norwegian consulting firm, predicts that renewable fuels will become increasingly economical after 2030 and supply 30 percent of all aviation fuel by 2050. But IHS Markit, a U.S. consulting firm, estimates that sustainable jet fuel will make up only 15 percent of all jet fuel by 2050.

Renewable jet fuel has its limits, too. The fuel reduces carbon emissions by only 30 percent to 50 percent compared with conventional jet fuel, according to Daniel Evans, the global head of refining and marketing at IHS Markit. What’s more, production of the fuel can cause deforestation when the raw materials are farmed.

Some companies want to get around those problems by avoiding agricultural crops. Fulcrum, in which United is invested, is planning to build a plant in Britain to produce jet fuel out of waste from landfills and other trash. Red Rock Biofuels, a Colorado company, hopes to use waste woody biomass.

But development of renewable fuels from waste or substances like fast-growing algae and switch grass has been frustratingly slow.

“It’s going to be a real stretch,” Mr. Evans said. “Even if you are burning 100 percent biofuel, it’s still not going to be getting you to carbon neutral.”

Biofuels are also about 50 percent more expensive to make than conventional fuel, according to Michael E. Webber, chief science and technology officer of Engie, a French utility working on advanced jet fuels.

Hydrogen offers another possibility, although probably not for several decades. Instead of batteries or fuel engines, the potential hydrogen-powered aircraft of the future would operate with hydrogen tanks and fuel cells, though the technology would need to be advanced to reduce the size of the tanks and cells. The hydrogen could be made with renewable power sources like the wind and sun to reduce planet-warming emissions. But such fuels cost two to three times more than conventional fuel, experts say.

Several European countries also require refiners to produce and blend renewable jet fuel. The European Union is financially supporting Airbus’s development of a hydrogen-fueled aircraft, and the French government is encouraging Air France to research a synthetic jet fuel.

In the United States, federal support is minimal, so far. Renewable jet fuel producers receive a $1 per gallon subsidy under existing federal tax credits for biodiesel, but a bill introduced this month in the House would provide a tax credit starting at $1.5 per gallon.

Another option that many airlines have turned to is carbon offsets. By buying an offset, a company or individual effectively pays somebody else to plant or not cut trees or to take other steps to reduce greenhouse gases.

But the benefits of some offsets are difficult to measure — it’s hard to know, for example, whether landowners would have cut down trees had they not been paid to preserve woods, a common type of offset. Mr. Kirby, the United chief executive, is skeptical that such offsets are effective.

“Traditional carbon offsets are a marketing initiative; they’re greenwashing,” he said. “Even in the few cases where they are real and are making a difference, they’re just so small that they can’t scale to solve the global problem.”

United helps passengers and corporate customers buy offsets, but Mr. Kirby said the company was focusing more on sustainable fuel and removing and storing carbon in perpetuity.

In December, the airline said it was investing in 1PointFive, a joint venture between Occidental Petroleum and a private equity firm that plans to build plants that suck carbon dioxide from the air and store the gas deep underground. This approach would theoretically allow United and other airlines to remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as their planes put into it.

“It’s the only solution I know of that can help get us as a globe to zero, because the others, if you understand the math, they just don’t work,” Mr. Kirby said.

Such efforts had long been dismissed as impractical, but corporations are increasingly pouring money into them as investors and activists pressure businesses to decarbonize. Mr. Kirby said such investments would help to drive down costs. But some experts warn that while direct air capture can help industries that are difficult to decarbonize, the ultimate aim should be to attack the problem at the source.

“If you can avoid the emissions in the first place, it’s so much cheaper and easier than having to pull it back out,” said Jennifer Wilcox, an Energy Department official and expert on direct air capture.

Despite the formidable challenges, Mr. Kirby is optimistic that investments in alternative fuels and carbon capture technology will yield a breakthrough.

“In the near term, it’s about getting them to work economically,” he said. “Once you cross that threshold, you will have an exponential increase.”

