Fleet changes boost China Southern 's international expansion plans

Even Southwest may abandon its bags fly free policy

Last year, the Arab Air Carrier Organization (AACO) chose a trip into the region's past by picking Algerian capital Algiers as the site for its annual general meeting. It was a surreal event in many ways: A lot of attendees did not even get to Algeria because they could not obtain visas, and those who were able to travel there were stuck in a highly protected luxury hotel above the city. Anyone who wanted to take a stroll was supposed to do so only with a bodyguard.

An Oct. 28 article (page 39) misstated the history and operational status of the Airbus A350 program, which was launched in 2006. The A350-1000 market has grown by 29% since then and now totals 2,100 units that are expected to be built during the next 20 years.

Hundreds of applications for aircraft operations and repair stations are held up, stymied by the FAA's inefficient certification processes, a government watchdog finds. FAA is juggling 1,029 such applications, Jeffrey Guzzetti of the Transportation Department's Inspector General's office, recently told Congress. The situation is so bad, one applicant has been in limbo since August 2006. And it is about to get worse, as requests from NextGen technologies and unmanned aircraft flow into the system.

Airbus and Boeing have argued that air transport growth is linked to the development of global GDP. But that is not always the case: U.S. air travel has been more or less stagnant in spite of economic growth, but Russian air transport is growing fast in the midst of a recession.

The price of EU carbon dioxide allowances (EUA) under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) was volatile in October, as market participants positioned ahead of imminent sales by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and speculated on the prospects for progress on market intervention by the regulator. The price of EUAs for delivery in December seesawed wildly through the month, ahead of upcoming sales by the EIB and possible political progress on the European Commission's plan to backload up to 900 million EUAs from auctions over the next few years.

Persian Gulf carriers gain much-needed new infrastructure in Dubai and Qatar