Five of six additional Boeing 737 Max 8s being leased to LOT Polish Airlines by Air Lease Corporation were originally placed with Romania's Blue Air. The Polish flag carrier says an agreement on the aircraft was reached following Blue Air's suspension of operations in September. ALC already leases five Max 8s and one 787 to LOT. Earlier this month Blue Air disclosed that it would not resume operations as planned on 10 October as it remained locked in talks with investors over funding for a return to the skies. Data shows that Blue Air has five ALC-managed Max 8s in storage and another four on order. The US lessor also has one 737-700 and six 737-800s with the Romanian carrier. LOT says it is in the process of selecting a new fleet in the regional and narrowbody segment. "Until a supplier is selected, we are planning to source aircraft as a bridging solution – the first Embraer 175 and 190 have already joined LOT Polish Airlines' fleet and will soon be followed by the Boeing 737-8," it adds.

Travellers to the USA who have been in Uganda in the 21 days prior to their arrival will be routed to one of five US airports where they will receive "enhanced screening" for Ebola. A health alert released on 6 October by the US State department's embassy in Kampala, Uganda, lists New York JFK, Newark Liberty, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, Chicago O'Hare and Washington Dulles as the airports designated for enhanced screening of passengers recently in Uganda, including US citizens. "Out of an abundance of caution, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will apply new layers of screening at these five US airports in response to the Ebola outbreak in Uganda," the US embassy in Uganda says. It adds that as of 6 October, cases of Ebola during the current outbreak have only been confirmed in Uganda. "No suspected, probable or confirmed cases of Ebola have been reported in the United States, and the risk of Ebola domestically is currently low." Uganda's health ministry has declared an Ebola outbreak in several districts that country. The US CDC says that Ebola is spread by contact with blood or body fluids of a person infected with Ebola virus. It is also spread by contact with contaminated objects or infected animals.

Europe is set to fall behind the long-term trend growth in passenger numbers over the next 20 years, as capacity constraints hit the continent particularly hard, IATA director general Willie Walsh has warned. Speaking at the Aviation Festival being held in Amsterdam, Walsh said IATA was forecasting global passenger growth at 3.4% per annum over the next two decades, supported by significant expansion in Asia. This is below the roughly 4% growth rates seen in recent years but represents a "healthy" rate, he adds. However, "Europe will not be like that because the capacity won't be there". Although he did not suggest an alternative figure for European growth, Walsh opined that a lack of support from governments for infrastructure investment would be the key factor holding back passenger numbers. He cites the example of London Heathrow's third runway, a project that has been under discussion for decades. "They'll never build it," he says. Likewise, the attitude to sustainability is likely to clip the industry's wings, despite the huge strides that airlines and the wider sector are making to reduce their emissions, Walsh argues. Although he is bullish on the global demand picture over the coming decades, he remains cautious on China, noting that international carriers may be averse to placing too much capacity into the country given the harsh zero-Covid policies that have been in place over the past two years. This will not impact forecast significant growth in Chinese domestic traffic, however. In the shorter term, Walsh is "very optimistic" about the state of the airline industry, given the challenges that it has overcome since early 2020. Although there are still capacity bottlenecks, "a lot of airports are functioning reasonably well". Likewise, despite a darkening economic picture, consumer confidence "remains very strong", he adds. Walsh believes the constraints that have emerged through the recovery can largely be attributed to a misunderstanding over how difficult it would be to bring staff back into the sector, something he attributes to employees now expecting to work from home – a challenge for airports and airlines.