Tag: Passengers

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World News

Virgin Galactic receives FAA license to fly passengers to area

Virgin Galactic receives FAA license to fly passengers to space

Virgin Galactic announced Friday that the Federal Aviation Administration granted the company the license it needs to fly passengers on future spaceflights, a key hurdle as the venture completes development testing.

“The commercial license that we have had in place since 2016 remains in place, but is now cleared to allow us to carry commercial passengers when we’re ready to do so,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier told CNBC. “This is obviously an exciting milestone and a huge compliment to the team.”

Virgin Galactic’s stock jumped 38.9% in trading on Friday, its largest ever rise in a single trading day, to close at $55.91. Shares had tumultuous start to the year, with the stock climbing above $60 in February and then plummeting to a low near $15 last month before rebounding.

While the FAA previously gave Virgin Galactic a launch license to conduct spaceflights, the license expansion allows the company to fly what the regulator calls “spaceflight participants.” The company completed a 29 element verification and validation program for the FAA, clearing the final two FAA milestones with its most recent spaceflight test in May. Colglazier noted the last two milestones were specific to the spacecraft’s flight-control systems and inertial navigation systems.

Notably, Virgin Galactic chief astronaut trainer Beth Moses is the only nonpilot to fly on one of the company’s spaceflights. To date, five Virgin Galactic employees, including four pilots, have become FAA-recognized astronauts – as the U.S. officially views an altitude of 80 kilometers (or about 50 miles) as the boundary to space.

Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft Unity is designed to hold up to six passengers along with the two pilots. The company has about 600 reservations for tickets on future flights, sold at prices between $200,000 and $250,000 each.

Next spaceflights TBD

With three spaceflight tests completed to date over the last two years, Virgin Galactic now has three more spaceflight tests planned before it completes development. The company previously announced its next spaceflight would carry four passengers to test the spacecraft’s cabin, its second would fly founder Sir Richard Branson and the third will carry members of the Italian Air Force for professional astronaut training.

Sir Richard Branson, left, and CEO Michael Colglazier celebrate the company’s third spaceflight test on May 22, 2021.

Virgin Galactic

However, a report earlier this month by a blogger based in Mojave, California – where Virgin Galactic manufactures its vehicles – said the company is considering reorganizing its flight schedule to launch Branson next over the July 4 weekend. The report came shortly after Jeff Bezos announced he would fly on Blue Origin’s first passenger spaceflight, planned to launch on July 20 – suggesting Branson may yet try to beat Bezos in personally flying to space.

Colglazier said the FAA approval means “the flight test program shifts now” to demonstrating “the cabin experience” of the spacecraft.

“I know there’s a lot of interest and speculation out there but we have not announced either the date nor the people that would be on those,” Colglazier said. “We approach this very methodically, with safety as the first consideration, and when we have all those boxes checked and all the steps in place – that’s when we can move forward and announce.”

Development delays have pushed back the company’s promised beginning of commercial service from mid-2020 to early 2022.

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Categories
Health

Open center seats might cut back Covid publicity of maskless passengers

Open middle seats could reduce Covid exposure of maskless passengers

View of the cabin of a Delta flight between Minneapolis and Baltimore on April 25, 2020.

Sebastien Duval | AFP | Getty Images

Passenger exposure to the virus that causes Covid-19 could be reduced by more than half if the center seats on airplanes were left open, according to a new study published Wednesday.

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kansas State University used laboratory models to find that passenger exposure to SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, could be reduced by between 23% in large and narrow-body aircraft and 57% when airlines leave middle seats open – Even if they don’t wear masks.

The study comes after airlines have spent much of the last year promoting increased on-board cleaning procedures and filtration to reassure travelers worried about flying during the pandemic. The demand for travel has recovered somewhat since then, as more people are vaccinated against Covid-19.

