Singapore has paused new ticket sales for inbound vaccinated travel lane (VTL) flights arriving between 23 December and 20 January, as a "proactive and pre-emptive" response to the Omicron variant. Beyond the four-week period, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) will cap inbound flights from 21 January at 50% of the allocated quota. "Given the rapid spread of the Omicron variant overseas, CAAS will take proactive and pre-emptive steps to manage the inflow of VTL travellers and mitigate the risk to the Singapore community, while we observe and assess the emerging situation," the regulator says in a statement today. "Additional safeguards will also be implemented to protect frontline airport workers and air crew." A government advisory published today states that inbound travellers on flights booked before 22 December will be allowed to enter the country. These measures also apply to Singapore's land VTL with neighbouring Malaysia. Singapore established VTLs with 27 countries and regions, including three to the Middle East – with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates – that are deferred until further notice. Active VTL destinations include the USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany; in Asia-Pacific, the destinations include Australia, India, South Korea as well as neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia.

Hainan Airlines has received a notice from Chinese securities regulator the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) due to suspected violations of information disclosure according to the securities law of the country. The carrier will actively cooperate with the relevant work of the CSRC, and perform information disclosure obligations in strict accordance with regulatory requirements, it says in an 18 December filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. At present, the airline says its operating conditions are “normal” and will continue to pay attention to the progress of these matters and strictly follow the supervision.

Qatar Airways has issued legal proceedings against Airbus in the UK High Court in relation to the surface degradation issue affecting its A350 aircraft. The Doha-based carrier says it has "sadly failed in all our attempts to reach a constructive solution" to the problem in its discussions with the manufacturer. As a result the carrier "has therefore been left with no alternative but to seek a rapid resolution of this dispute via the courts", it states. Qatar Airways has grounded 21 A350 aircraft because of the issue, out of a total fleet of 53 of the type. In a sign that the problem is impacting a steadily increasing number of the carrier's aircraft, Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker said on 30 November that the issue was affecting 20 aircraft. At the start of the month, the airline said just 19 of the type were impacted. Qatar Airways says the legal action has "been commenced to ensure that Airbus will now address our legitimate concerns without further delay. We strongly believe that Airbus must undertake a thorough investigation of this condition to conclusively establish its full root cause." The carrier and Airbus have been in a long-running dispute over the issue, with the airframer saying earlier this month that it was seeking an independent legal review into the situation to resolve the dispute. The manufacturer believes the surface-paint-related issue has been thoroughly assessed both internally and by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) as having no airworthiness impact on the A350 fleet, an assessment that has previously been questioned by Al Baker. "The real cause has not been established," commented the chief executive at the UK Aviation Club in London on 30 November. "In the beginning, they mentioned that it was only cosmetic… Now they have at last accepted that there are other airlines, several of them, that have the same condition... and yesterday [they] acknowledged that they are working to find a solution, which means they don’t have a solution, and they don't have a solution because they don’t know why it is happening." A spokesperson for Airbus says: "Airbus has already stated it is prepared to use legal action in order to solve this dispute, in the face of the ongoing mischaracterisation of non-structural surface degradation issues on some A350s - the root cause of which has been identified, with solutions in place to allow for continued operations of the worldwide A350 fleet. "Airbus will continue to take all necessary measures to defend its position and reputation and has no further comment on ongoing litigation," they add.