Gatwick airport is limiting flight movements to 800 per day until 1 October due to a lack of air traffic controllers at the facility. The decision was taken alongside air traffic service provider NATS, who run the airport’s control tower, and is designed to prevent last-minute cancellations and delays. Gatwick attributes the lack of capacity to sickness, including Covid. "We are working closely with NATS to build resilience in the control tower, and this decision means we can prevent as much disruptions as possible," states Gatwick chief executive Stewart Wingate. NATS comments that it has trained as many air traffic controllers "as possible" this year at Gatwick, but that "with 30% of tower staff unavailable for a variety of medical reasons including covid, we cannot manage the number of flights that were originally planned for this week." It expects operational resilience at the airport to improve coming into the autumn, with a new tranche of controllers set to qualify ahead of peak season 2024. "Even an experienced air traffic controller takes at least nine months to qualify at Gatwick and very few are able to do so, as Gatwick is such a busy and complex air traffic environment," it says. The latest restrictions will result in the cancellation of 164 services in total, with 29 September seeing the largest number – 65 cancellations. It follows on from disruption at the airport earlier this month caused by a shortage of NATS air traffic controllers, which resulted in calls for widescale reform of the organisation from airlines. “This cannot be allowed to continue. Immediate action must be taken to fix the staffing shortages now while a more wide-ranging review examines broader issues to ensure NATS delivers robust services to passengers now and in the future,” says EasyJet’s chief executive Johan Lundgren. Even before this, in August, an outage at NATS saw the system for processing flights across the UK and its backup fail, resulting in significant delays and cancellations across the country, enraging airlines. That was estimated by IATA to have cost carriers up to £100 million ($124 million).

United Airlines has submitted to the US Department of Transportation an application requesting approval to operate additional services between the USA and Tokyo Haneda. The Chicago-based carrier is seeking to begin daily flights between Houston and Haneda and a five-times-weekly service from Guam. Besides the potential allocation of the additional 12 frequencies, United holds five slot pairs connecting with Haneda, from San Francisco, Newark, Chicago O'Hare, Washington Dulles and Los Angeles. The airline notes in its 25 September petition to the DOT that it is applying for a slot pair "returned by Delta (seven weekly frequencies) so that United may institute daily Houston-Haneda service". In late June, the DOT denied a motion by Delta Air Lines to confer onto all USA-Haneda slot holders the flexibility to use up to two of their currently allocated slot pairs to serve the Japanese airport from any US point of their choosing. American Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines had supported Delta's motion, while United strongly opposed it. United's vice-president regulatory and policy Steve Morrissey during an 8 May media briefing argued that Delta through its motion filed on 1 May was in effect asking the DOT to disregard "the product of very long and difficult negotiations between the US and the government of Japan over the course of several years". In its 25 September petition to the DOT, United notes that it is applying "for five weekly frequencies from the night-time-only slot pair Hawaiian currently holds for Kona/Honolulu-Haneda service but shows no plans to operate so that United may institute the first-ever Guam-Haneda service". It adds: "Awarding these unused frequencies to United will ensure that these underutilised Haneda slot pairs are finally put to their highest and best use."

Members of the Dutch pilots’ union VNV have called off a strike at KLM scheduled for 25 September after an outline collective labour agreement was reached with the carrier. The deal, which was sealed late on 24 September, lays the ground for more detailed work to be completed in the coming days and approval by VNV's members. Key to the agreement was movement on additional pay. Pilots will receive an average wage increase of 5% per year over the two-year term from 1 September, plus a one-off 2% payment to reflect the late start date of the agreement, says the VNV. The deal covers the period from 2 March this year until end-February 2025. "We are happy that we were ultimately able to achieve this result through constructive consultation," says KLM. VNV notes that the agreement follows "months of consultations" and was struck "under threat of action". The union adds that is "pleased that KLM has taken the necessary steps to create a collective labour agreement that does justice to our reasonable wishes and proposals".