Emirates Airlines plans to add a fourth daily flight between Dubai and Johannesburg, starting 1 March 2025. The carrier says the new service will be operated using a Boeing 777-300ER. The expansion brings Emirates' service to South Africa back to pre-pandemic levels, with 49 weekly flights across three gateways. The new service, Emirates adds, increases cargo capacity by 300 tons a week, supporting the transportation of goods such as fresh produce, meat, and flowers. This development follows the recent introduction of a second daily Airbus A380 service to Johannesburg.

Comac is conducting high-altitude tests with a C919 at Lhasa Kongga International airport. The Chinese airframer says the aircraft "smoothly" landed at the airport, which has an elevation of 3,569m, for the first time on 19 September. Noting the location's surrounding high terrain and "complex and changeable" weather conditions, Comac says it will test the twinjet's environmental control system, avionics and engines "to lay a foundation for subsequently meeting the operational requirements of high plateau routes and the development of plateau versions of aircraft". At Lhasa, the C919 met with an ARJ21 that has been carrying out demonstration flights around the Qinghai-Xizang plateau since 21 August. The ARJ has completed flight tasks on 25 routes and 55 flight segments over 62h, covering 11 high-plateau airports, including four sorties at Daocheng Yading airport, the highest civil airport in the world, Comac notes.

European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has issued a new airworthiness directive to inspect fuel lines on a wider range of Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines after it identified a cleaning process that can degrade those lines. That appears to have caused an engine fire on a Cathay Pacific Airbus A350-1000 as it was departing Hong Kong to Zurich on 2 September. The incident led EASA to issue a 9 September airworthiness directive to inspect fuel lines on Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines, which are the sole powerplants used on A350-1000s. "Since EASA issued [the earlier AD], in-service and in-shop inspections have identified that a specific cleaning process available during engine refurbishment may lead to fuel manifold main fuel hose degradation”, states the EU agency in a 19 September airworthiness directive. The new directive expands the inspections to other Trent XWB variants, namely the -75, -79, -79B and -84 engines, saying they were also "the subject of the suspect cleaning process" and could be “potentially affected by the unsafe condition addressed by this AD." Trent XWB-84 engines power all A350-900s, while the -75 and -79 variants were developed for the now-defunct -800 variant. The agency adds that the latest directive "supersedes" the previous AD and "requires repetitive inspections and corrective actions for affected populations of engines". Operators of the affected engines have 30 days to comply with the directive from 3 October. EASA says that since the degraded fuel lines were discovered, the affected cleaning process has been discontinued by maintenance organisations, and Rolls-Royce issued a service bulletin to “provide repetitive inspections” for engines affected by the cleaning process. It adds that investigation is still “ongoing to identify the root cause of the event”. The new AD came out the same day that Hong Kong’s Air Accident Investigation Authority (AAIA) released a preliminary report into the engine fire, stating that a post-flight examination of the engine showed a rupture in a fuel hose. "The steel braided sheath of the fuel hose (secondary fuel manifold hose) connecting to the No.17 fuel spray nozzle had a rupture, evidenced by a discernible hole in the hose," it states, adding that "five additional secondary fuel manifold hoses were found to have either frayed metal braids or collapsed structures inside the hose". Furthermore, "black soot was observed on the aft section of the core engine, indicating signs of a fire. Burn marks were also noted on the underside of the two thrust reverser cowls". The authority says the engine fire could have resulted in more severe damage if it had not been contained quickly. "If not promptly detected and addressed, this situation, along with further failures, could escalate into a more serious engine fire, potentially causing extensive damage to the aircraft," it states.