US carriers should be careful not to compromise on safety in the name of reducing costs amid network cancellations and delays, United Airlines chief executive Scott Kirby said on 12 September during a panel discussion at the US Chamber of Commerce Global Aerospace Summit in Washington, DC. When asked at the event about pressure that carriers face to reimburse customers after cancellations and delays, Kirby said that increasing industry requirements for compensation could have the unintended consequence of tempting airline staff to take safety risks to avoid schedule disruptions. "I do not want a pilot, I do not want a mechanic thinking about the extra cost of a delay," Kirby says. "We want them 100% focused on safety." Raising federal rules for passenger compensation could pose a greater financial liability for low-cost or regional carriers, he says, compared with US majors. Shortages of air traffic controllers employed by the US Federal Aviation Administration have been among the factors contributing to more disruptions and delays for US carriers. That makes it harder for carriers to maintain schedules when responding to severe weather and other incidents, Kirby says, particular in the New York and Newark regions. Being transparent with customers and keeping them informed about disruptions due to maintenance, weather or other factors, he says, is one way that carriers could improve responses to this trend. United reduced its schedule of summer flights connecting with Ronald Reagan Washington National airport and New York area airports in an effort to ease congestion due to a lack of air traffic controllers. A cautionary tale for US aviation safety, Kirby says, is the Boeing merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997 that shifted the combined company "from a great engineering culture to a cost-focused culture". That culture shift, he says, contributed to its failures during the aircraft safety certification of 737 Max aircraft and the resulting two fatal crashes of Max aircraft in 2018 and 2019. Boeing chief executive David Calhoun, Kirby says, "deserves a lot of credit" for reforming the airframer's safety culture in the wake of Max crashes and congressional inquiry that led to new aircraft certification laws. While hiring and retaining pilots to support capacity growth and to offset retirements is "probably a forever problem" for US airlines, Kirby says, he would not take a position on a proposal being debated in Congress about whether to raise the legally required pilot retirement age from 65 to 67. Nonetheless, he said: "We need policy changes if you are really going to address the pilot shortage". United is better positioned to meet pilot staffing needs compared with smaller regional carriers, he adds, so the US major is "not flying to as many small cities as a result". With that challenge in mind, the Regional Airline Association trade group states that proposed legislation to raise the pilot retirement age is "aimed at mitigating the growing pilot shortage and even more acute shortage of airline captains, which have driven a collapse in small community air service across the United States". Airline worker unions, including the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) and the Air Line Pilots Association, have opposed raising the retirement age, in part because it conflicts with the mandatory age of 65 set by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The US House of Representatives in July passed legislation to set funding and priorities for the FAA for the next five years, which included a provision to raise the pilot retirement age to 67. That pilot age debate and proposed new rules for airline passenger compensation are contentious issues faced by lawmakers as a Senate committee must now advance its version of that bill for approval by that chamber. The current FAA legislation enacted in 2018 expires on 30 September.

The UK’s competition regulator has backed a decision by the Civil Aviation Authority to cut charges at Heathrow airport by 20% next year. In April, the CAA decided in a provisional ruling that the airport should cut fees for services from £31.75 ($39.74) per passenger to £25.43. Heathrow had sought an increase to £40. Airline users of the facility and the airport itself requested then requested the Competition & Markets Authority investigate the ruling. Heathrow argued that charges were too low to support investment, and airlines that charges were harming the consumer. "Overall, we provisionally consider that the CAA was not wrong in most of the decisions that were appealed to us," writes the CMA in its subsequent review on 8 September. In "one small element", concerning the CAA's calculation of passenger numbers during exceptional events, the CMA did identify an error, but it did not deem this significant. It does add that the CAA was "inappropriate" in the way it calculated an adjustment pertaining to the clawing back of revenues in 2020 and 2021, but, again, this did not influence its view of the aviation regulator's overall decision. The CMA stresses that its job is not to assess the CAA's decision but to examine whether it was based on factual errors. The airlines and Heathrow can now appeal against the CMA's decision. A final ruling is to be made on 17 October. The current price-control period runs to end-2026.

Boeing has confirmed Vietnam Airlines' selection of the 737 Max 8 to grow its future single-aisle fleet. As earlier indicated in a White House fact sheet on US president Joe Biden's state visit to Hanoi, the airline has committed to ordering 50 of the aircraft, Boeing says. Airline chair Dang Ngoc Hoa suggests that "in line with Vietnam Airlines' 2025-2030 fleet strategy and a vision to 2035, aircraft investment is a crucial project that underpins positive recovery momentum and prosperous outlook for the airline". He adds: "The new narrowbody fleet will allow us to foster our overall development and extend our high-quality service on Vietnam Airlines' domestic and Asian routes, as well as modernise our fuel-efficient fleet." The Boeing 737 Max family is powered by CFM International Leap-1B engines. Boeing senior vice-president of commercial sales and marketing Brad McMullen notes the airframers' "historic partnership with Vietnam Airlines, dating back to 1995 when the airline first leased 767s".