Middle eastern nations Qatar and Kuwait have widened travel bans to include Singapore, in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Kuwait is advising its citizens to defer unnecessary travel to Singapore, and urging them to leave the country, media reports indicate. The Qatari embassy issued a similar statement on 9 February, advising citizens to "wait until the conditions related to the coronavirus calms, except for the most urgent need". Singapore is a key regional hub with over 400 connections to nearly 150 cities, according to Cirium schedules data. As of 11 February, there are 45 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the city state, the highest count outside of mainland China if the cases originating from a cruise ship are excluded from Japan's figure. An increasing number of nations have also cautioned its citizens about travelling to Singapore. Neighbouring state Indonesia is warning its citizens to take extra care, while the UK government has advised citizens returning from Singapore, among other nations with a significant number of cases, to monitor for coronavirus symptoms within 14 days of return.

Source: Cirium

Airlink is to maintain services on four routes from which franchise partner South African Airways is withdrawing at the end of the month. The business rescue practitioners appointed to lead cash-strapped SAA – after it was placed in formal restructuring in early December – announced on 6 February that the Star Alliance carrier would drop a string of flights as part of a wide-ranging streamlining of its network. That included all its domestic flights except Johannesburg-Cape Town, regional flights from Johannesburg to Abidjan, Entebbe, Luanda and Ndola, and intercontinental services to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Munich and Sao Paulo. But private South African carrier Airlink – which has a franchise agreement in place with SAA – says it will continue to operate the domestic route linking Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth, as well as services to Ugandan city Entebbe, Ndola in Zambia and the Angolan capital Luanda, after SAA stops doing so . "We want to reassure travellers that as far as Airlink is concerned, it is business as usual. Our schedule and operations are unaffected by SAA's latest network cuts," states Airlink chief executive Rodger Foster. Airlink had in January reached an amended agreement with SAA to replace their franchise agreement with a new commercial arrangement. Under the revised deal, Airlink will continue to operate flights under the SA8 code until switching to its own 4Z flight code from 11 June 2020. At the time, Airlink said that while SAA remained "an important strategic pillar in Airlink's strategy", the new arrangement gives Airlink "the freedom to extend its commercial reach, develop more routes and frequencies on an independent basis and extend or establish additional agreements with other leading international airlines".

Source: Cirium

US FAA chief Steve Dickson has defended the administration’s decision to wait for empirical evidence to order the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max, rather than follow other authorities’ precautionary approach. The FAA grounded the type on 13 March, three days after the loss of an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft – the second fatal Max accident – having held out against a wave of suspensions by other regulators, including the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. US regulators had originally insisted that there was no basis on which to order a grounding of the Max, despite concerns over similarities between the Ethiopian accident and that involving a Lion Air jet five months earlier. Speaking during a briefing in London on 6 February, Dickson acknowledged that regulatory alignment would have been preferable. But he also defended the FAA’s decision to wait for data to establish a common thread, the behaviour of the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System, between the two Max accidents. “If you ground an airplane arbitrarily – if you’re making any kind of safety decision arbitrarily – you really don’t know when you’ve got to a point where the situation has been improved,” he says. “These two accidents had different factors associated with them – two airlines, two groups of pilots – so they weren’t the same scenario. “They did have a common thread of MCAS. But having the data from which to make those decisions certainly focuses your effort.” Dickson says has a “big focus” on data at the FAA and believes the industry needs to “raise the bar” and ensure interested parties have the “same kind of availability of data”. “I don’t know on what basis EASA made their [grounding] decision,” he says. But he believes that the FAA and Canadian regulators took data-based decisions. “I do know the agency was looking to identify a common thread, and it took getting the data to be able to make that decision. It was not available for a couple of days,” says Dickson, adding that reinforcement of data provision around the world would contribute to moving from “forensic” to “pro-active” analysis

Source: Cirium.