JetBlue Airways is the latest US carrier to announce plans to unblock middle seats, citing research showing passengers face a low risk of catching coronavirus on an aircraft. The New York-based low-cost carrier says on 12 November it will gradually remove seat blocks and open all seats from 8 January, following studies showing aircraft are “as safe or substantially safer than other more common settings.” “With the science validating the safety of the aircraft cabin, JetBlue will phase out seat blocks by early 2021,” chief operations officer Joanna Geraghty writes in a note published on the carrier’s website. “We have always been confident that the potential for transmission on the aircraft is extremely low,” she adds. JetBlue will cap loads at 70% until 1 December, after which it will raise that number to 85% through 7 January. After that, all seats will be available for booking. When the global pandemic began earlier this year, most airlines blocked middle seats, giving customers more space for social distancing. Airlines hoped that keeping passengers separated would encourage them to return to the air sooner. But as time passed and financial pressures on airlines mounted, many carriers, including Spirit Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines, stopped the practice. Southwest Airlines has said it will begin unblocking middle seats on 1 December. That leaves Delta Air Lines the only other major US carrier to continue blocking the seats through early January. US airline lobby group Airlines for America (A4A), of which JetBlue is a member, said earlier in the day that the top nine US passenger airlines are still burning upwards of $180 million daily, and are desperately looking for ways to save money and generate revenue. So far this year, the nine have posted a combined $36 billion in losses. Industry analysts have said it is unrealistic to expect airlines to continue blocking middle seats in the long term. Hospital-grade air filters in aircraft along with enhanced cleaning protocols and personal protective equipment such as face coverings have been proven to be effective measures to limit or stop the spread of the virus on aircraft, studies have shown.

Source: Cirium

Pre-flight testing for coronavirus only makes sense if it is delivered before passengers arrive at airports, in the view of Ryanair group chief executive Michael O’Leary. “It’s too late, it takes too long, and what do you do in the middle of a terminal when you’ve a couple of positive tests?” O’Leary said of airport testing during the World Travel Market conference on 10 November. He adds, however, that “we’re generally supportive of pre-departure testing”, but that it should be within “72 hours or 36 hours” of departure. Under such a system, “people should be coming to airports with negative tests”, he explains, meaning that with “certainly in short-haul within Europe, we can go back to flying with reasonable confidence, with reasonable security”, without the patchwork of quarantine requirements that currently exist across the carrier’s network. O’Leary also laments the lack of mass testing of the general population within individual countries, which he believes would help to control the spread of the virus. In recent weeks, Ryanair has criticised the policies adopted by the Irish and UK governments around Covid-19 travel restrictions. In the wider industry, airlines body IATA and airports association ACI World have been lobbying for an internationally recognised pre-flight testing regime to replace quarantine requirements for arriving passengers. Their proposals to the European Union – made in mid-September in conjunction with airlines body A4E – suggested both pre-airport and at-airport testing as viable options. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) announced in late October that they are working on a common testing protocol for travellers within the EU, with their proposals due soon.


Source: Cirium

New Zealand investigators have closed an inquiry into two incidents involving engine problems on Rolls-Royce-powered Boeing 787-9s operated by Air New Zealand. The country’s Transport Accident Investigation Commission states that the incidents involved fracture of intermediate-pressure turbine blades on Trent 1000 powerplants. Deterioration of these blades was one of several issues affecting various blade types in the engine, and Rolls-Royce has undertaken extensive work to study and correct the problems. The first ANZ incident involved an in-flight engine shutdown – as well as damage to the airframe – resulting in the return to Auckland of a 787-9 service to Tokyo on 5 December 2017. This was followed, just a day later, by an engine anomaly on a second 787-9, bound for Buenos Aires, which also returned to Auckland. Both aircraft were fitted with the Package C version of the Trent 1000. Corrosion fatigue cracking was identified, which had led blades to fracture and separate from the intermediate-pressure turbine disc. The New Zealand commission says Rolls-Royce’s addressing the safety issues identified in its interim report has “satisfied” the investigators. “Further lines of inquiry would be unlikely to identify further circumstances with significant implications for transport safety,” says commission deputy chief Stephen Davies Howard. He says prolonging the probe would not result in additional findings or recommendations. “By the time we published our interim report, Rolls-Royce was already replacing affected [intermediate turbine] blades with a new design that used an established alloy with protective coating,” he adds. “These actions by the engine manufacturer were sufficient to address the safety issues.” Rolls-Royce stated in July this year that the newly-developed blade for the turbine, to overcome the sulphidation corrosion problem, had already been fitted across virtually all of the operational fleet, for all package versions of the Trent 1000.

Source: Cirium