Emirates is reinstating outbound passenger services from the UK to Dubai from today, following the suspension of inbound connections because of travel restrictions. Services will consist of a daily flight from London Heathrow and four weekly services from Manchester. Cargo-only operations will continue from Birmingham and Glasgow. The Middle Eastern carrier says the move is designed "primarily to help return passengers, particularly UAE residents, to get home". As of 29 January the UK has prevented entry to passengers who arrived from or transited through the UAE, except those with British or Irish passports or UK residency, and banned direct flights from the country. Exempted travellers are required to self-isolate for 10 days. The number of departing flights from the UK to the UAE declined sharply after the ban, falling from 16 on 11 January to just four on 1 February. The UAE had been on the UK's list of safe travel corridors until 12 January, when it was removed because of worsening Covid-19 cases. Up until that point the connection between London and Dubai was the 22nd busiest international route globally, with 950 flights and nearly 400,000 seats between 1 and 11 January.

Boeing has further delayed its 737 Max 10 programme by two years, with deliveries of the largest variant of its re-engined narrowbody now scheduled to begin in 2023. The company also now expects to deliver the first 737 Max 7 – the smallest of the Max family – in 2021; that milestone was previously anticipated in 2020. The Chicago-headquartered airframer disclosed the tweaked timelines in its latest annual report, made public on 1 February. Several days earlier, during Boeing’s 27 January earnings call, the company said it had pushed back the first 777-9 delivery from 2021 to 2023. “We now anticipate that the first 737 Max 10 and 777X delivery will occur in 2023,” Boeing’s securities filing says. “This schedule reflects a number of factors, including an updated assessment of global certification requirements informed by continued discussions with regulators and resulting in a management decision to make modifications to the aircraft’s design.” The company has disclosed it is modifying the 777-9 due to certification requirements but has not mentioned Max 10 design changes. However, a recent document from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) says the Max 10 will receive an angle-of-attack (AoA) sensor “integrity enhancement” – essentially a means of reducing the risk from a failure of one of the two AoA sensors. Boeing did not immediately respond to requests for more information. Boeing has been relatively quiet about the Max 7 and 10 development schedules since the grounding of the Max 8 and 9 in March 2019. US regulators cleared those jets to fly in November 2020, with EASA following suit last month. Previous annual reports placed 737 Max 10 deliveries as beginning in 2020. That deadline quietly slipped amid the Max and Covid-19 crisis of 2020. The company rolled out the first Max 10 in November 2019. The jet’s differences from its smaller siblings include longer landing gear, which ensures appropriate clearance between the rear fuselage and the ground during take-off rotation. The main gear has a “semi-levered” design, which saved Boeing from making extensive changes to the Max’s wheel wells. During rotation, the gear extends 241mm (9.5in). Once airborne, a steel compressing mechanism called a “shrink link” pulls the inner cylinder as the gear retracts. The Max 10 is to carry up to 230 passengers and have 3,300nm (6,110km) range, according to Boeing’s figures. By comparison, Airbus’s A321neo can carry up to 244 passengers and has range of 4,000nm (in the LR variant). Airbus is also developing the 4,700nm-range A321XLR.

United Airlines has put 14,000 employees on notice that their jobs are once again in danger when the second round of US government financial aid set aside for airline payroll support expires on 31 March. The Chicago-based carrier says in an internal memo on 29 January that it will be shedding the positions if the US government does not approve further coronavirus relief measures for the airline industry, and passenger demand does not improve markedly in the coming weeks. It has sent the so-called Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) letters to many of the same employees it had furloughed last year when the first round of aid ran out. The notice is a federally mandated requirement that requires employers to inform workers 60 days before a potential mass layoff event. “Despite ongoing efforts to distribute vaccines, customer demand has not changed much since we recalled… employees,” the company writes in a note to its workers. “Receiving a WARN notice does not automatically mean you will be on furlough status after April 1 – but it is a sign that we have a reasonable expectation that your job may be affected.” Meantime, Fort Worth-based American Airlines says it has not sent out any of these notices as of 29 January. At the end of September, the two airlines together involuntarily furloughed about 32,000 employees after a first round of $25 billion in government payroll support expired. Initially, United had warned 36,000 employees of impending job cuts, but was able to limit its involuntary furloughs to 13,000 at that time. American furloughed 19,000 employees at the end of September. The airlines hired the workers back when lawmakers approved a second package, worth another $15 billion, at the end of December. According to the conditions of the grants set aside in the second programme, airlines must keep the employees on staff until the end of March. Unlike its peers, the third major US carrier, Atlanta-headquartered Delta Air Lines, did not furlough any employees in September, and reached a deal with its pilots in November to protect them from job cuts as well. Industry observers say it is unlikely that the global coronavirus pandemic – and the ongoing depression in demand – will be over by the end of the first quarter. New travel restrictions, including a mandatory testing requirement for all inbound international arrivals and discussion that this could be extended to domestic flights as well, continue to make travel arduous and complicated, and potential customers are still wary about booking trips. Airline executives continue to hope that confidence and demand will return when nationwide vaccination ramps up in the coming months.