Politicians speaking at a UK parliamentary debate on the recovery of the country’s aviation industry have urged the government to rapidly adopt a coronavirus airport testing regime to encourage passengers back into the sky. Former prime minister Theresa May says that the UK is “lagging behind” other jurisdictions who have already adopted testing, noting that in total 30 countries were already carrying out the procedures. “Testing has to be the way forward in the foreseeable future, but at the moment airports aren’t even permitted to trial test on passengers,” May says. Other speakers note the importance of the aviation sector to the UK economy given its role in enabling exports and creating jobs, with 230,000 people in the UK directly employed by the industry. They argue that aviation connectivity will be particularly important as the country looks to recover from the economic decline caused by the pandemic. UK health secretary Matt Hancock said on 7 September that coronavirus testing at the border “doesn’t work” to stop the spread of the disease because of its incubation period, Sky News reports. But the government was looking at other ways to reduce the quarantine period, Hancock said. Quarantine times upon entry to the UK are currently two weeks for arrivals from countries covered by the rule. But the government is coming under increasing industry pressure to reduce that period. Earlier this week, the Airport Operator’s Association (AOA) urged the government to make a decision this week on introducing testing for international travellers. The airports body had warned up to 110,000 jobs at UK airports and their supply chains were at risk. It also highlights traffic data from ACI Europe showing passenger numbers were down 73% from UK airports in August – an even sharper reduction than the 70% fall across European airports as a whole. “There is no surprise that, with quarantine measures constantly changing and still being applied in a blanket way, rather than a more targeted regional approach, and no sign of a testing regime, UK aviation has suffered through its worst summer in a generation,” says AOA chief executive Karen Dee. ”These figures show that for our peak month of August, the UK industry’s recovery lagged behind our counterparts in Europe.”

Source: Cirium

Less than two months before the new Berlin Brandenburg International airport is scheduled to open after years of delays, the airport’s operator Flughafen Berlin-Brandenburg (FBB) will need an additional 300 million euro ($354 million) if it is to remain solvent on its opening day. That is the essence of a letter the German Finance ministry sent to the federal parliament’s budget committee earlier this week, according to reports in German media on 9 September. "Without the financial commitment from the shareholders, FBB’s ability to meet financial obligations in 2020 is not secured," the ministry’s state secretary Bettina Hagedorn wrote in the letter. The company needs the additional funds to make up for losses experienced by the other Berlin airports it manages – Tegel and Schoenefeld – due to the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year. The planned aid would consist of a grant of 99 million euro, and loans of about 201 million euro. The federal government owns 26% of FBB’s shares, and the states of Berlin and Brandenburg each hold 37%.
Opposition lawmakers in parliament had hoped to stop the additional financial assistance for the airport, which is scheduled to open for business on 31 October, more than eight years late. But the federal government stepped in to support the aid. "We are prepared, along with the other shareholders, to secure the necessary liquidity," German finance minister Olaf Scholz told the German parliament on 9 September. The federal government’s share is worth 78 million euro. The states of Berlin and Brandenburg have not yet released their portions. But that is not all. Depending on the development of air traffic in the coming months as the industry recovers, the new airport could require another 500-700 million euro to stave off a potential bankruptcy. Berlin Brandenburg International airport has a long and troubled history. The project was launched in 1996 but years of financial issues hampered its construction, and the costs skyrocketed. In the meantime the project’s total pricetag has risen to more than 7 billion euro. Design and building flaws as well as numerous management changes slowed completion, and just a few weeks before its planned commissioning in June 2012, a series of safety inspection failures prompted authorities to abruptly halt the airport’s opening. In early 2020, eight years after its proposed completion, the coronavirus pandemic threatened to derail the opening yet again. But FBB says its preparations are almost complete, and testing of the facility is currently in full gear. Volunteers are playing the role of passengers in testing of the airport’s operations.

Source: Cirium

Alaska Airlines' Oneworld alliance membership has been pushed to at least early 2021. This is slightly later than its most recent estimate of "around the end of the year", but still on track for its original estimate of mid-2021 when announcing its intention to join in February. "We’re hoping by sometime late Q1 we’ll be a full-fledged Oneworld member," Alaska Airlines president Ben Minicucci said during the 9 September online Cowen 2020 Global Transportation & Sustainable Mobility Conference. "This feeds into our strategy in Seattle about being not only a domestic airline, but an airline that can give our loyalty members and our customers access to the world [through] American’s international network as well as Oneworld." Alaska announced plans to join Oneworld in February, when it also said it would form an international alliance on the West Coast with American Airlines. Alaska does still have restrictions on national codeshares with American related to a previous agreement with Virgin America, which merged with Alaska in late 2016. "A lot of those restrictions from the integration or the acquisition of Virgin are still in place, and time will tell if we seek any relief to that or not," chief financial officer Shane Tackett says. "But it is really focused on the international network – that’s really the piece of the puzzle that we don’t have that American and the rest of the Oneworld family has in spades."

Source: Cirium