Italy’s government has signed an air transport decree to establish a new national airline to succeed flag-carrier Alitalia. The government is referring the operator as Newco, but transport minister Paola De Micheli signals that the company’s formal name is ITA, adding that the company will “bring Italy to the world”. She says the decree has been signed with finance minister Roberto Gualtieri, economic development minister Stefano Patuanelli and labour minister Nunzia Catalfo..“A national airline is born that will have to play a leading role on the European and international market,” she says. It will represent a “clear discontinuity” with the past, and serve to “relaunch” Italian tourism. Creation of the national carrier follows months of wrangling after plans for an investor consortium to take over Alitalia fell through and the government stepped in to set up a new airline. “Newco represents the first step towards establishing a quality carrier capable of competing on the international market,” says Gualtieri. He says the management team will develop and implement a “solid and sustainable” plan. The board will include chief executive Fabio Maria Lazzerini and chairman Francesco Caio. Patuanelli says the air transport crisis has provided an opportunity to think carefully about the relaunch, while Catalfo says: “We need a national airline to help Italy get back on track.” “With the birth of Newco we are faced with an ambitious challenge,” Catalfo adds, “which must be met in order to equip the country with a competitive and qualified air carrier.” Workers’ representatives have welcomed the ministerial decision. “Finally a stalemate of months has been overcome,” says transport union Uiltrasporti. There is a need to set up co-ordination activity with Alitalia’s commissioner, the Newco management, unions and authorities, it states, to prepare the company for operations – working on the necessary investments in personnel for the airline’s fleet, maintenance and ground-handling. Union FIT-CISL adds that “a new era begins from this moment”, and that efforts to execute the ambitious plan “must not go wrong”. Alitalia recorded an earnings loss of €207 million ($245 million) for the second quarter, the three months which inflicted heavy damage on the European airline sector. The Italian flag-carrier’s commissioner disclosed the figures to a parliamentary hearing on 7 October, indicating that the losses were on a par with those of SAS and Swiss. Revenues over the first nine months of this year reached €716 million, a 70% fall on the same period last year.

Data suggests that an individual has a much greater chance of being hit by lightning over a 12-month period than they do of catching Covid-19 during a commercial flight, according to IATA. The airlines body claims during a briefing today that since the start of 2020 there have been 44 cases of Covid-19 reported in which transmission is thought to have occurred during a flight. It notes that over the same period, some 1.2 billion passengers have travelled. The briefing follows the release of several studies in September that suggested an airliner cabin was a potential source of significant coronavirus outbreaks. “The risk of a passenger contracting Covid-19 while on board appears very low,” states said David Powell, IATA’s medical adviser. “With only 44 identified potential cases of flight-related transmission among 1.2 billion travellers, that’s one case for every 27 million travellers. “We recognise that this may be an underestimate, but even if 90% of the cases were unreported, it would be one case for every 2.7 million travellers. We think these figures are extremely reassuring.” Powell recalls hearing data that suggests the chances of an individual being struck by lightning in a 12-month period is between one in 500,000 and one in 1.2 million. Those figures are in line with those stated by the UK’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, for example, which puts the odds of being struck by lightning at around 1 in 1 million over a 12-month period. Furthermore, “the vast majority of published cases of coronavirus cases on board an aircraft occurred before the wearing of face coverings in flight became widespread”, Powell observes. IATA acknowledges that although “there is no way to establish an exact tally of possible flight-associated cases”, its data aligns “with the low numbers reported in a recently published peer-reviewed study by Freedman and Wilder-Smith in the Journal of Travel Medicine”. During the same briefing, Airbus, Boeing and Embraer presented separate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research showing that aircraft airflow systems can control the movement of particles in the cabin, limiting the spread of viruses. “After multiple, highly-detailed simulations using the most accurate scientific methods available, we have concrete data which reveals the aircraft cabin offers a much safer environment than indoor public spaces,” says Bruno Fargeon of Airbus Engineering, who leads the airframer’s Keep Trust in Air Travel initiative. “The way that air circulates, is filtered and replaced on airplanes creates an absolutely unique environment in which you have just as much protection being seated side-by-side as you would standing six feet apart on the ground.” Indeed, the industry body and the airframers highlight several factors that they claim make air travel relatively Covid-safe, including: limited face-to-face interactions as passengers face forward; the seat-back acting as a physical barrier to air movement; the minimisation of forward-aft flow of air, with a segmented flow design which is directed generally downward from ceiling to floor; the high rate of fresh air coming into the cabin; and the use of HEPA filters which have “more than 99.9% bacteria/virus removal efficiency rate”. “The addition of mask-wearing amid pandemic concerns adds a further and significant extra layer of protection, which makes being seated in close proximity in an aircraft cabin safer than most other indoor environments,” IATA adds. Studies published elsewhere in recent weeks have concluded, however, that commercial airliners are potential sources of coronavirus outbreaks. One recent study in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal stated, for example: ”We conclude that the risk for onboard transmission of SARS-CoV-2 during long flights is real and has the potential to cause Covid-19 clusters of substantial size, even in business class-like settings with spacious seating arrangements well beyond the established distance used to define close contact on airplanes. “As long as Covid-19 presents a global pandemic threat in the absence of a good point-of-care test, better onboard infection prevention measures and arrival screening procedures are needed to make flying safe.”

Source: Cirium

Airbus’s higher-weight A330-900 has obtained certification from the European airworthiness authority, enabling operators to take advantage of greater range. The aircraft, the larger variant of the A330neo family, has a maximum take-off weight of 251t. French carrier Corsair will be the first carrier to introduce the new version. Airbus commenced flight-testing of the higher-weight version at the end of February this year, using MSN1967 The aircraft has undergone modifications, including strengthened landing-gear and structural reinforcements, which the airframer describes as “weight-neutral” – adding that it retains 99% spares commonality. “Modifications to the nose- and main landing-gear have also enabled Airbus engineers to extend their time-before-overhaul,” it says, stretching the interval from 10 to 12 years. The increased capability gives the A330-900 an additional 650nm (1,200km) of range compared with the 242t version. Airbus says the 251t aircraft has secured European Union Aviation Safety Agency certification. “With this new A330-900 offering, operators will have the necessary range and capacity to capitalise on longer routes while rationalising their fleets,” it adds. Airbus A330 chief engineer Francois Kubica says the aircraft is “more flexible” as a result of the enhancement, able to take 6t more payload. The airframer intends to obtain similar 251t certification next year for the smaller A330-800. Airbus is aiming the longer-range A330neos – which are powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 engines – at the transpacific markets as well as Asia-European routes.

Source: Cirium