US aircraft manufacturer giant Boeing has predicted that air travel in Bangladesh will double in the next decade – driven by the country’s growing population, expanding economy and the middleclass. Boeing provided details about the increasing demand and capacity for air travel in Bangladesh in a briefing today in Dhaka, on its Commercial Market Outlook (CMO), a yearly forecast of global and regional demand for aircraft. Through 2032, Bangladesh is expected to achieve an annual economic growth rate of more than 5% -- double the global average, supporting air traffic growth at nearly 8.5% annually, according to Boeing. Read More: NOVOAIR launches direct flight on Jashore-Cox’s Bazar route “As travel restrictions were relaxed over the past year, capacity growth in Bangladesh has increased by 11% year-over-year,” said Dave Schulte, Boeing Commercial Marketing Managing Director for Asia Pacific and India, on Wednesday (May 10, 2023). Led by regional traffic to the Middle East and India, Bangladesh’s air travel could double over the next 10 years, he said. To meet strong demands in passenger travel and air cargo, Boeing anticipates South Asia’s carriers will need more than 2,300 new commercial airplanes over the next 20 years, more than tripling South Asia’s current in-service fleet of 700 airplanes. Read: US-Bangla Airlines to operate Boeing 737 Max 8  “We see tremendous opportunity in South Asia, with more than 80% of new deliveries supporting air travel growth and 20% replacing older, less fuel-efficient airplanes,” said Schulte. Single-aisle airplanes like the Boeing 737 family will make up nearly 90% of South Asia’s future fleet, while 10% of the regional fleet will be widebody airplanes like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Both airplane models are currently in operation with Biman Bangladesh Airlines and US-Bangla Airlines. “Boeing airplanes have played a tremendous role in the rapid growth of commercial aviation in Bangladesh. Commonality across the fleet will continue to play a major role in furthering growth, especially as it enables our airline customers to reduce operating costs and expenditures associated with training and maintenance,” added the Boeing Commercial Marketing Managing Director for Asia Pacific and India. Read More: Target trade-based capital flight, not genuine consumption through imports: Economists

U.S. air travel returned mostly to normal Thursday, a day after a computer system that sends safety information to pilots broke down and grounded traffic from coast to coast. By midafternoon on the East Coast, about 150 flights had been canceled and more than 3,700 delayed — much lower figures than on Wednesday, when more than 1,300 flights were scrubbed and 11,000 delayed. Attention turned to the federal agency where the technology failure apparently started hours before it inconvenienced more than 1 million travelers. The Federal Aviation Administration said a damaged database file appeared to have caused the outage in the safety-alert system. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg promised a thorough examination to avoid another major failure. “Our immediate focus is technical — understanding exactly how this happened, why the redundancies and the backups that were build into the system were not able to prevent the level of disruption that we saw,” Buttigieg told reporters. Buttigieg said there was no indication that the outage was caused by a cyberattack but that officials would not rule that out until they know more. Read more: Flight disruptions cascade across US after computer outage The FAA said late Thursday that a preliminary analysis showed the breakdown came after “a data file was damaged by personnel who failed to follow procedures.” The massive disruption was the latest black eye for the agency, which has traded blame with airlines over who has inconvenienced passengers more. Critics, including airline and tourism leaders, say agency technology is underfunded. “Investment is going to be required, no doubt,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom told CNBC. “It’s going to be billions of dollars, and it’s not something that is done overnight.” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has been critical of the FAA on a variety of issues, including staffing of air traffic controllers. He says the agency makes “a heroic effort” and does well most of the time but can be overwhelmed during busy travel times. “They need more investment for technology,” Kirby said at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event in September. “They have been saying it." Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington state, the top Democrat on a House aviation subcommittee, said the outage shows the weakness of the FAA's technology and that the agency needs to make significant improvements. “It's one thing to get things up and going on the old software,” Larsen said in an interview. “It's another thing to invest in the new software platforms that are necessary to ensure this doesn't happen again.” Mike McCormick, a former FAA manager of airspace security who retired in 2017 after about 35 years at the agency, was more confident in FAA technology. He said the agency modernized computer systems over the past 15 years and is 95% up to date, having upgraded to next-generation satellite-based systems for navigation, flight tracking and communication. “Software, hardware, the final upgrades, were completed in the last three years, so now they’re actually working on the next generation beyond that and the enhancements to the systems,” said McCormick, who now teaches air-traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The system that generates NOTAMs — or Notice to Air Missions — also was upgraded, but the outage happened as an engineer was working on the main system and the database somehow became corrupted, McCormick said, citing