London Heathrow airport is to keep Terminal 4 non-operational until the end of next year as a recovery in air traffic continues to falter. Passenger numbers fell by 88% in November at Europe’s biggest hub over the previous year as it handled just 747,000 passengers. That marked a decline on the 1.24 million passengers Heathrow had in October – which was itself down 82% on the same month in 2019. National lockdown restrictions were tightened over much of the UK during November, compounding demand already hit as a result of increased travel restrictions across Europe. ”Based on current forecasts and continued decline in passengers, the decision has been taken for Terminal 4 to remain non-operational until the end of 2021,” the airport says. Heathrow airport has handled just under 21 million passenger numbers across the first 11 months of the year – down almost 72% on the same period last year. The airport handled just under 81 million passenger in 2019.

Scheduled US passenger airlines cut almost 37,000 jobs in the one-month period ending mid-October, bringing that sector’s employment to the lowest level in at least 30 years, US government data shows. Those cuts followed the expiration in at the end of September of US government aid that had specifically funded US airlines’ payrolls. In mid-October, 22 US carriers employed 368,162 full-time staff, down 9% from 404,869 in the middle of September, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) says on 11 December. Airlines have not employed so few people in any month since the DOT started reporting the figure in January 1990. The sector’s mid-October employment figure was down 19% - or about 86,000 jobs – from the 454,070 full-time workers employed by airlines one year earlier. The majority of the September-October cuts came from four US network carriers, which employ the most of the group and which collectively slashed 32,000 jobs in the period. Low-cost carriers eliminated only about 1,400 jobs in the one-month period, while US regional airlines cut 3,100 jobs, DOT data shows. The government’s pandemic-relief law, passed in March, made $29 billion available for airlines to pay staff salaries and benefits. That aid expired after 30 September.

European safety regulators have refused to lift an operational ban on Pakistan International Airlines imposed at the end of June. While the airline does not feature on the European Commission’s blacklist of banned carriers – which was revised on 2 December – it has not been reinstated on the list of third-country operators approved by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. EASA imposed the sanction following preliminary findings over the fatal loss of a PIA Airbus A320 at Karachi and the revelation, around the same time, that a high number of pilot licences issued by the Pakistani civil aviation authority were obtained fraudulently. The licensing concerns and the “lack of effective implementation” of a safety-management system led EASA to suspend PIA’s approval, states documentation associated with the Commission’s blacklist revision. Third-country authorisation was also suspended for Pakistani Boeing 737 operator Vision Air. The Commission has consulted with the country’s civil aviation authority since the suspension, requesting information on its oversight of carriers and the personnel licensing situation – seeking evidence that similar doubts over licence validity are not present in the cabin crew or maintenance sectors. Technical meetings were held with the civil aviation authority on 9 July and 25 September, and the Commission says the authority has been “co-operative and transparent”. Examination of the situation ultimately led to the revocation or suspension of the fraudulent licences, the Pakistani authority has told the Commission, as well as the decision to stop issuing new licences from the end of June 2020. “They also informed us that new aviation rules had been put in place to deal with the issues raised and, where appropriate, enforcement actions had been taken,” says the Commission. But with regard to safety-management system oversight, the civil aviation authority has acknowledged that implementation is still at an early stage. “It appears that the authority still needs to effectively identify the root causes of its problems, and to deal with them in a sustainable manner,” says the Commission. While the Commission believes the Pakistani authority is “engaged in a significant effort” to take the corrective actions necessary to address safety concerns, PIA’s third-country approval remains suspended. European regulators plan to conduct an on-site assessment visit to Pakistan. PIA’s permission to operate to the UK is also suspended, as a result of the EASA decision, a consequence of the UK’s still being in a transition period following its departure from the European Union.