Mask Mandate Extended to March
President Biden extended the mask mandate for individuals on public transportation, airplanes, and transportation hubs including airports through March 18. The mandate has been extended several times and was most recently scheduled to expire on January 18.
The mandate extension comes as part of the federal government’s new guidelines to protect against the Omicron variant of COVID-19 which also include requiring testing for inbound international travelers within 1 day instead of the current 3 days of travel. The three leading international carriers in the United States — American, Delta, and United — also had to turn over data to the government on their customers who have traveled from the eight countries leading in Omicron cases to facilitate contact tracing. Delta’s list got to the government on-time and was mostly accurate. American’s data was late and missing a bunch of names due to staffing issues, while United’s eventually got there but was stuck in Newark for two days.
The current mask mandate requires masks to be worn by all travelers on airplanes, ships, trains, subways, buses, taxis and ride-shares, and at transportation hubs such as airports, bus or ferry terminals, train and subway stations, and seaports. It also requires masks for anyone playing Microsoft Flight Simulator at home or while watching the movie Airplane! Airplane II: The Sequel is not covered by the mandate since space travel is not impacted.
Jet Airways is Ready for Holiday Shopping
Jet Airways 2.0, the reincarnated version of the once-bankrupt Indian carrier, is in talks with both Boeing and Airbus to drop a cool $12 billion (at list prices, not in reality) on at least 100 narrowbody airplanes for the carrier to use to resume operations.
Jet was the largest private carrier in India before it shut down in April of 2019. The new airline – but with the old name – plans to begin flying in March of next year after the Dubai-based, but Indian Murari Lal Jalan and Florian Fritsch won the bid to lose large sums of money and take over the airline in a state-run bankruptcy auction.
The group plans to invest about $200 million via both equity and debt over the next six months as it attempts to become the first airline revived after bankruptcy in Indian history. The new version of the airline plans to be a full-service carrier with a loyalty program and plans to push all its costs to its customers in the form of unbundled fares.
China Moves Closer Toward Resuming MAX Operations
China’s Civil Aviation Authority provided instructions to airlines on what fixes it will require on the B737 MAX to bring the aircraft back into service in China. The airworthiness directive issued by the government requires certain software installed and revisions to the flight manual plus a promise to never, ever say a bad word about China… ever.
The CAA did not provide a timeline for a resumption of MAX service. China was the first country to ban the aircraft following the two fatal crashes in March of 2019. The aircraft was approved to resume service in the United States about a year ago and has since been approved in most countries. It has been flying without incident. China, along with Russia and Indonesia, are the largest holdouts remaining.
Boeing currently has a backlog of about 300 MAXs to be delivered to Chinese airlines that remain on hold while the plane is plana non grata in the country. Chinese airlines have about 100 MAX aircraft in their fleets currently in addition to those on hold.
- Aer Lingus operated its first route from Manchester, UK to New York yesterday.
- Air Astana delayed its IPO until 2025. We have no update on what this did to the Kazakh stock market.
- Air Canada‘s Aeroplan added Oman Air as its newest partner.
- Avianca emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday.
- Belavia and Cham Wings Airlines were both sanctioned for a fifth time by the EU due to their alleged participation in a migrant smuggling operation.
- Emirates will resume service to two Nigerian destinations, Abuja and Lagos, this Sunday.
- Jazeera Airways launched its first flight to Kazakhstan on Wednesday when it began service from Kuwait City to Almaty.
- LOT is nearing an order for 50 A220s. That’s a lot.
- Qantas plans to make every seat available on its A380 flights via point redemptions in an attempt to draw down the large number of points liability its customers stocked up on during the pandemic.
- Virgin Australia linked up with Link Airways to resume service between Sydney and Canberra which had been on hiatus since the onset of the pandemic.
Air used to be free at the gas station, now it’s $1.50. You know why?
Inflation.