The UK's Civil Aviation Authority has lowered the cap on charges that London Heathrow airport can levy on airlines in the period to end-2026, following a review by the country's competition authorities. This means that the hub will be able to charge airlines a maximum of £23.73 ($30.56) per passenger in 2025 and £23.71 in 2026, a reduction of £1.52 and £1.57, respectively, from what the CAA originally decided in March 2023. This reflects a review of the charging regime by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which last October said that despite the CAA having struck "broadly the right balance" between affordability for passengers and encouraging investment in the airport from investors, there were some smaller issues for the CAA to re-examine, such as the recovery of charges from the pandemic and the calculation of Heathrow's cost of capital. In March last year, the CAA ordered Heathrow to cut its fees for 2024 by 20%, after the airport had requested permission to significantly increase charges. Airlines have argued that Heathrow's fees are consistently too high, and that the decision-making process surrounding the issue should be reviewed.

T'way Air is expanding its network in Europe with flights between Seoul Incheon and Paris Charles de Gaulle from 28 August. The South Korean low-cost carrier says flights on the route will be operated four times a week from 28 August and five times a week from 6 October using 246-seat Airbus A330-200s. Air France and Korean Air currently operate daily flights on the route, while Asiana operates six flights a week. T'way Air already flies to Croatia and will launch flights to Rome, Barcelona and Frankfurt this year.

Russian president Vladimir Putin would never have allowed the return of Western aircraft that had been leased to his country's airlines, in the view of a retired UK general giving evidence at an Irish High Court case pitting lessors against insurers. Asked during cross examination as a witness on 10 July whether he believed there were any circumstances under which the Russian leader would have permitted the return of leased aircraft to their owners, General Richard Barrons said "no, not at all". "I remain firmly of the view that president Putin was never going to agree to sacrifice his country's civil aviation capability... in the face of the demand from his enemy that he do that," he adds. Barrons believes it was "certain" that commercial aircraft and supporting services supplied by the West to the Russian civil aviation sector would be "very high up" the list of likely sanctions that would be imposed by Western governments on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. He further believes that the West expected the Russian invasion was likely to succeed and therefore the sanctions regime was constructed with that in mind. Barrons says that while the civil aviation sector was of limited importance to the Russian military – it relies more heavily on rail for its logistics – as a form of economic warfare, targeting the country's commercial airlines had an advantage of impeding the civil state and of conveying a message to the Russian people that "their life was no longer going to proceed normally". As a former "military practitioner", Barrons says that if he had been involved in planning the sanctions regime he would have had the "same interest in dismantling Russia's civil aviation capability" and would have expected that the sanctions would need to endure for a "very long time" based on an assumption of a military victory by Russia and subsequently a "very protracted standoff" between it and the West. Barrons is of the belief that there is "almost no prospect" of the war now ending before 2026 "on the current trends", and he has not suggested it will end in 2026. Discussing talks between Russia and Ukraine over a settlement to the war, the former military officer says that Russia has demanded that Ukraine stop fighting, "de-nazify" and does not join NATO. "The day Ukraine joins NATO is the day it gives up any aspiration to take back by force any territory that is lost, because NATO is never going to allow that to occur," he adds. The Russian proposition would also see Ukraine retain a "much diminished armed forces", and a neutral status guaranteed by the USA, UK, Germany and Russia, a position he describes as "non-sense" due to the inability of Western powers to provide such guarantees as NATO members and without military forces stationed in Ukraine. Asked by senior counsel Michael Collins for SMBC Aviation Capital if there any prospects for peace negotiations to succeed, Barrons says: "I would always say, it's a good thing to talk, you might find a compromise. But so far the gap to be closed [in talks] has been too wide and too profound for there to be a realistic prospect of a settlement." The hearing continues.