Airtravel

France suspended all flights from Brazil on Tuesday amid mounting fears over the particularly contagious Covid variant that has been sweeping the South American country.

"We note that the situation is getting worse and so we have decided to suspend all flights between Brazil and France until further notice," Castex said, drawing scattered applause from lawmakers.

Castex noted that travelers from Brazil already needed to test negative for the virus before their departure and upon arrival in France, and also quarantine for 10 days.

The French parliamentarians voted by a majority for a ban on domestic flights on routes that can be covered by train in less than two and a half hours. Flights from Paris to Lyon or Bordeaux could thus soon be a thing of the past.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire had already voiced such ideas in May 2020, when state aid for AirFrance-KLM was decided. The weekend's vote picks up on these plans and aims to help reduce CO₂ emissions permanently - even if the air travel industry picks up again after the global pandemic. The ban is part of a broader climate law that aims to reduce French carbon dioxide emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

The European Commission on Tuesday stated the French government is allowed to contribute €4 billion to help keep Air France afloat.

In February, Ryanair lost a legal fight in the EU General Court against state aid being granted to Air France and Sweden's SAS through national schemes. Ryanair is still seeking to contest the German government's bailout of Lufthansa, as well as similar schemes in Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal.

As of today, entry by air to Germany is only possible with a negative Covid-19 test. A corresponding amendment to the Coronavirus Entry Regulation came into force at midnight. The new regulation applies regardless of the Corona situation in the country from which someone is flying to Germany. The test may be no more than 48 hours old at the time of entry. The measure is limited until 12 May.

After the engine failure of a Boeing 777 near Denver in the state of Colorado, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced consequences. Machines of this type equipped with certain Pratt & Whitney engines should be strengthened and immediately inspected.

The agency has ordered extra inspections of Boeing 777 jets fitted with the Pratt & Whitney 4000 engine following the incident. "We reviewed all available safety data following [Saturday's] incident," said FAA administrator Steve Dickson in a statement.

A man too afraid to fly due to the pandemic lived undetected in a secure area of Chicago's international airport for three months, US. He reportedly found the staff badge in the airport and was "scared to go home due to Covid"

On Tuesday Boing announced it will end production of the 747 in 2022 with the last four 747s being sold to Atlas Air Worldwide. The 747 revolutionised aviation when it was first introduced in the 1970s by hauling more people, at lower cost. However, since upgrading to a new 747-8 model in 2011, only 47 were sold to passenger carriers as the upgrade could not complete with the Airbus A380.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) was allowed to use the Airbus A350-900 for the first time for a trip to Egypt.

The new jet is 67 meters long, can reach speeds of up to 960 kilometers per hour, flies more than 13,000 meters high and can reach any destination worldwide without a stopover.

Being the the first of three new acquisitions, the two other A350-900s are to be delivered for the Bundeswehr's "white fleet" by 2022.

Search teams on Sunday discovered the flight recorder of the missing Boeing 737-500 of the Indonesian company Sriwijaya Air in the sea. This was announced by the country's army chief.

After the suspected crash of the passenger plane, police also reported the discovery of body parts of passengers. The body parts were found off the coast of the capital Jakarta, a police spokesman told Metro TV. The plane, operated by Indonesian airline Sriwijaya Air with 62 people on board, had disappeared from radar just minutes after takeoff on Saturday and had been considered missing ever since.

According to reports from the BBC and Flightradar24.com an Indonesian Boeing 737 has gone missing and lost contact en route to Pontianak in the West Kalimantan province.

The plane had taken-off from Jakarta and lost 3,000m in altitude in less than one minute before losing contact.

There was little activity in the skies over Germany in the Corona year 2020: Up to and including 27 December, the German Air Navigation Services (DFS) monitored just under 1.47 million aircraft movements. This was 56 percent less than the 3.33 million flights recorded in the same period last year.

In the Christmas week, aircraft movements including overflights were only 38.4 per cent of the previous year's figure.

International air traffic had plummeted dramatically in March after more and more countries closed their borders to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The last time controllers recorded fewer commercial and military flights was in 1989, then for West German airspace alone. The previous record year is 2018, with 3.35 million movements.

Virgin Atlantic has announced that all passengers travelling from London to the United States will be required to show proof of a negative Covid-19 vaccine. The new requirement will go in effect on December 24.

“With the health and safety of our customers and people always our number one priority, we will require all travellers to present evidence of a negative LAMP or PCR Covid-19 test, taken up to 72 hours prior to departure, including on-site at the airport,” Virgin said in a statement.

The Chinese aviation regulator has sparked some controversy today by requesting that cabin crew wear disposable nappies, and refrain from using onboard toilets to reduce the risk of catching COVID-19.

This advice has been published in a new guideline book for airlines under 'personal protective equipment'.

The regulator was quick to point out that this requirement is only for flights into high COVID-19 areas; where infection exceeds 500 per 1 million people.

Pilots of the Russian state-controlled airline Pobeda have chosen a route that traces the contours of a male sexual organ during an unauthorized maneuver with an aircraft with 100 passengers on board.

The airline's supervisory board has now drawn the consequences in this case: The head of the company was warned and his deputy fired, as the Moscow newspaper "RBK" reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, the pilots wanted the maneuver to be understood as a solidarity action for the Russian soccer player Artjom Dsjuba. As the captain of the national team, Dsjuba had been excluded from the games in November after an intimate video of him was widely viewed on the Internet.

The departure from the route, which was dangerous for passengers, was said to have occurred on a flight from Moscow to Ekaterinburg on November 11. Pobeda is a subsidiary of the Russian airline Aeroflot.

Brazilian company Embraer, considered today's third-largest airplane maker after Boeing and Airbus, was the victim of a ransomware attack last month.

All of Qantas' ground handling staff will be outsourced, laying off 2,000 employees to save the company more than $100 million a year.

Around 8,500 positions have been ditched by Qantas since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.

The Transport Workers' Union criticized the move by Qantas, despite a bid by the 2,000 workers to keep their jobs.

“This is a dark day as Qantas management rejects a thorough and competitive bid by its highly skilled and dedicated workers to keep their own jobs,” said TWU national secretary Michael Kaine.

A new study by the EU's aviation regulator EASA has found that "aviation emissions are currently warming the climate at approximately three times the rate of that associated with aviation CO2 emissions alone."

This is due to non-CO2 emissions, which are harder to quantify and not well studied. The new study examined the impact of these emissions, including nitrogen oxide, water vapor, oxidized sulfur and soot particles.

About 2 percent of global CO2 emissions are caused by aviation, but that does not include the non-CO2 emissions listed above.

According to the CEO of the airline Qantas, implementing a Covid-19 vaccination requirement for passengers would be "a necessity" as soon as vaccines become widely available. He also stated that "talking to my colleagues in other airlines around the globe" this requirement could be a widespread measure against the virus.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an order Wednesday that paved the way for the troubled Boeing 737 Max to carry passengers again, ending the jet's 20-month grounding.

After the FAA announcement, the Air Line Pilots Association released a statement saying it "believes that the engineering fixes to the flight-critical aircraft systems are sound and will be an effective component that leads to the safe return to service of the 737 MAX."

When the aircraft returns to the skies, some airlines are likely to downplay the "Max" label using the plane's formal variant names, such as "737 -7" or "737 -8," Reuters reports, citing industry sources familiar with the branding.

Berlin's Cold War-era Tegel airport finally closed its doors Sunday after the Air France flight AF1235 to Paris took off. Originally built to handle 2.5 million passengers a year, Tegel passed 24 million in 2019.

The shutdown happened one week after Berlin's new BER airport opened southeast of the capital.