Saddled with mounting debt and heavy losses, India's airlines are caught in a no-win situation. Passenger traffic is increasing, but costs are rising faster. The airlines want to grow and modernize their fleets to cater to passenger demand, but financing planned fleet expansion is problematic. Indian banks, which have about $7 billion already tied up in the airlines, are worried about their exposure to the sector and are unwilling to restructure loans to carriers, including state-run Air India.

European Union emission allowance (EUA) prices eased back in the first half of February, moving lower in line with German power prices and profit-taking on January's gains.

Nearly 16 years after Boeing seriously revisited the idea of stretching the 747, the company is concluding final flight tests of the first airline derivative of the 747-8 in readiness for an expected service debut in April.

Anderson Leveille grew up in Stowe, Vt., and got his first high-school job in the circa-1820 sawmill his dad owned. There were no blueprints or tolerance gauges, so maintaining the wooden teeth on the mill's bevel gears, which were lubricated with sheep tallow, taught Leveille the value of creative engineering.

Pilots still talk of flights across the Atlantic Ocean—one of the busiest international sectors in aviation—as “a crossing.” It implies an element of voyaging into the unknown. In air traffic management (ATM) terms, it also involves something a bit less romantic: changing flight information regions (FIR) at least three times and arriving into an air traffic system unlike the one from which the aircraft departed.

Air traffic surveillance is set to extend from Europe to North America for the first time thanks to satellite-based coverage that is being established across the northern reaches of the Atlantic. Although the program has run into delays, when finally completed it will yield major safety and efficiency gains for key international air routes.

Passengers stranded due to Spanair's decision to stop operating at the end of January are home, and ticket holders who never made their trips have until April 15 to try to get reimbursed. The airline, which ceased operations due to “exceptional circumstances,” according to its website, has been under financial duress for years.

Distressed Austrian Airlines seemed to have been rescued for good when Lufthansa bought it in 2009, but three years later and with little restructuring success visible, its days seem numbered.