TheInternational Air Transport Association (IATA) overnight named Willie Walsh as its next director general and CEO. Read More » Walsh, who earlier this year stepped down as International Airlines Group CEO, will succeed Alexandre de Juniac from April 1 2021. De Juniac said it was the "right time to hand over IATA's leadership for the long process of recovery". IATA said de Juniac, who has been in the role since September 2016, had made known his intention to step down “several months ago”.
In a media briefing as part of this week’s virtual AGM, IATA saidit was in the final phase of developing its digital health pass with a trial of the technology scheduled before the end of 2020 and rollout planned for the first quarter of 2021. The IATA Travel Pass aimed to manage and verify the secure flow of necessary testing or vaccine information among governments, airlines, laboratories and travellers, IATA said. “Our main priority is for people to safely travel again. In the immediate term that means giving governments confidence systematic COVID-19 testing can work as a replacement for quarantine requirements. That will eventually develop into a vaccine program," IATA senior vice president for airport, passenger, cargo and security, Nick Careen, said.
IATA also called for rules covering the use of take-off and landing slots to be waived for the 2021 northern hemisphere March to October summer season. "We have to ensure the environment continues to be one focused on flexibility and not slot use. Otherwise, it’s focusing airlines on the wrong objective," IATA head of airport slots, Lara Maughan, said in a slide presentation. "It’s not about operating movements to retain slots, it’s about operating where there’s demand and stimulating demand." Under what is known as the 80:20 rule, airlines risked losing their allocated slots at slot-controlled airports if they operated less than 80% of their schedule in any given season. Earlier in 2020, regulators issued waivers for the northern hemisphere winter season, which are due to end in March 2021.
Qantas Group CEO, Alan Joyce, said in a television interview last night the airline would require proof of a COVID-19 vaccine before accepting passengers for international flights. “We are looking at changing our terms and conditions for international travellers. We will ask people to have a vaccination before they embark on the aircraft,” Joyce told Channel Nine's A Current Affair program. Qantas's international network is in hibernation except for a number of New Zealand services and repatriation flights operated on behalf of the Australian government. Joyce said the company had yet to decide if passengers on domestic flights needed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before they could travel with the airline.
Indian carriers flew 5.27 million passengers on their domestic networks in October, up 34% from 3.94 million in September, figures from the country's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed. Despite the month-on-month improvement, the October figure was 57% below the 12.32 million domestic travellers transported a year earlier. IndiGo had the largest market share in October, at 55% (2.9 million passengers), followed by SpiceJet at 13.4% (704,000 passengers) and state-owned Air India at 9.4% (494,000 passengers).
CDB Aviation, the leasing arm of China Development Bank Financial Leasing Company, said yesterday it would enter the freighter conversion market with two A330-300s. The lessor said the two passenger A330s would be sourced from its existing fleet of 228 aircraft and converted to freighters by German-based Elbe Flugzeugwerke GmbH (EFW). “We look forward to working with EFW on converting our highly efficient A330-300s into next generation medium wide-body freighters that our customers can use to meet the burgeoning international and regional air freight demand," CDB Aviation CEO, Patrick Hannigan, said in a statement.
Qatar's public prosecutor said it had charged a number of police officers at Hamad International Airport in Doha who subjected some female passengers to a medical examination to determine if they had recently given birth after finding an abandoned baby in an airport bathroom. “Extensive investigations revealed some employees of the airport security department acted unilaterally by summoning female medical staff to conduct external examinations on some female passengers, thinking that what they had done was within the law,” the public prosecutor said according to media reports.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) published a new manual overnight covering COVID-19 testing and cross-border risk management. “This new risk management manual is designed to help countries assess and include personal tests as part of their overall air transport public health responses to COVID-19,” ICAO secretary general, Dr Fang Liu, said.
