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B.C.-based Carbon Engineering Ltd. has secured multimillion-dollar investments from Air Canada AC-T and aircraft manufacturer Airbus SE to scale up and improve its technology for extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, the latest in a series of funding announcements from big-name backers. Carbon Engineering said the funding will go to research and development at its innovation centre in Squamish, B.C. The work there is aimed at improving the efficiency and reducing costs of the direct-air capture technology, one of a number of methods being used around the world to remove greenhouse gas emissions in the fight against climate change. “By providing the funding, they’re allowing us to go faster. We have an ambitious program and it requires lots of labour and equipment,” Daniel Friedmann, chief executive officer of Carbon Engineering, said in an interview. “The more funding we have to move things forward, the more things we can do in parallel.” Air Canada contributed $6.75-million in an equi...

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra appears as a witness at the Public Order Emergency Commission, in Ottawa, on Nov. 23. PATRICK DOYLE/The Canadian Press Transport Minister Omar Alghabra met with members of the air transport sector to discuss measures to modernize and digitize the industry and to learn from the mistakes that led to major travel disruptions this summer. Alghabra, alongside minister Randy Boissonnault and parliamentary secretary Annie Koutrakis, led a national summit on the recovery of the air sector Thursday to discuss improvements to Canada’s air transportation, including transparency, accountability and passenger rights. Alghabra says that after the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, last summer the air industry faced a new crisis of congestion and delays. He says government officials and air transport actors discussed plans to improve ahead of the winter travel surge including modernizing the security screening process and digitizing the sharing of information. Over th...

Passengers queue for the check in desk at Heathrow airport, in London, on June 1. HANNAH MCKAY/Reuters Global airlines are predicting their first industry-wide profit since 2019 next year as air travel rebounds from COVID-19 restrictions, while a new war of words erupted with airports on Tuesday over rising air fares and ground charges. Airlines lost tens of billions of dollars in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, but air travel has partially recovered and some airports have struggled to cope. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) now expects a net profit of $4.7-billion for the industry next year, with more than 4 billion passengers set to fly. It had previously said only that profits were “within reach” in 2023. For 2022, IATA narrowed its forecast for industry-wide losses to $6.9-billion from $9.7-billion. “That is a great achievement considering the scale of the financial and economic damage caused by government-imposed pandemic restrictions,” IATA Director General ...

The federal court of appeal says it will uphold all but one of the rules that bolster compensation for air passengers subjected to delayed flights and damaged luggage. The court on Tuesday dismissed the appeal that challenged the validity of the passenger bill of rights, with the exception of one regulation that applies to the temporary loss of baggage. Air Canada AC-T and Porter Airlines Inc., along with 16 other appellants that include the International Air Transport Association had argued that the passenger rights charter launched in 2019 violates global standards and should be rendered invalid for international flights. In court filings, the airlines argued the regulation exceed the Canadian Transportation Agency’s authority and went against a multilateral treaty by imposing compensation requirements for flight cancellations or lost baggage that were too stringent. The CTA and Attorney-General argued there is no conflict between the passenger protections and the treaty. The FCA i...

Indian police have arrested an unruly airline passenger following a complaint by a woman aboard an Air India flight. Manish Swarup/The Associated Press Indian police have arrested an unruly airline passenger following a complaint by a woman aboard an Air India flight from New York that he urinated on her in business class. Shankar Mishra was picked up by police in the southern city of Bengaluru and brought to the Indian capital on Saturday, New Delhi Police spokesperson Suman Nalva said on Sunday. Nalva declined to say what Mishra told investigators after his arrest. The Times of India newspaper cited Mishra as saying that he was drunk and could not believe what he had done. A New Delhi court sent him to prison for 14 days as police investigate the complaint accusing Mishra of outraging the modesty of a woman during the New York-New Delhi flight. If convicted, he faces up to three years in prison. Sugata Bhattacharjee, another passenger on the flight, told reporters he saw Mishra con...

Travellers wait in the terminal as an Alaska Airlines plane sits at a gate at Los Angeles International Airport, on Jan. 11. STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images A computer outage at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration brought flights to a standstill across the U.S. on Wednesday, with hundreds of delays quickly cascading through the system, including at Canadian airports. The White House initially said that there was no evidence of a cyberattack behind the outage that ruined travel plans for millions of passengers. President Joe Biden said Wednesday morning that he’s directed the Department of Transportation to investigate. Whatever the cause, the outage revealed how dependent the world’s largest economy is on air travel, and how dependent air travel is on an antiquated computer system called the Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM. Before commencing a flight, pilots are required to consult NOTAMs, which list potential adverse impacts on flights, from runway construction to the potent...

Toronto-based Hydrostor Inc. will employ the company’s advanced compressed air energy storage technology in a proposed energy storage project in California. Handout A California community electricity distributor has signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with Toronto-based Hydrostor Inc., a deal worth almost US$1-billion that moves a long-duration energy storage project closer to fruition. Under the agreement, Central Coast Community Energy will contract for 40 per cent of the offtake from Hydrostor’s Willow Rock Energy Storage Center, a proposed development near Rosamond, in Kern County, Calif. The project will employ the company’s advanced compressed air energy storage technology. Willow Rock is one of two planned Hydrostor developments in California. The plants, which can store energy longer than lithium-ion batteries, will allow more renewable energy onto grids by smoothing out the inherent supply variability of wind and solar farms. The company is also developing a project in...

Air Canada this month ended service to Calgary from Regina and Saskatoon and stopped flying to Victoria and other B.C. cities from the Alberta hub. MIKE SEGAR/Reuters Canada’s competition watchdog is being urged to look into moves by Air Canada and WestJet to end regional service in parts of the country, steps one business group alleges are anti-competitive. Air Canada AC-T this month ended service to Calgary from Regina and Saskatoon and stopped flying to Victoria and other B.C. cities from the Alberta hub. The Montreal-based carrier took the steps seven months after Calgary-based WestJet said it would end some service within Eastern Canada, including Quebec and the Maritimes. On Tuesday, the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce called on Competition Commissioner Matthew Boswell to investigate the service cancellations and their impact on travellers’ choices and costs. The group urged Mr. Boswell to find out if the airlines broke the law by effectively agreeing to divide the Canadi...