conversations with people at the FAA. When they switched to the backup system, its database also was corrupted, McCormick said. The system then had to be rebooted. Read more: Number of flights canceled by Southwest Airlines is growing “Things can still go wrong,” McCormick said. “You can still have human error, you can still have procedural errors, you can still have technological errors.” Michael Huerta, FAA administrator from 2013 to 2018, said the systems need to be updated constantly to keep up with technology. Nothing in the FAA system is so old that it's in danger of failing, he said, especially the system that tracks and communicates with planes. “The public should definitely be confident that the air traffic control system is safe,” he said. But the NOTAM system is about a decade old when systems reach the point where vendors don't support it or the platform that it runs on has been upgraded. “It's not a one-and-done type of event,” he said. “It's not very many years that go by before you have to upgrade it.” The outage came at a bad time for both the FAA and Buttigieg. The FAA is trying to repair its reputation after being widely criticized for the way it approved the Boeing 737 Max without fully understanding a flight-control system that malfunctioned and played a key role in two crashes that killed 346 people. The agency took a more hands-on approach when considering — and eventually improving — changes that Boeing made to get the plane back in the air. The meltdown at an agency overseen by the Transportation Department could also undercut Buttigieg’s moral authority to chastise airlines when they cancel or delay flights. He has gone after the airlines since last summer, most recently over disruptions at Southwest Airlines. Wednesday's breakdown showed how much American air travel depends on the computer system that generates NOTAMs. Before a plane takes off, pilots and airline dispatchers must review the notices, which include details about weather, runway closures or other temporary factors that could affect the flight. The system was once telephone-based but moved online years ago. Buttigieg said when the system broke down Tuesday night, a backup system went into effect. The FAA tried a complete reboot of the main system Wednesday morning, but that failed, leading the FAA to take the rare step of preventing planes from taking off.

The European Union said Friday it is planning to stop air travel from southern Africa to counter the spread of a new COVID-19 variant as the 27-nation bloc is battling a massive spike in cases. “The last thing we need is to bring in a new variant that will cause even more problems,” said German Health Minister Jens Spahn. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement that she “proposes, in close coordination with the member states, to activate the emergency brake to stop air travel from the southern African region.” A new coronavirus variant has been detected in South Africa that scientists say is a concern because of its high number of mutations and rapid spread among young people in Gauteng, the country’s most populous province. Read:South African scientists detect new virus variant amid spike Germany said von der Leyen's proposal could be enacted as soon as Friday night. Spahn said airlines coming back from South Africa will only be able to transport German citizens home, and travelers will need to go into quarantine for 14 days whether they are vaccinated or not. Germany has seen new record daily case numbers in recent days and passed the mark of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 on Thursday. A fourth spike of the coronavirus is hitting the 27-nation EU especially badly, with governments scrambling to tighten restrictions in an attempt to contain spread. The flight ban proposal came in the wake of similar action from Britain on Thursday. The U.K. announced that it was banning flights from South Africa and five other southern African countries effective at noon on Friday, and that anyone who had recently arrived from those countries would be asked to take a coronavirus test. U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said there were concerns the new variant “may be more transmissible” than the dominant delta strain, and “the vaccines that we currently have may be less effective” against it. The coronavirus evolves as it spreads and many new variants, including those with worrying mutations, often just die out. Scientists monitor for possible changes that could be more transmissible or deadly, but sorting out whether new variants will have a public health impact can take time. Currently identified as B.1.1.529, the new variant has also been found in Botswana and Hong Kong in travelers from South Africa, he said. Read:Can new variants of the coronavirus keep emerging? The World Health Organization’s technical working group is to meet Friday to assess the new variant and may decide whether to give it a name from the Greek alphabet. The World Health Organization says coronavirus infections jumped 11% in Europe in the past week, the only region in the world where COVID-19 continues to rise. The WHO’s Europe director, Dr. Hans Kluge, warned that without urgent measures, the continent could see another 700,000 deaths by the spring. The EU's emergency brake mechanism has been set up to deal with such emergencies. Where the epidemiological situation of a third country or region worsens quickly, in particular if a variant of concern or of interest has been detected, member states should adopt an urgent, temporary restriction on all travel into the EU. This emergency brake should not apply to EU citizens, long-term EU residents and certain categories of essential travelers, who should nevertheless be subject to appropriate testing and quarantine measures, even if fully vaccinated. Such restrictions should be reviewed at least every two weeks.

