V Australia, the international arm of Virgin Blue Airlines, has applied for rights to fly between Johannesburg and Sydney five times a week with Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. If the carrier receives approval, the rights would be available from October — two months before V Australia is due to begin its first service, between Los Angeles and Sydney. The airline also plans to connect Los Angeles with Brisbane.

Taiwanese and mainland Chinese airlines could expand their nonstop charter passenger services and introduce nonstop freight flights as early as October. Under the latest proposals, routes would also be straightened. Nonstop flights currently need to pass through Hong Kong air space, greatly lengthening the flying time, even though they offer a much faster service than the standard cross-strait services, which typically stop in Hong Kong, Macau or Seoul.

Chinese airlines, increasingly important players in global demand for commercial aircraft, should return to their customary powerful rates of expansion in the coming year, despite the strange collapse in traffic growth they have suffered in the past few months. A remarkable combination of events has waylaid industry growth, bringing it down from its usual thundering rate of around 15% a year. Passenger numbers in the first five months of the year were only 7.3% higher than a year earlier.