U.S. airlines, including JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines, limited the capacity on board their aircraft at the start of the pandemic, but have since abolished the policy, citing hospital-grade filtration and other safety measures to limit the risk of exposure on board. Delta Air Lines plans to end the lockdown of the center seats next month, the last U.S. carrier to make the change. However, capacity caps were halted over the Easter weekend as staff shortages resulted in dozens of flight cancellations.

The researchers’ study did not look at wearing masks on flights, which became an airline and federal government policy during the pandemic.

However, they cited a New Zealand case study which stated that “some of the virus aerosol is given off by an infectious masked passenger, so distancing might still be useful.”

They used a surrogate virus to stand up for SARS-CoV-2 in the air.

Categories
Business

Frontier Cancels Flight, Citing Maskless Passengers

Frontier Cancels Flight, Citing Maskless Passengers

A Frontier Airlines flight from Miami to New York’s La Guardia Airport was canceled Sunday evening after a large group of passengers, including several adults, refused to wear masks.

On Monday morning, the airline was charged with anti-Semitism for the treatment of passengers who are Hasidic Jews, as well as demands for investigations by the Anti-Defamation League of New York and other groups. Frontier held firm to its position that passengers had refused to comply with federal regulations requiring them to wear masks.

Some cell phone videos that have surfaced do not show the confrontation between the passengers and Frontier crew members, only the aftermath. The footage from the plane appeared to show members of the group wearing masks. Some passengers said the episode escalated because only one member of the group, a 15-month-old child, was not carrying a child.

Videos of passengers exiting the plane amid the chaos and taped by others on the flight have been posted on Twitter by the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council. In one video, a passenger says, “This is an anti-Semitic act.”

Another video showed a couple holding a maskless baby in a car seat when children heard crying, and one woman explained that the young children in her group, sitting in the back of the plane, had removed their masks to eat.

In a third video, a passenger says “This is Nazi Germany” as the couple and the small child walk up the aisle of the plane to the exit.

A Frontier Airlines spokeswoman said in a statement that “a large group of passengers have repeatedly refused to comply with the US government’s mask mandate.”

“Several people, including several adults, have been repeatedly asked to wear their masks and refused to do so,” said Jennifer de la Cruz, the spokeswoman. “Due to the continued refusal to comply with the federal mask mandate, refusal to disembark, and aggression against the flight crew, local law enforcement agencies were engaged. The flight was eventually canceled. “

But members of the group said they wore masks.

“We are law abiding citizens, law abiding people,” said Martin Joseph, who traveled with 21 members of his family, including his children and grandchildren. “We have young children. We understand that the mask must be worn and everyone must wear a mask and that is the law. We keep a million percent. “

Mr. Joseph said his daughter and her husband were sitting in the back row with their 15-month-old child and two other couples and their children. All are Hasidic Jews, said Mr. Joseph, although he added that one of the couples was not related to him.

Updated

March 1, 2021, 9:49 p.m. ET

He said a flight attendant asked his daughter to put a mask on her baby. She argued that her son did not have to wear a mask because of his age. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires masks only for passengers who are at least 2 years old.

“Then they announced that all three couples would have to get off the plane in the back of the plane before they could take off,” said Mr. Joseph. “The babies were crying, the people were crying, the mothers were crying.”

Another passenger on the plane, Temima Stark, said she was sitting with her husband and child when the commotion started. She said she saw airline employees approaching passengers in the background. Everyone seemed to be wearing masks, she said, except for the baby who was eating.

As the passengers got off the plane, Ms. Stark, who was not traveling with the group, said she saw airline employees pulling each other up. Several other passengers interviewed on video reiterated the claim. Frontier Airlines did not comment directly on the allegation.

“The whole plane just went crazy,” she said.

A few minutes after disembarking, Ms. Stark said, the remaining passengers were ordered off the plane.

On Monday, the New York Anti-Defamation League called for a “full and transparent investigation” on Twitter, citing “obvious # anti-Semitic comments from the occupation or others”.

