Australia’s main airline carrier group Qantas announced last week a record annual profit of A$1.42bn ($1.1bn, £820m), nearly doubling last year’s result. A portion of this huge profit increase was attributed to savings on jet fuel, due to plunging global oil prices. However, destruction of jobs and conditions played a critical role as was explained […]
On 18 August 2016, a Qatar Airways passenger plane has made an emergency landing at Istanbul’s Atatürk airport due to an engine fire believed to have been caused by a bird strike. Thanks to the professionalism of the cockpit and cabin crew as well as the firefighters and the airport’s airside workers, all 298 passengers […]
Airline pilots describe being pushed to the limit and warn about the impact on flight safety in a cache of leaked documents that give a unique and occasionally hair-raising insight into the aviation industry. Crews complain about fatigue and potentially dangerous schedules at a leading budget airline, which is already under pressure following a crash […]
Australian airport employees will this week join workers across the world to protest low wages and insecure work as a report shows poor working conditions are affecting safety and security in air transport. The report by the International Transport Workers’ Federation is being published as aviation executives gather for a global air transport summit in […]
Panama, a small nation of just three million, has the largest shipping fleet in the world, greater than those of the US and China combined. Aliyya Swaby investigates how this tiny Central American country came to rule the waves. (…) Cheaper foreign labour Most merchant ships flying Panama’s flag belong to foreign owners wishing to […]
Prospect has called for the UK’s aviation regulator to be split up, in a letter to transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin, amid concerns that safety is no longer its paramount concern. The union, which represents more than 5,000 aviation specialists, reached the conclusion that the Civil Aviation Authority’s regulatory functions should be separated after extensive research […]
Your plane is on fire. You can see smoke billowing outside the windows. Flight attendants are screaming to evacuate. So you unbuckle your seat belt, stand up, open the overhead compartment and make sure you grab that nice piece of luggage you brought with you. I mean, you can’t possibly let it burn! Wait, what? […]
Three ITF affiliates have joined the federation in praising the actions of firefighters and the crew on board British Airways flight 2276 in evacuating 172 people when the plane caught fire before take-off this morning at Las Vegas airport. Many of the cabin crew are members of the ITF-affiliated Unite union based at Gatwick airport […]