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Airways begin repairing Boeing 737 Max planes grounded by electrical drawback

Airlines start repairing Boeing 737 Max planes grounded by electrical problem

United Airlines aircraft, including a Boeing 737 MAX 9 model, are pictured at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas on March 18, 2019.

Loren Elliott | Reuters

Boeing announced Thursday that shipments of 737 Max planes would resume “within a week” after federal officials approved a fix to an electrical problem while US airlines begin repairing dozen of grounded jets.

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared the repair of the manufacturing defect that put more than 100 aircraft into service last month.

Boeing had halted shipments of Max planes it had already manufactured to solve the problem. This has been the company’s most recent obstacle in generating much-needed money.

Boeing stock closed 0.8% after briefly rising to session highs of more than 3%.

The Max planes were on the ground worldwide for 20 months until last November after two fatal crashes. The electrical problem has nothing to do with issues that resulted in the grounding after the crashes between March 2019 and November 2020.

The airlines have been keen to get the planes back in service to meet the resurgent demand for travel as more and more customers are vaccinated against Covid-19 and the attractions reopen.

United Airlines has begun repairs to the aircraft and expects the 17 affected Max jets “to be put back into service in the coming days when we complete our inspection process and ensure that these aircraft meet our strict safety standards”. The Chicago-based airline has a total of 30 Maxes in its fleet.

American Airlines has also started repairs and expects its 18 Max planes that need to be repaired to be back in service in the next few days. Southwest Airlines said work on each aircraft will take two to three days and that “it will take about three weeks to complete compliance work”.

The Dallas-based Southwest has 32 Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft that were grounded last month out of a total fleet of 64.

The FAA announced April 29 that it is investigating how the electrical problem occurred. Officials said the manufacturing flaw that occurred after a design change in 2019 resulted in inadequate electrical grounding in some areas of the cockpit, which could ultimately affect systems such as engine ice protection if left unchecked.

The agency also said it is reviewing the Boeing process for minor design changes.

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Pipeline outage forces airways to think about different gasoline provides

Pipeline outage forces airlines to consider other fuel supplies

Holding tanks can be seen in the Charlotte Airport Delivery Facility of Colonial Pipeline in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, an undated photo.

Colonial pipeline | via Reuters

The cyberattack that forced the shutdown of the largest refined fuel pipeline in the country over the weekend triggered some route changes for American Airlines as it aims to save fuel at its second largest hub.

Colonial Pipeline Co., which operates the 5,500-mile-long pipeline from Houston, Texas, to Linden, New Jersey, has a goal of resuming operations by the end of the week but said the process would be gradual. According to the company, the pipeline serves seven airports directly.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which is the busiest for Delta Air Lines, said it is reviewing other fuel suppliers but operations are not affected.

“Hartsfield-Jackson and its airline partners are in close communication with fuel suppliers and are taking steps to mitigate the effects of the colonial incident,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “ATL is currently coordinating with other suppliers to increase the airport’s fuel inventory.”

Delta declined to comment on the pipeline failure.

American Airlines said in a statement that the impact of the outage on its operations has so far been minor. Stopovers will be added for two long-haul flights from Charlotte Douglas Airport, the airline announced on Monday. A non-stop trip to Honolulu will stop at Dallas-Fort Worth International, where the fuel supply has not been interrupted. Customers there will convert their aircraft to a Boeing 777-300 to fly on to Hawaii.

A flight from Charlotte to London will stop in Boston for extra fuel. The changes are effective at least until May 14th.

Southwest Airlines flies extra-fuel aircraft at airports such as Nashville International Airport “to supplement local supplies.” Airlines can load more fuel on planes than is normally needed to avoid or reduce the need to refuel on the ground when supplies are limited.

“We are pleased to announce that Southwest’s operations have no impact,” said a spokesman.

American is also considering moving or refueling fuel at airports affected by the shortage, according to someone familiar with the matter.

United Airlines said it is working with airports “to understand the impact and our operations are not currently affected”.

Analysts have said the impact on the supply of jet fuel and other refined products like gasoline will depend on how long the outage lasts, especially as Memorial Day weekend approaches.