When asked about the allegations of anti-Semitism, Ms. de la Cruz, a spokeswoman for Frontier, said the airline is looking into “any situation that requires a passenger to be removed from a flight.”

“Like many other airlines,” she said, “Frontier has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to masks on our flights.” This becomes clear at the time of purchase, before and during the check-in process at the gate and on board the aircraft. “

Wearing masks and other public health measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus became a hotspot in the New York area during the summer as Covid-19 spread rapidly in parts of Brooklyn and Queens. The city’s health authorities said at the time they were particularly concerned about a significant increase in transmission between some of the city’s Hasidic communities. Similar tensions simmered in Israel.

When asked about the confrontation aboard the Frontier flight, Yossi Gestetner, founder of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, said: “Regardless of what started this whole mess, people certainly blame airline staff for doing so unacceptable and needs to be addressed. “

“The airline wants the public to believe that 12 people, some of whom are unrelated other than belonging to the same ethnic group, decided to go to the airport and on the plane wearing masks and leave with masks on, as seen on videos however, to act together remove all masks while seated, ”he said. “It’s contrary to logic.”

Categories
Business

Airways Nonetheless Don’t Know When Passengers Will Return

Airlines Still Don’t Know When Passengers Will Return

For United Airlines it was “a year of hell”. Delta Air Lines had the “toughest year” in its history. And for American Airlines it was “the most challenging year”. This is how the executives who run these companies have described 2020 in recent weeks.

The aviation industry is eager to keep going, but hasn’t figured out how.

Air travel has bounced back a bit in the past few months but is still deeply depressed compared to 2019 and no one knows when business will return to more normal levels. Two major airline money-makers – business travel and international travel – are likely to be on hold for another year and possibly much longer.

At least now and for the next few months, airlines fly wherever they can, wherever they can. That often means catering for a small group of vacationers who won’t be deterred by the pandemic to travel to ski slopes or beaches.

“Fly where people are as a quick strategy,” said Ben Baldanza, former managing director of Spirit Airlines, the low-cost airline. “It was a really smart strategy, but it’s not a long-term money making opportunity for these airlines.”

But vacation travel offers limited convenience to an industry so thoroughly overcrowded. Tourists and people visiting family and friends typically occupy most of the seats on airplanes, but airlines rely disproportionately on business travelers’ income in front of the cabin. Before the pandemic, business travel made up about 30 percent of travel but 40 to 50 percent of passenger revenue, according to Airlines for America, an industry association. And these customers are not expected to return in large numbers anytime soon.

The four largest US airlines – American, Delta, United, and Southwest Airlines – lost more than $ 31 billion last year, and the industry is still losing more than $ 150 million a day, according to an estimate by Airlines for America .

The losses are even bigger when you consider airlines received $ 40 billion federal grants to pay employees and tens of billions more in low-cost government loans. The problem is, airlines these days can’t fly planes with enough people high enough to break even.

The industry spent much of the past year removing older, less efficient aircraft from their fleets and saving. Renegotiation of contracts; and encourage tens of thousands of workers to adopt takeovers or early retirement packages.

However, it has not been enough to offset a nearly two-thirds decline in air travel as public health experts and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to discourage travel. Airlines for America does not expect passenger numbers to recover to 2019 levels until at least 2023. And airlines may have to wait even longer if the economic recovery falters due to the spread of coronavirus variants or a delay in vaccinations.

Still, airlines say they are hopeful for the year ahead.

Sales this month were better than expected, according to Southwest. Alaska Airlines was hoping to fly around 80 percent as many flights this summer as it did in 2019, while Hawaiian Airlines came up with a similarly positive forecast. Delta chief executive Ed Bastian said in a message to customers last week that he expected a “tipping point in spring” as consumer confidence increased, travel restrictions eased and vaccine distribution expanded. Last week, JetBlue launched daily flights from New York, Boston and Los Angeles to Miami, and added seasonal flights to Key West, which serves either city for the first time.

