The US Departments of Transportation, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services have jointly published a report outlining recommendations for public safety as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. The document, published on 2 July, is titled “Runway to Recovery: The United States Framework for Airlines and Airports to Mitigate the Public Health Risks of Coronavirus”. It lays out a roadmap for passenger carriers and airports as they try to minimise further transmission of the virus amongst and between passengers, crews and other workers. The roadmap outlines numerous measures the air carriers and airport operators should take “across all operations and all phases of travel to, from, and within the USA, along with a roadmap explaining how those measures should be adapted to the unique air travel environment”, the report says. “This document provides clear guidance to airlines and airports to protect the traveling public, and we encourage people to pay attention to it,” says transportation secretary Elaine Chao. Recommendations include passenger education efforts, social distancing, mandatory face coverings, health assessments, and minimising in-person interaction as well as utilisation of technologies that will support this goal. The DOT has come under increasing pressure to mandate uniform regulations for all airlines as the coronavirus crisis drags on into its fourth month. With the beginning of the summer holiday travel season and more and more regions in the USA lifting shelter-in-place orders, both airlines and airports are expecting passenger numbers to rise. So far, most airlines have implemented their own coronavirus-related protocols, creating confusion and frustration among travellers. Last month several carriers said they would enforce mask-wearing on their flights, and impose no-fly sanctions on those passengers who refuse to comply. Some lawmakers say the recommendations in the report, while well-meaning, are too little too late. Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal and Edward Markey, members of the Senate’s Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, laud the government for presenting the report at all, but criticise it for its “unenforceable and woefully inadequate recommendations”. “We need federally enforceable mandates to keep the travelling public safe,” the senators write on 2 July. "Moreover, this document merely scratches the surface of the many complex questions that we need to address to ensure safe and healthy air travel." In the past several weeks, airlines have brought aircraft out of storage and increased their capacity to both domestic and international destinations. United Airlines, for example, said on 1 July that it was adding 25,000 flights to its August schedule. That said, several southern states like Arizona, Texas and Florida are currently experiencing a spike in new cases, which may cause some vacationers to rethink their plans. Some states have imposed quarantine requirements for those passengers returning from high-case regions. On 2 July the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says it screened 626,516 passengers the day before. That’s the third-highest daily throughput since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but still far below the 2.5 million passengers it screened on the same day a year ago.

Source: Cirium

Recent growth in the number of coronavirus cases is harming the recovery in air passenger demand and could lead IATA to downgrade its passenger estimates for the remainder of the year, the association has warned. IATA notes that passenger demand in May was down 91% from the same month last year. This represents a "mild uptick" from the 94% annual drop seen in April, driven by a recovery in domestic markets, especially China. But data from the second half of June shows that as the number of worldwide coronavirus cases has accelerated over the period, net bookings have again begun to decline. Speaking during IATA's weekly press call, chief economist Brian Pearce highlighted that although June looked better than May "on average", the reduction during the second half of the month "is causing us to be cautious about prospects in the next few months". He adds that there is a "downside risk" to the association's current projections. "We still expect an improvement, but not as much as our baseline," says Pearce. Illustrating the deteriorating market conditions, Pearce showed an updated estimate of revenue passenger-kilometres for 2020 with a downside risk scenario under which RPKs recover only to a fall of 53% in December 2020, versus the recently published baseline scenario of a 36% reduction. The risk is largely focused on emerging markets and US international flights, as these regions are seeing the bulk of the rise in fresh cases. Together they account for 37% of global RPKs. Looking at the wider market, Pearce notes that growing business confidence will not necessarily translate to higher corporate travel numbers because companies are likely to be reluctant to allow their staff to travel while the risk of infection remains. The majority of passengers travel for leisure or to visit friends and family, but confidence among this constituency also remains low. Besides domestic Chinese demand, "[in] other key markets – the US, Germany, UK – we've not really seen a pick-up at all in confidence", Pearce points out. IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac offers a frank assessment: "May was not quite as terrible as April. That's about the best thing that can be said. "As predicted, the first improvements in passenger demand are occurring in domestic markets. International traffic remained virtually stopped in May. "We are only at the very beginning of a long and difficult recovery. And there is tremendous uncertainty about what impact a resurgence of new Covid-19 cases in key markets could have."

Source: Cirium

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has completed three days of flight tests on the Boeing 737 Max ahead of a possible recertification in the coming weeks. The flights were an important milestone in the process to bring the troubled aircraft back into service and end its almost 16-month grounding following two fatal accidents. “During three days of testing this week, FAA pilots and engineers evaluated Boeing’s proposed changes in connection with the automated flight control system on the aircraft,” the FAA said on 1 July. “While completion of the flights is an important milestone, a number of key tasks remain, including evaluating the data gathered during these flights.” “The agency is following a deliberate process and will take the time it needs to thoroughly review Boeing’s work. We will lift the grounding order only after FAA safety experts are satisfied that the aircraft meets certification standards,” the regulatory body says. Certification flights are among the final steps prior to the FAA issuing an airworthiness directive (AD) lifting the grounding. The AD will specify measures operators must take before returning the jets to revenue service. Boeing has said it expects the AD will come in time to permit it to resume 737 Max deliveries in the third quarter of the year. According to flight tracking website Flightradar24, the aircraft with the tail number N7201S completed about 10 hours of flight time over Washington state and neighbouring Idaho on 29 and 30 June, and 1 July. The FAA must still review and approve Boeing’s final design documentation and the regulator’s Flight Standardization Board (FSB) as well as the Joint Operations Evaluation Board (JOEB) - which includes partners from other non-US jurisdictions - will evaluate pilot training requirements. The type was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after two separate accidents killed 346 passengers and crew. The aircraft’s new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was at fault in both crashes. Earlier in the day another government watchdog issued a scathing report that blasted Boeing for misleading regulators and purposefully holding back information about MCAS during the aircraft’s certification process. The FAA was kept in the dark about potential dangers of the flawed system, and therefore it was not able to adequately test or otherwise address it.

Source: Cirium