“We could probably do inventory for a week and then the problem would become acute,” said Rick Joswick, global head of oil analysis at S&P Global Platts. “Hopefully this will be resolved by then.”

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Airways may gain advantage when the E.U. eases restrictions on journey.

Airlines could benefit when the E.U. eases restrictions on travel.

US airlines have been empowered with the return of customers looking to travel within or outside of its borders. However, the country’s largest airlines continue to lament the loss of two particularly lucrative businesses: international travel and business travel. At least one of them could recover this summer.

In an interview with the New York Times over the weekend, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said she expected the European Union to ease travel restrictions on vaccinated American tourists, which could allow the aviation industry to make money at its busiest Travel season of the year.

“International long-haul aviation represents a significant opportunity for United,” United Airlines chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella told investors last week. “We have seen in the past few weeks that immediately after a country provides evidence of a vaccine, recreational demand quickly returns to 2019 levels.”

American Airlines and United earlier this month announced that international travel remained roughly 80 percent lower than in 2019. They and other airlines expect strong domestic demand this summer, and the restoration of transatlantic travel could be an urgent matter for the industry needed boost to give it works to generate profits again.

American, Delta Air Lines and United all reported losses of more than $ 1 billion for the first three months of the year. Southwest Airlines reported a small profit of $ 116 million, despite the CEO saying the airline would have lost $ 1 billion without government assistance.

The news of the reopening of the EU to vaccinated American tourists was also welcomed by Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, a global group in the aviation industry, who said it could bode well for other airlines too.

In a statement, he said coordination between the European Commission and industry is essential “so that airlines can plan within public health benchmarks and schedules that allow unconditional travel for those vaccinated,” not just Americans but also for passengers from other countries.

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Newer Planes Are Offering Airways a Trove of Helpful Information

Newer Planes Are Providing Airlines a Trove of Useful Data

This article is part of our new series of Currents, which examines how rapid advances in technology are changing our lives.

With fewer flights and even fewer passengers, the coronavirus pandemic created a number of challenges for airlines. Some have gone out of business, others barely survive as global passenger traffic is around 50 percent of 2019 levels.

With no passengers to fill them, airlines have retired their older planes faster than normal. The 1,400+ aircraft parked in 2020 and may not go back into service is more than double the number of aircraft that would normally be retired in a single year. This is the result of a 10-year aviation forecast by the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman. The result will be a more modern fleet, the report says.

David Marty, director of marketing for digital solutions at Airbus, found in a half-full observation that aircraft that remain in airline fleets are younger, more fuel-efficient aircraft with lower carbon dioxide emissions.

Thanks to new engine technology and lighter structures and components, the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 use 20 to 25 percent less fuel than the aircraft they are replacing, according to manufacturers.

The other major change is digital. Each new generation of aircraft can collect more data with sensors and circuitry that – like a giant Fitbit – track the health of the aircraft from nose to tail.

For example, on a particular flight, an airline can calculate how much carbon it is emitting and which aircraft components may need attention upon arrival.

As the proportion of modern aircraft in airline fleets increases, so will the amount of data available. And the airplane only contributes part of the growing flow of information.

“The world is changing a lot and airplanes are definitely providing more and more information,” said Vincent Capezzuto, chief technology officer for Aireon, an aircraft tracking and surveillance company. New tracking signals are flight specific, but can also provide information useful for air traffic control services and airport arrival planning to control the flow of traffic in the air and at airports.

In a novel application, Aireon was commissioned by the FAA to monitor all Boeing 737 Max flights in order to capture any anomalies for analysis. This is in response to the Max’s nearly two-year grounding after two fatal crashes. The Max was put back into service at the end of 2020. (Some of the planes were re-grounded this month due to a possible electrical problem.)

Kevin Michaels, Managing Director of AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consultancy, points to the latest Airbus airliner, the A350. Usually 800 megabytes of data are recorded per flight. The Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger aircraft, which went into service in 2007, can only deliver half of it.

“There’s a lot more data and better algorithms,” said Michaels.