This summer is already shaping up to be a difficult one for air travelers. Southwest Airlines customers have struggled with thousands of delays and hundreds of canceled flights this month because of computer problems, staffing shortages and bad weather. American Airlines is also grappling with a surge in delays, and it has trimmed its schedule through mid-July at least in part because it doesn’t have enough pilots, according to the pilots’ union. Travelers are posting photos of long airport lines and describing painful flights. Read:Hundreds believed dead in heat wave despite efforts to help in Northwest “It was ridiculously crowded,” Tracey Milligan said of airports after a round trip from her New Jersey home to Miami this week. Milligan and her 6-year-old daughter endured hours-long delays on both legs of the trip. Before the flight to Florida, she said, JetBlue agents first told passengers there was a discrepancy with the plane’s weight, then they were missing three crew members because the airline was short-staffed, then there was a weather delay. “I really wanted to start screaming and cursing everybody out, but that doesn’t get you anywhere, and security will come and remove you from the plane,” she said. At least the passengers on Milligan’s flights kept their cool. Airlines have seen a surge in unruly passengers, and some experts predict it will get worse this summer as planes become even more crowded. There have been 10 days in June when more than 2 million travelers went through U.S. airports, according to figures from the Transportation Security Administration. Airlines say that domestic leisure travel is nearly back to 2019 levels, although the lack of business travelers means that overall, the number of passengers over the past week is still down about 20% compared with the same days in 2019. The airlines were expecting a blockbuster July Fourth weekend, scheduling more than 100,000 U.S. flights between July 1 and July 5. That was nearly twice the 58,000 that they offered over the same days last year, according to data from aviation researcher Cirium. July 1 was first time the TSA screened more people than on the same day in 2019. The weekend highlights the rapid turnaround boosting an industry that was fighting for survival last year. The recovery has been faster than many expected — including, apparently, the airlines themselves. Since the start of the pandemic, U.S. airlines have received $54 billion in federal aid to help cover payroll expenses. In return, they were prohibited from furloughing or laying off workers. However, they were allowed to persuade tens of thousands of employees to take buyouts, early retirement or leaves of absence. Read:Hundreds of deaths could be linked to Northwest heat wave Now some are finding they don’t have enough people in key roles, including pilots. This week, as Southwest officials braced for crowded flights over the holiday weekend they offered to double pay for flight attendants and other employees who agree to extra work through Wednesday. “The staffing shortage is across the board. On the pilot side, it’s a training backlog,” said Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. “Southwest came into the summer with very little margin.” Murray said many pilots coming back from leave are still getting federally required training to refresh their skills and aren’t yet eligible to fly. When storms cause long delays, pilots can reach their FAA limit on the number of hours they are allowed to work, and there aren’t enough backups to step in, he said. On top of that, he said, Southwest pushed for an “aggressive” summer schedule to capitalize on rising travel demand. Since June 14, Southwest has averaged more than 1,300 daily flights delays — a staggering 40% of its schedule — according to figures from tracking service Flightaware.com. Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said most delays were caused by weather, and that with fewer flights than before the pandemic, it’s harder for Southwest to recover from long thunderstorms. At American Airlines, unions say labor shortages are contributing to delays and the scrubbing of up to 80 flights a day from the schedule through mid-July. In echoes of Southwest, the pilots’ union at American said management did not act quickly enough to retrain 1,600 pilots who were temporarily furloughed then rehired last year or replace the 1,000 who retired. American has also suffered high delay numbers in June. Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have appeared to fare better, although staffing shortages caused Delta to cancel dozens of flights over Thanksgiving last year and again around Easter this year. Read:Blackouts in US Northwest due to heat wave, deaths reported Airlines that pushed people to quit a year ago and now beginning to hire again, which could help fix staffing shortages. Delta, for example, plans to hire more than 1,000 pilots by next summer, starting with about 75 by this August. Passengers whose flights aren’t canceled or delayed still risk being on board with troublesome plane mates. Airlines have reported more than 3,200 incidents of unruly passengers since Jan. 1, most of them involving compliance with the federal requirement to wear face masks on flights, and some face large fines. Andrew Thomas, a frequent flyer who teaches international business at The University of Akron and has tracked air rage for more than 20 years, believes conditions are ripe for even more incidents on planes this summer because travelers are more stressed than ever. “The problem was there before COVID, and now you are putting more people in the sky and you exacerbate this with the masks,” Thomas said. “Service levels are atrocious. Planes are packed, they are not feeding you, it’s hard to get food in an airport. The only thing that’s easy to get is alcohol, which is not a good thing.”

Boeing is lowering its expectations around demand for new planes over the next decade as the coronavirus pandemic continues to undercut air travel.