Aviation News

A new carrier will grace the apron at Melbourne Airport from December, with Chinese carrier, Shenzhen Airlines, announcing its intention to serve Australia for the first time. The direct flight, which will depart from Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport (SZX) three times a week, will commence on December 22, utilizing an Airbus A330-300 aircraft.

QantasLink, the regional subsidiary of Australian flag carrier Qantas, has bid farewell to the loyal De Havilland Canada Dash 8 Q-300, following 25 years of dedicated service connecting regional Australia to some of its largest cities. The airline, which operated the last flight on Saturday, August 9, shuttled passengers for the final time between Sydney and Tamworth.

The US has more widebody flights in August than any other country worldwide except China. This is based on combining all routes using OAG data. The US has over 1,030 twin-aisle services daily, of which 84% are deployed on long-haul routes. The nation's shortest international links using such equipment were examined recently.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is proposing to extend flight restrictions at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) through the end of next summer amid ongoing air traffic control (ATC) shortages. This would see a maximum of 72 flight movements per hour at the New York-area airport for both the winter 2025 and summer 2026 seasons.

Airlines have more passenger flights between the US and Europe in August than in any other month to date. Carrier submissions to Cirium Diio show an average of 620 daily departures in the peak summer month. Compared to last August, 26 daily services were added.

Korean Air has scrapped plans to deploy the Boeing 747-8 to New York JFK while halving the number of Airbus A380 flights to Los Angeles this winter. Scheduling data from aviation analytics company Cirium shows A380 flights to LAX will scale down from 14 to 7 weekly services starting in November 2025.

Last weekend, I reported that the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) had published content on social media providing some details from a discussion with Russia that could involve a wet-lease deal with Ethiopian Airlines (ET). Crucially, Ethiopian Airlines' fleet is modern and composed of Western-made jets that Russia no longer has access to given US and EU sanctions. After my report came out, the ECAA deleted the post. It seems that information might not have been theirs to share. Someone messed up.

In its push to phase out the Embraer E190 in favor of the Airbus A220, Queens-based JetBlue Airways is selling E190s and its engines. Aviation Week is reporting that earlier this week, JetBlue sold 23 General Electric CF34s to various aftermarket companies. For the buyers, this significantly expands their MRO capabilities at a time of restricted aftermarket support.

Air France-KLM is changing most of its Airbus A350-1000 orders to the smaller A350-900, according to Airbus’ latest order backlog data. This adjustment comes two years after the group’s initial purchase. The change was first reported by FlightGlobal.

Delta’s current fleet of CRJ700 Bombardier regional jets that ferry skiers and nature lovers to the high mountain chalets of Aspen will soon be swapped out for bigger, sleeker Embraer E175 aircraft.

You know the tarmac can tun into a frying pan in the summer if you’ve ever flown at one of the many airports in the American Southwest, like Palm Springs Airport (PSP). The area around this small Southern California airport is famed for the natural beauty of its desert setting.

The runway expansion at Heathrow Airport is once again at the center of discussion, with new proposals now on the table. Earlier this month, Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) submitted a plan, which states it could deliver an operational third runway within the next decade at a cost of around $28.2 billion (£21 billion).

Seeking Alpha is reporting that the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has formally cleared Boeing's $4.7 billion all-stock acquisition of Spirit Aerosystems. This decision comes after the CMA concluded the review phase of an investigation into the acquisition. This was completed ahead of the August 28 deadline.

Denver-based, ultra-low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines remains confident that it will be the 'last man standing' in the ULCC, United States aviation space. According to Aviation Week, the airline's Chief Executive Officer proclaimed that while the airline is pushing towards profitability for the second half of 2025. It believes that the ultra-low-cost aviation market will have less competition and capacity to compete against in 2026.

You might know by now that American Airlines has just added five additional European routes, all of which will take off next March or May. While only one link is brand-new (it has never been served by any carrier), the others are returning to its network. They involve three of its hubs: Dallas/Fort Worth,Miami, and Philadelphia.Only one of these is within the US's 10 busiest airports list.

Qantas has finally taken its newest aircraft transcontinental. The airline, which received it's first gamechanging Airbus A321XLR on July 2, has quietly been operating the aircraft primarily between Sydney and Melbourne for most of July, however on August 8, the plane took off from Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport (SYD), destined for it's longest commerical flight since delivery, across the countries 'red center', all the way to Perth International Airport (PER), in Western Australia.

Airbus has reported that it delivered 67 new aircraft to 41 customers in July 2025. While this was the third month in a row that deliveries increased, the 2025 figures were still 10 units shy of the total deliveries made in July 2024. CEO Guillaume Faury reaffirmed the manufacturer's target of 820 aircraft deliveries in 2025 during the company's mid-year financials presentation last month, but this goal might now be in jeopardy.

Emirates has announced that it will be prohibiting the use of power banks on board its flights from October this year, with a raft of other new rules relating to the transportation of such devices also being brought in. The changes come in the wake of various high-profile incidents where power banks have started in-flight fires.

Travelers headed in and out ofSpain are bracing for significant disruptions from August 15 to August 17, 2025. The Daily Mail is reporting that over 3,000 baggage handlers employed by Azul Handling, a subsidiary of Ryanair, will begin a strike action at 12 airports in Spain. These will commence on August 15 and then repeat every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday until the end of December.

Boeing is seeking to remove or raise the production limit on its 737 MAX series as the longest variant nears certification completion. Following the discovery of a deicing issue and another unique vulnerability, design corrections are expected to be finished on the engines in the next several months.