Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is proposing to deny authorisation to Qantas and China Eastern airlines in coordinating passenger and cargo transportation until March 2024 as it may breach cooperation laws.
“We are concerned that the authorisation would provide Qantas and China Eastern with the opportunity and incentive to increase prices, compared to what they would charge absent the alliance, by limiting or delaying the introduction of additional capacity on the Sydney-Shanghai route as passenger demand continues to grow,” says ACCC Commissioner Anna Brakey. She adds that the commission is not convinced potential benefits will outweigh “likely harm to competition” from Qantas and China Eastern’s proposed coordination. The commission had previously authorised the alliance in 2015 with conditions, and in 2021 without conditions due to exceptional circumstances related to the Covid-19 pandemic, and its associated effects on travel. The parties applied for re-authorisation of their alliance in November 2022 until 31 March 2024 and the ACCC granted interim authorisation on 30 March this year. “A key difference between now and the previous authorisations is we have not been provided with sufficient evidence that the coordination would lead to additional services on other routes between Australia and China,” states Brakey, as travel demand between the two countries are likely to grow as Chinese tour groups return. China Eastern is the only airline flying direct between Sydney and Shanghai with Qantas planning to resume flights in late October. The Chinese carrier is also planning to resume flights between Shanghai and Brisbane on 31 October. The commission is seeking responses to the draft determination by 6 October, before making its final decision Meanwhile, the interim authorisation remains in place and Qantas and China Eastern have been invited to make submissions on a transition to end authorisation.

Airlines have reacted for immediate action to prevent further air traffic control cancellations after Gatwick airport was impacted by further disruptions. Flights at the UK airport experienced cancellations and disruption on 14 September caused according to media reports by a shortage of air traffic controllers at NATS. It follows an outage at NATS in August that 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). Ryanair's group chief executive Michael O'Leary has called on NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to stand down over the incident. "It is unacceptable that more flights and hundreds of passengers are suffering delays to/from Gatwick Airport for a third time in just two weeks due to NATS chief executive, Martin Rolfe’s blatant failure to adequately staff UK ATC,” O’Leary says. “Airlines are paying millions of pounds to NATS each and every year and should not have to see their passengers suffer avoidable delays due to UK ATC staff shortages. We call on Martin Rolfe to immediately resign and hand the job over to someone competent enough to do it.” EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren, says that recent staff shortages at NATS have “plagued the industry” causing over a month’s worth of disruption. “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,” he continues. Gatwick notes that, as of the morning of 15 September, its ATC facilities are fully staffed and the airport is operating normally. NATS and Gatwick has been approached for comment.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has renewed the Category 1 safety rating for Mexican airlines, lifting a freeze on the ability of carriers from that country to add new routes and frequencies to the USA, along with a freeze on their ability to add new aircraft to their US network. Mexican carriers regained this top safety rating on 14 September after 28 months of sitting in Category 2. That downgrade cost Mexico's airlines around $1 billion, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates, by causing them to miss out on potential revenue growth through US routes and through the inability to replace older aircraft on its US network with newer aircraft that are more fuel-efficient and have more seats. US airlines can also resume marketing and selling tickets with their names and designator codes on Mexican-operated flights following the renewal of Mexico's top safety rating, the FAA states. The FAA downgraded Mexico's safety rating in May 2021 to Category 2 after it determined the country did not meet standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The agency states that it "sent a team of aviation safety experts multiple times over the last two years" to assist with safety reviews and steps to address safety shortcomings. Areas of safety concern for the FAA included a relative lack of qualified aviation inspectors and technical personnel in Mexico compared with ICAO standards, along with the safety oversight framework at Mexico's Agencia Federal de Aviacion Civil (AFAC) regulator. Mexico had previously been downgraded by the FAA to Category 2 in 2010 but the agency restored it to Category 1 that same year.