Russian-Kazakh free-trade agreement gives EADS incentive

The Arab Air Carrier Organization has summoned its members to Algiers this week to attend the annual general meeting. This marks a distinct change from the group's usual choice of venue. In times past Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates or Qatar hosted the upscale parties and showcased their strength. Algeria, in contrast, is a part of the Arab world that has not experienced much liberalization in air travel, nor has it demonstrated the same growth as the Persian Gulf countries.

Airlines in the next decade will face what might be an unprecedented direct or indirect requirement for equipping their aircraft with communications, navigation, surveillance and safety kits in order to gain access to the NextGen system's most efficient routing and operations.

Competition is fierce among regional jet manufacturers to secure customers that serve London City Airport, into which only a few aircraft types are able to fly. But of the three legacy airline groups operating there—British Airways, Lufthansa (through its Swiss subsidiary) and Air France (under the CityJet brand)—only CityJet has not taken steps to replace its aging RJ fleet.

U.S. airlines—and particularly East Coast-focused carriers such as JetBlue Airways—will take a bigger financial hit from Hurricane Sandy than from most previous major weather phenomena, but they should be able to manage the costs. The bigger questions for the airlines are: How many more weather-related financial hits will they take this year and this winter? And will such extreme coastal weather become more commonplace because of climate change?

China might well become the third force in commercial aircraft building, as many Western companies expect, but its record of export sales of jet and turboprop airliners remains modest. The industry often takes two steps forward, frequently with a political push, then one step backward. Its foreign customers still tend to be financially weak airlines and in many cases have received the aircraft on generous terms. In at least two cases, overseas operators have given up using the aircraft after just a few years.

Are “next-generation” low-cost carriers now inventing the long-overdue all-new business model that is expected to reconcile legacy players' aging strategy with pure players' innovative ideas? Apparently, it is slightly premature to ask the question, keeping in mind attempts that failed in the past few years or ended in tenuous compromises. Just remember Air Berlin: It was expected to devise a new strategy but, in the end, joined the crowd and a global airline alliance, namely Oneworld. Moreover, today, Air Berlin is not in very good shape.

EU carbon dioxide allowances (EUAs) held within the previous month's range in October, as the market took stock of proposed regulatory changes and new primary supply from government auctions. However, United Nations' carbon offset credits crashed to a new all-time low as the market continued to feel the effects of a severe oversupply and signs of a possible ban on some credits in the European Union system.