Pilots at Qantas's Network Aviation unit have withdrawn plans to strike for a second time on 24 October and given the airline an assurance that they will not take further industrial action until after 27 October. The Australian Federation of Air Pilots states that it has withdrawn the planned strike "to give Qantas subsidiary Network Aviation every opportunity to come to its senses". Schedules data indicates that if the strike had gone ahead, it would have impacted 56 scheduled services to ports including Broome, Paraburdoo and Karratha, as well as closed charter services for resources clients, including Rio Tinto, Chevron and Fortescue Metals Group. “If the company’s management is serious, it will spend next week focusing on listening and responding to its pilots to allow a resolution to be reached,” says AFAP senior industrial officer Chris Aikens. “However, if Qantas does not take this opportunity to reach an agreement that is acceptable to both parties, then we have no other option but to escalate with further [protected industrial action].” The union and Qantas have been at loggerheads over a pay increase for the pilots, which operate most of Qantas's regional services in Western Australia. Reports indicate that the union is pushing for major pay increases for pilots which are operating under an agreement that expired in 2016. Fleets data shows that Network operates 15 Fokker 100s and 15 Airbus A320ceos. The withdrawal of the strike comes a day after Qantas terminated its plan to take over fellow operator Alliance Aviation Services, months after Australia's competition regulator announced that it would oppose the acquisition.

Ryanair has lost four separate legal cases contesting the decisions to approve state aid to European airlines through the pandemic. The EU General Court ruled four times on 18 October that the approval of state aid to former Italian carrier Alitalia, plus Air Baltic, Brussels Airlines and Nordica, were valid, dismissing Ryanair’s various challenges. The low-cost airline was ordered to pay the defendants’ costs. In each case, Ryanair was seeking action against the European Commission, the state providing the aid, and, in the case of Air Baltic and Brussels Airlines, the carriers themselves. It had argued that aid amounted to unfair subsidies and was anti-competitive, with the Commission having failed to follow proper procedure or fully examine the implications of the financial support being provided. It therefore sought to have the court annul the approvals. This was rejected by the Commission who argued, in each case, that the airline in question played an important role in their national economy, and therefore were sole beneficiaries of state aid that had met legal and procedural benchmarks.

Freight airline DHL Express has agreed to buy 668 million litres of SAF using sustainable aviation fuel certificates (SAFc) over seven years from US-based producer World Energy. The SAFc contract will enable DHL Express to offer customers the option to buy SAF via their Go Green Plus service without the need for the physical product to be used on their flights, which saves the expensive and carbon-intensive task of shipping it around. It allows corporate buyers to pay the premium for SAF, enabling them to claim the Scope 3 carbon reductions on emissions connected to their supply chains, while DHL Express can also count it as an absolute reduction of their CO2 output from core operations – a Scope 1 saving. “This helps make SAFc the most efficient way to decarbonise aviation,” says World Fuels. The physically-produced SAF will be supplied to airports in the Los Angeles area, close to World Energy’s California production facility. DHL Express and World Fuels describe the deal as the one of the longest and largest SAFc agreements in the aviation industry to date, that is expected to save around 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 over the aviation fuel cycle. That is the equivalent of DHL Express’s 77,000 annual aircraft movements in the Americas for a year.