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Two hearings took place on Capitol Hill to address the increasingly long lines and security issues currently facing U.S. airports.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Administrator Peter Neffenger testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security on his plans to deal with the challenges at TSA. The House Homeland Security Committee’s Transportation Security subcommittee heard from local officials serving on the front lines at airports, airlines and aviation executives on the frustratingly long security lines.

Michael W. McCormick, Executive Director and COO of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) – the voice of the business travel industry – issued the following statement in which he called on TSA, Congress and the industry to work together in a collective effort to fix the current state of airport security, ensuring safe and efficient air travel:

“For several months, GBTA has been warning its members of tighter airport security and increasingly long security lines that would not necessarily bring added security. The devastation we saw in Brussels underscores the fact that forcing people to queue up in long lines to go through security could actually be setting up soft targets for terrorists.

But we are far beyond the time for finger pointing. Congress, the TSA, the travel industry and travelers themselves must come together as we embark on the busy summer travel season.

It is well known that TSA is understaffed. But the agency must do a better job of utilizing the staff available and to better manage its resources. Local TSA officials need the flexibility and agility to manage security lines hour by hour. And TSA headquarters needs to ensure the officers on the ground have the intelligence and planning abilities to address security threats.

For their part, airports and airlines deserve credit for taking proactive steps to manage queues and for hiring contractors to help assist TSA personnel with non-screening functions.

Finally, travelers must be cognizant of the strain on the system and do everything in their power to help move travel along. Every frequent traveler must enroll in PreCheck.

As we work through the immediate crisis, TSA must begin to develop long-term solutions. GBTA strongly believes in risk-based programs and supports ways to expand enrollment in TSA’s PreCheck program. The House and Senate have both embraced this plan, but the different vehicles for passage are being held up. GBTA has called on Congress to include this language in the FAA Reauthorization and to pass it without further delay.

TSA, Congress and the air travel industry must address this as an all-hands-on-deck response as we all need to share the responsibility of supporting the efforts necessary to protect one of our nation’s most valued assets: safe and secure air travel.”

Two hearings took place on Capitol Hill to address the increasingly long lines and security issues currently facing U.S. airports.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Administrator Peter Neffenger testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security on his plans to deal with the challenges at TSA. The House Homeland Security Committee’s Transportation Security subcommittee heard from local officials serving on the front lines at airports, airlines and aviation executives on the frustratingly long security lines.

Michael W. McCormick, Executive Director and COO of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) – the voice of the business travel industry – issued the following statement in which he called on TSA, Congress and the industry to work together in a collective effort to fix the current state of airport security, ensuring safe and efficient air travel:

“For several months, GBTA has been warning its members of tighter airport security and increasingly long security lines that would not necessarily bring added security. The devastation we saw in Brussels underscores the fact that forcing people to queue up in long lines to go through security could actually be setting up soft targets for terrorists.

But we are far beyond the time for finger pointing. Congress, the TSA, the travel industry and travelers themselves must come together as we embark on the busy summer travel season.

It is well known that TSA is understaffed. But the agency must do a better job of utilizing the staff available and to better manage its resources. Local TSA officials need the flexibility and agility to manage security lines hour by hour. And TSA headquarters needs to ensure the officers on the ground have the intelligence and planning abilities to address security threats.

For their part, airports and airlines deserve credit for taking proactive steps to manage queues and for hiring contractors to help assist TSA personnel with non-screening functions.

Finally, travelers must be cognizant of the strain on the system and do everything in their power to help move travel along. Every frequent traveler must enroll in PreCheck.

As we work through the immediate crisis, TSA must begin to develop long-term solutions. GBTA strongly believes in risk-based programs and supports ways to expand enrollment in TSA’s PreCheck program. The House and Senate have both embraced this plan, but the different vehicles for passage are being held up. GBTA has called on Congress to include this language in the FAA Reauthorization and to pass it without further delay.

TSA, Congress and the air travel industry must address this as an all-hands-on-deck response as we all need to share the responsibility of supporting the efforts necessary to protect one of our nation’s most valued assets: safe and secure air travel.”

The US issued a travel alert over the possibility of attacks in Europe this summer causing ripples in the travel sector and the plunging of European tourism-related shares.
The travel and leisure sector fell 1.5 per cent, among top sectoral fallers.
In the warning, the US specified that major events, tourist sites, restaurants, commercial centers and transportation could all be targeted.
The already battered French tourism industry had to face another downfall with the fall in shares of French tourism stocks.
“The expectation is that we will see a bit of a difficult summer, and the backdrop of that perception of an increased risk of attacks is certainly not helping,” Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at IG, said.

Ryanair, Europe’s favourite airline, today (2 Jun) cut its checked-in bag fees for 92% of its 116m customers, and simplified the number of bag fee options (from 108 to 6), as part of Year 3 of its “Always Getting Better” (AGB) programme, which continues to improve the customer experience, through service, digital and inflight developments.

