A lack of harmony when global regulators lift the grounding on the Boeing 737 Max will further complicate the plans of international carriers to restore the troubled aircraft to revenue service, said airline chiefs during a lively panel debate at the IATA's World Air Transport Summit in Seoul on the 2nd of June. Carriers operating in large countries like the USA and Canada may operate the aircraft on domestic routes after their regulators allow the 737 Max to return to the skies, but Singapore Airlines doesn't have "the luxury", said the carrier's chief executive Goh Choon Phong. "Everything I operate is international," he says. "Beyond having the approvals of authorities in Singapore, we would need approvals of other countries we operate to."
It is still unclear when the global grounding on the 737 Max will be lifted. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which was the last major regulator to ground the aircraft, had been in the crossfire for not taking action earlier. Concerns continue to linger over whether the regulator allowed the 737 Max to be rushed through certification.

United Airlines has indicated that it will seek some form of compensation from Boeing for the impact of the 737 Max grounding, says their chief executive Oscar Munoz. "There will be recompense of some sort over time," he says at New York's LaGuardia airport today. "The discussion of that is a bit early. Let's get that aircraft back to flight safely." The carrier has not disclosed the financial impact of the grounding, which took effect in March and affected United's 14 in-service 737 Max 9s. The grounding forced the airline to cancel flights starting in April, and the company recently extended Max-related cancellations until 3 August. It has reduced capacity growth by a percentage point, to up 4-5%, in 2019. Boeing has completed testing a software update to the 737 Max's manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system (MCAS), which investigators have implicated as a factor in both the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air 737 Max crashes. Global regulators will begin evaluating the update shortly but none have said when they expect to allow 737 Max back in the sky.
"It's important to recognise that the flying public is going to have a perception," he says today. "Whatever it takes for us to get the public to see it as safe is going to be important." said Munoz.

Cathay Pacific are awaiting acquisition of Hong Kong Express is just one element of its preparation to take advantage of growth opportunities afforded by the coming opening of a third runway at its Hong Kong base. HK Express will give the Oneworld Alliance member a "running start" to rapidly expand in the low-cost segment once the new runway opens in 2024, says the the carrier's chairman John Slosar at the Wings Club in New York on 30 May. "We'll already have 30 airplanes in the air [and] the next 20 to 30 will be easier on that basis," he says of HK Express. "It would be a lot harder if we started from zero." Hong Kong airport's new runway will be ready just in time to capture much of this growth. The "three runway system" will boost the airport's annual capacity by roughly 30 million passengers to around 100 million by 2030. Cathay announced plans to acquire HK Express from HNA Group for HK$4.93 billion ($628 million) in March. The deal is expected to close by year-end pending regulatory approval, with Slosar saying today the companies are on-track to meet that timeline.