In the face of recent service cuts and general passenger and industry disillusionment – and a claim that Canada is “years behind” other countries when it comes to digital border solutions – a new coalition of travel and business leaders has joined together with the goal of ensuring that Toronto Pearson remains “a global beacon of air travel.”
A passenger who helped restrain a threatening man on a weekend flight from Los Angeles to Boston says that the entire chaotic episode was over within seconds thanks to teamwork.
Canadian travellers are facing increased airport fees after the pandemic grounded revenues, disrupting the airport sector’s “relatively stable” and resilient business model and causing more debt for airports across the country.
WestJet says it is making significant increases to its summer schedule, bringing more seats and additional flight frequencies to routes across its network. That includes a 64 percent increase in capacity from Regina and 46 percent more from Saskatoon, as well as other western gateways.
Just as Toronto Pearson announced a cap on flight and passenger arrivals, a group of airlines that includes KLM, Delta and easyJet have sued the Dutch government over its plans to reduce the number of flights from Amsterdam’s busy Schiphol Airport.
A Lufthansa flight that experienced “significant turbulence” late last week was diverted to Washington Dulles International Airport and seven people on board were taken to area hospitals.
A travel industry coalition is calling on Ottawa to broaden its trusted traveller pilot program and roll it out across the country. The demand comes ahead of an expected busy summer season, and spring break this month when traveller numbers at Toronto’s Pearson airport are expected to be 30 percent higher than a year ago.
Air Canada says it has no problem with the Greater Toronto Airport Authority plan to impose limits on carrier operations at Toronto-Pearson airport. The airline says it learned of GTAA’s plans last August and designed its 2023 winter schedule accordingly.
A JetBlue pilot had to take “evasive action” while landing at Boston’s Logan International Airport when another aircraft crossed an intersecting runway, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Despite the spate of recent “near misses” data from the US Federal Aviation Administration shows the number of the most serious close calls at US airports has actually been decreasing even as overall incidents have risen.
Air Canada conducted its second annual Black History celebratory flight from Montreal to Halifax on Tuesday – an operation that was planned, supported, and operated by Black pilots, flight attendants, managers, and employees on the ground and behind the scenes.
Porter Aviation Holdings Inc. (PAHI) is entering a partnership with Montréal Saint-Hubert Airport (YHU) to develop a new terminal capable of serving over 4 million passengers annually. Construction will begin in mid-2023, with a scheduled completion by late 2024, providing a second airport for Porter to serve the Montréal market.
Air Canada and United Airlines have announced that through their enhanced transborder joint business agreement they will offer more than 260 daily transborder flights and two new routes this summer.
Airlines are warning that travel to and from Central Canada may be affected by a winter storm sweeping in from the west. The blizzard conditions were expected to cause delays to flights into and out of airports in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal on Wednesday and Thursday. Meanwhile, brutal winter weather hammered the northern US Wednesday with “whiteout” snow, dangerous wind gusts and bitter cold, shutting down roadways, closing schools and businesses and prompting dire warnings for people to stay home.
With the addition of two aircraft to its fleet, interCaribbean Airways will offer an expanded flight schedule to service Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent & The Grenadines.
The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says it intercepted a record 6,542 guns – nearly 18 a day – last year at airport checkpoints across the America. And while experts don’t think this indicates an epidemic of would-be hijackers – nearly everyone caught claims to have forgotten they had a gun with them – they emphasize the danger even one gun can pose in the wrong hands on a plane or at a checkpoint.
Calling the process, simple, seamless, and safe, Air Canada has launched digital identification for passengers, becoming the first airline in Canada with approval to use facial recognition technology to confirm identification. The pilot project is currently underway for select customers departing from YVR for Winnipeg, and entering the Air Canada Café at Toronto Pearson, but will be expanded to other locations.
The US National Transportation Safety Board says is investigating a December flight in which a United Airlines plane nose-dived to within less than 250 metres of the ocean surface after taking off from Hawaii. The NTSB said it expects to issue a preliminary report in about two weeks. The agency said that it had been asking United questions about the incident before deciding whether to launch a formal investigation.
Having carried 36 million passengers in 2022 and posting record passenger and operating revenues in Q4, Air Canada says it has a “positive outlook” for the start of 2023 and beyond. The carrier also reported achieving 83% of its pre-pandemic passenger revenue recorded in 2019.
Approximately 40 percent of pet owners include their pets in travel plans – and that number is growing, having doubled in the last decade, according to the recent American Pet Products Association’s ‘National Pet Owner’ survey. But flying with Fido doesn’t come without considerable circumstance and planning.
The head of the US Federal Aviation Administration says he has taken steps to avoid a repeat of the technology failure last month that briefly halted all flights in the United States from taking off.
Germany’s air traffic control agency said Wednesday that it is diverting all flights away from the country’s busiest airport, Frankfurt, after a problem with Lufthansa’s computer systems caused major disruption at the German airline.
Air India is placing orders for 470 Boeing and Airbus aircraft to keep up with surging demand for increased mobility in a nation with a swelling middle class. It is Boeing’s third largest sale of all time, in dollar value, and its second of all time in quantity, and has India’s prime minister predicting that the country will soon be the third largest aviation market in the world.
WestJet has unveiled 20 new routes and three new destinations – Minneapolis, Detroit and Washington DC (Dulles) – to the airline’s summer schedule, which features what the carrier calls its “largest expansion in history” out of Edmonton. At the same time, Porter is launching Ottawa-Charlottetown service in May.
A senior executive of Southwest Airlines apologized to a US Senate committee late last week for a December meltdown and said the airline is upgrading software to help fix its inability to reassign crews after the winter storm. The president of the Southwest pilots’ union told senators that airline leaders ignored calls to improve technology for years, then botched the recovery from the storm – losing track of employees and operating more than 500 empty flights while passengers were stuck on the ground over the holidays.
The union that represents pilots at WestJet says it is asking for federal assistance after months of failing to reach a contract agreement with the airline. The official request begins a process that could result in a strike, or lockout, if the impasse is not resolved.
Against the backdrop of a global pilot shortage, hopefuls aspiring to a career in the skies say their Canadian licensing applications are taking far too long to process. Student pilots who have completed the training requirements for their private or commercial pilots’ licences say their credentials are being delayed due to what they say are unacceptably lengthy processing times at Transport Canada.
The US Congress began considering critical aviation legislation on Tuesday in the aftermath of recent close calls involving airline and cargo jets at airports in New York and Texas. Lawmakers celebrated the small number of deaths on airline flights in the United States since a 2009 crash that killed 50 people, but they noted the recent scary incidents.
The union representing WestJet pilots says contract negotiations with the airline have been unproductive and federal conciliation may be needed to avert a strike. ALPA Canada, which represents approximately 1,800 pilots at WestJet and its low-cost subsidiary Swoop, says it has been negotiating unsuccessfully with the Calgary-based company since September.
As carriers worldwide try to lessen their carbon footprint, Emirates says it has successfully flown a test flight with one of its two engines entirely powered by so-called sustainable aviation fuel.
A New York congressman wants to add some Zoom to the sluggish effort to clear a bilateral backlog of NEXUS trusted-traveller applications. Rep. Brian Higgins, a frequent champion of streamlined travel between Canada and the US, has introduced legislation on Capitol Hill that, if passed, would require the Department of Homeland Security to deploy video conferencing to replace in-person interviews.