From today, customers on domestic flights under 2 hours will have their bag fees cut by 50%, while customers on all other flights under 3 hours will enjoy savings of up to 17%. Customers on flights over 3 hours will see no change to their checked bag fees.

Ryanair’s Chief Marketing Officer, Kenny Jacobs said:

“We’re pleased to cut bag fees for 92% of customers as part of our “Always Getting Better” programme with a streamlined range of just 6 bag fee options, as we continue to listen to our customers and improve the Ryanair experience for the 116m people we’ll carry this year.

Over 92% of our customers will enjoy reduced bag fees and will pay the same price for checking-in a bag whether bought at the time of the initial booking or added to the booking, regardless of seasonality. Furthermore, customers will also be able to add bags to their bookings via the Ryanair app up to 3 hours before their scheduled time of departure.

These bag changes are in addition to our best-in-class cabin bag allowance, offering 2 free carry-on bags, and we’ll continue to offer the biggest and best choice of destinations, with the most on-time flights and a fantastic onboard experience, as we grow our fleet, traffic and routes – and all on the lowest fares.”

At the opening of the International Aerospace Exhibition (ILA) in Berlin on 31 May, Lufthansa was honoured with the innovation award from the German Aviation Industry in the category of emissions reduction. The innovation award is presented under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Energy (BMWi) and is aimed at companies, start-ups and individuals who have facilitated innovations in the field of civil aviation.

The award recognises the newly developed analysis software OMEGA, which was developed together with the IT company Aviaso. The name stands for ‘Ops Monitor and Efficiency Gap Analyzer’. The IT programme uses data collected from flight operations to improve the efficiency of future flights. Amongst other things, weather, flight performance and navigation data are evaluated. After around three years of its project phase, it was successfully put into regular operation at the end of 2015.

The new software programme provides important data by comparing the planned, actual and optimum values during the different phases of flight in order to reduce fuel and CO2 emissions. “We have taken a great step forward with project OMEGA: Now we can evaluate the experience gained from thousands of daily flights worldwide. And with it, we can optimise flight planning and therefore save several thousand tonnes of kerosene per year. This is a significant contribution to the improvement of the ecological balance”, says Dr. Joachim Schneider, Vice President of Flight Operations Standards & Projects, Deutsche Lufthansa. Pilots can take advantage of the analyses carried out in order to optimally prepare during the flight and for its arrival destination, and also use it to detect any possible deviations from the plan at an early stage.

In 2008, the Lufthansa Group published their strategic environmental programme. Since then, the Group has managed to improve the fuel efficiency of the passenger fleet by 11.5 percent to 3.84 litres per passenger and 100 kilometres in 2015.

A recent report by Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) predicts that China will be the largest international tourism source market for the U.S. by 2020, excluding Mexico and Canada. This marks a pivotal visitor scenario shift from the one that was dominated by the UK and Japan.

PATA, which analyzes Asia-Pacific region’s international travel trends, predicts that by 2020 the number of Chinese travelers visiting the US will reach 5 million per year.

Furthermore, the annual growth rate will be approximately 13 percent for the next five years. In 2015, 3 million Chinese visited the US and China was the third largest tourism source market.

As such, six percent of all the overseas visitors to the US would be Chinese by 2020 compared to UK’s and Japan’s market share of 4.27 percent and 4.03 percent, respectively. The market share of Canada and Mexico put together is 50 percent.

David Huether, senior vice president of research at the U.S. Travel Associations, said the number of visitors from the UK and Japan would continue to rise over the next 10 years, but the annual growth rate is likely to be only in single digits.
Huether also said that an oncoming wave should not be anticipated, even though there will be more Chinese travelers, because that has already happened in the past decade. He further added that the ten years will see strong growth.

According to him, the growth rate of Chinese arrivals to the U.S. is moderating after experiencing a growth rate of 36 percent in 2011 and 20 percent in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The forecast is that the growth rate will be in double digits through 2020. However, it is likely to be in the range of 16 to 17 or 18 percent.
Instead of just two countries making up a large chunk of the overseas tourism source market (as in 2000), eight countries make up 50 percent of the visitation market with equal shares. Apart from China, travelers from several other countries to the US are expected to grow.

Currently, Brazil is the third biggest overseas source market. The country is likely to maintain its position in 2020. However, the average annual growth rate will be the highest from the Asia-Pacific region.

According to the U.S. Travel Association, the overall increase in travel exports was 3.5 percent during the period March 2015 to March 2016. In 2015, international travelers spent as much as $277 billion in the US, the best performance in a couple of years, indicating that the moderation in international visitors’ spending has started to ebb.

In the recent times, the Japanese Yen has lost some ground against the dollar and therefore there is a slowdown in spending. On the other hand, the decline of Chinese yuan against the dollar has not been much. The British pound started to soften against the dollar only during 2015.

he growth in tourism to the US has also been fueled by higher incomes in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in China. Further, the report pointed out that the income sensitivity displayed by the European source markets (specifically Germany and France) and the Americas (Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela in particular) are higher compared to the tourism source markets in the Asia-Pacific region.