At Delta Air Lines, due to new technologies, the airline has developed apps that pilots use on a tablet such as Flight Weather Viewer to avoid flying through turbulence. It was first introduced in 2016 and has been updated over the years as new features became available.

With the Flight Family Communication app launched in 2018, all employees working on a particular flight can communicate with one another, from ground crew to flight crew. John Laughter, the airline’s operations manager, says one of the best ways to use the new data is to predict when parts will fail so maintenance can be carried out proactively.

“I’ve been with Delta since 1993 and almost everything we did back then was looking back,” he said. “We’d have a bug and would ask, ‘How do we fix this?'”

Today, Mr. Laughter says that “data scientists examine the data” so they can plan what would previously have been an unscheduled and potentially disruptive repair.

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April 22, 2021, 4:15 p.m. ET

AirAsia executives in Malaysia say preventing delays is critical as their business model relies on planes not spending more than 25 minutes at the airport gates. With 10 different units involved in dispatching a flight, anything slowing the progress of any of these people can trigger a cascade of delays.

By applying artificial intelligence to the data it collects, AirAsia has also seen small savings in fuel and labor costs, which add up, said Javed Malik, the airline’s group chief operations officer. “It could save millions at the end of the year.”

Still, many airlines have found it difficult to keep up with the volume of information.

“Airlines and planes are like oil rigs in the ocean,” said Yann Cabaret, vice president of strategy, product and marketing at SITA, a non-profit aviation technology technology. “And their data is like crude oil. You can’t do much with it. You need people and technology to refine this data so that they can take advantage of it. “

It’s not that airlines haven’t introduced new technology in the past.

For example, computer reservation systems were state of the art in the early 1960s. But six decades later, airlines are still trying to find a way to sell tickets and other products with the pizazz that web-savvy buyers have come to expect. The rapid pace of change can create hurdles.

“We are tied to old systems for which our IT providers have developed specific applications,” said Frederic Sutter, head of a data exchange platform offered by Airbus called Skywise. “When you had to mix the different data from different systems, the industry wasn’t equipped for it.”

To solve this problem, Airbus began selling customers access to Skywise’s cloud-based platform in 2017, where they could share information about their aircraft, suppliers and components with other airlines.

One hundred and thirty airlines, including AirAsia, upload their unidentified data to the platform “so that they can compare themselves to the entire fleet,” said Sutter.

Airbus is also a beneficiary. “The data collected and shared enables us to validate our design and prepare for the next generation of aircraft,” he said. Should reports from the fleet reveal unexpected problems, the company can begin planning design changes if necessary.

Global companies like Airbus, Google, and IBM have found a potentially lucrative market for selling technology services to airlines as the airlines, some of which have been around for a century, are tied to what Vik Krishnan, a McKinsey & Company partner, is , who works in the travel sector, calls systems “obsolete”.

Newer airlines like AirAsia are not affected by this story. It was only 5 years old when its current owners bought it in 2001. After adding a long-haul airline and acquiring a handful of regional airlines, the company decided to merge its disparate data and create what Mr. Malik called the “Connected Ecosystem. “

The airline wanted all information to be accessible under one roof and visible across departments so that, for example, a passenger’s biometric information – such as fingerprints or facial recognition – could be used for security and boarding at the airport, but also for purchasing products from AirAsia E-commerce platforms. This use of technology could create privacy issues that governments may need to address.

“These are separate, different technologies. Payments and biometrics that need to work seamlessly in the background for the customer to have a great experience, ”said Malik.

In 2018, AirAsia partnered with Google to become one of the first airlines to move their data to the cloud. Other airlines followed. Delta and IBM announced a deal earlier this year to move both customer and in-house apps to the public cloud while they work on strategies for dealing with increasing amounts of aircraft information.

“Airlines have greater capacity to consume or process the data or deploy artificial intelligence while they sift through and gather the information they need,” said Dee Waddell, IBM’s global director for travel and transportation.

But as they move further into the digital age, airlines are also learning that being part of big data is not without its drawbacks. The burden of managing everything is one of them.