Updated

Apr. 19, 2021 at 5:58 pm ET

“The discussion is shifting from being a survivor to being more involved in recovery,” said Sheila Kahyaoglu, an aerospace and defense analyst at Jefferies, an investment bank. “It will be about who can best access certain markets.”

The airlines have a few things ahead of them. Washington lawmakers appear poised to provide industry with a third major aid package since the pandemic erupted last spring. A House committee last week backed $ 14 billion in grants that airlines could use to pay workers through September and added it to the coronavirus aid package under consideration in Congress.

The airlines are also doing everything they can to stimulate demand.

Delta recently extended its middle seat booking ban to April and hired a chief health officer. The steps are part of Delta’s efforts to distinguish itself as a world-class, health-conscious carrier. To mark its 50th anniversary, Southwest has offers including a sale that promises one-way prices starting at $ 50. The airline usually has big sales in the fall and sometimes in the summer.

“I don’t think either of us can remember making a wild sale in January, but here we are,” Southwest chief executive Gary Kelly told investors and reporters last month. “The goal is simple: we need to encourage travel. We need to make more bookings. “

Most industry experts expect travelers to return in greater numbers this spring or summer as the weather improves and more people are vaccinated.

But planning that is not easy. Passengers used to book flights months in advance, but now plans are often confirmed just weeks later. And booking trends were often fleeting.

“Every time the demand shows signs of life, it takes another step backwards,” said Hunter Keay, senior airline analyst at Wolfe Research. “So it is very difficult for airlines to bring airplanes to market because if you get this wrong, you will only exacerbate the problem of burning money.”

Perhaps the toughest question for airlines and other tour operators is when will executives, middle managers, and other business travelers be comfortable flying. In the final three months of 2020, business travel in the US, Delta and Southwest fell 85 percent or more, according to airlines.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association, a trade group, has announced that business travel will not fully recover until 2024. Other groups believe this could take longer. By comparison, international business travel declined only 13 percent during the financial crisis a decade ago, but it took five years for it to return to its previous peak, according to McKinsey.

Some experts argue that business travel may never fully recover as many face-to-face meetings are permanently replaced by video conferencing and phone calls. Travel for sales meetings, conventions, and trade shows are the least likely to be permanently affected, IdeaWorks, an industry consulting firm, said in a December report. But shorter trips to meet up with colleagues for a few hours – say from New York to Washington – could be hit harder, it concluded.

Airlines are more hopeful, perhaps because they rely heavily on business travel.

Around 40 percent of Delta’s large corporate customers expect their own business travel to be fully restored by 2022 and another 11 percent by 2023, Bastian said on a conference call in January, citing the airline’s internal investigations. Only 7 percent said business travel may never fully recover, while the rest said they weren’t sure when things would return to normal.

American is “very optimistic” that business travel will return with vaccine distribution, Vasu Raja, the airline’s chief revenue officer, told investors and reporters last month. But, he added, “the rate of this is unclear at best.”

Categories
Health

U.S. to Require Unfavourable Virus Assessments From Worldwide Air Passengers

U.S. to Require Negative Virus Tests From International Air Passengers

Before boarding any flights, all international passengers traveling to the United States must first demonstrate a negative coronavirus test under a new federal policy that comes into effect Jan. 26.

“Testing doesn’t eliminate all risks,” said Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a statement describing the new policy.

“However, when combined with staying at home and taking everyday precautions like wearing masks and social distancing, travel can become safer, healthier and more responsible by reducing its spread on airplanes, airports and travel destinations.”

Dr. Redfield is expected to sign the contract with the new rules on Tuesday.

The new policy stipulates that all passengers, regardless of vaccination status, must receive a test for current infections within three days prior to departure for the United States and must provide written documentation of their test results or proof of recovery from Covid. 19th

Evidence of immunization won’t be enough as the vaccines have been shown to only prevent serious diseases, said Jason McDonald, a spokesman for the CDC-vaccinated people, could theoretically still be infected and transmit the virus on a flight.

The agency will not require any further testing in the three months following a positive test, as long as the traveler has no symptoms. In this situation, a passenger may travel with documentation of the positive test result and a letter from a health care provider or public health officer stating that the traveler has now been cleared for travel.

Airlines must confirm the negative test result for all passengers or documentation of recovery before boarding. If a passenger fails to provide evidence of a negative test or recovery, or fails to take a test, the airline must refuse to board the passenger, the agency said.

“Tests before and after travel are an important layer in order to slow down the introduction and spread of Covid-19,” said a statement by the officials. “With the US already in the surge status, the passenger testing requirement will help slow the spread of the virus while we work to vaccinate the American public.”

The policy expands on a similar rule introduced in late December that requires travelers from the UK to prove a negative result on a virus test. The Trump administration introduced this restriction after reports that a more contagious variant of the coronavirus had become the source of most infections in much of this country.

This variant has now been discovered in several American states and, according to scientists, is likely to have spread even more. However, the United States genetically sequences only a tiny fraction of its virus samples – too few to give an accurate estimate of the spread of the variant in that country.

Updated

Jan. 12, 2021, 8:12 p.m. ET

The new travel policy follows the announcement by the Japanese government on Tuesday that four travelers from Brazil have imported another new variant of the virus into Japan. Two other so-called worrying variants are said to be in circulation in South Africa and Brazil.

The coronavirus outbreak>

Things to know about testing

Confused by Coronavirus Testing Conditions? Let us help:

    • antibody: A protein produced by the immune system that can recognize and attach to certain types of viruses, bacteria or other invaders.
    • Antibody test / serology test: A test that detects antibodies specific to the coronavirus. About a week after the coronavirus infects the body, antibodies start appearing in the blood. Because antibodies take so long to develop, an antibody test cannot reliably diagnose an ongoing infection. However, it can identify people who have been exposed to the coronavirus in the past.
    • Antigen test: This test detects parts of coronavirus proteins called antigens. Antigen tests are quick and only take five minutes. However, they are less accurate than tests that detect genetic material from the virus.
    • Coronavirus: Any virus that belongs to the Orthocoronavirinae virus family. The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 is known as SARS-CoV-2.
    • Covid19: The disease caused by the new coronavirus. The name stands for Coronavirus Disease 2019.
    • Isolation and quarantine: Isolation is separating people who know they have a contagious disease from those who are not sick. Quarantine refers to restricting the movement of people who have been exposed to a virus.
    • Nasopharyngeal smear: A long, flexible stick with a soft swab that is inserted deep into the nose to collect samples from the space where the nasal cavity meets the throat. Samples for coronavirus tests can also be obtained with swabs that do not go as deep into the nose – sometimes called nasal swabs – or with mouth or throat swabs.
    • Polymerase chain reaction (PCR): Scientists use PCR to make millions of copies of genetic material in a sample. With the help of PCR tests, researchers can detect the coronavirus even when it is scarce.
    • Viral load: The amount of virus in a person’s body. In people infected with the coronavirus, viral loads can peak before symptoms, if any.

The White House coronavirus task force and federal agencies, including the CDC, have been debating the expanded requirements for weeks.

The CDC currently recommends that all air travelers, including those flying within the United States, be tested one to three days prior to travel and again three to five days after travel is complete.

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Many airlines offer optional tests for passengers, but only mandate them if the destinations so require. But last week a group representing major U.S. airlines endorsed a policy requiring all passengers to be tested.

In a statement, United Airlines welcomed the move, saying testing was “the key to opening up international borders”.

“United already has procedures in place to comply with similar regulations for international jurisdictions and we will plan to expand them in light of this new mandate,” the airline said in a statement.

“In addition, United is actively working to introduce new technologies and processes to make these test requirements easier to navigate for both our employees and our customers.”

Niraj Chokshi contributed to the coverage.