Ask The Editors Roundup: Top Air Transport Questions From Sept.

1. Will The Proposed Airbus A220-500 Enter The Market This Decade?

Jens Flottau; Photo Credit: S. Ramadier/Airbus

The potential A220-500 would be a great strategic asset for Airbus in the long-standing competition with Boeing and the 737 MAX. Airbus has an opportunity to launch a state-of-the-art, 150-seat aircraft that would, by all expectations, be far more economical than its chief competitor, the Boeing 737-7. Airbus could then disregard the 100-150-seat segment in its considerations for a future new narrowbody, because it already has an A220 platform on which to build.

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2. What’s The Outlook For U.S. Regional Airlines?

Ben Goldstein; Photo Credit: Joepriesaviation.net

The short answer is "yes." Scope-clause restrictions in pilot contracts at the legacy carriers are unlikely to go away anytime soon. But the roster of regionals will be slimmer because of consolidation upstream, favoring stronger players such as SkyWest Airlines and Mesa Airlines. Meanwhile, weaker carriers such as Trans States, Compass Airlines and ExpressJet have already become casualties.

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3. Will Aircraft Demand Pick Up Before 2025?

Jens Flottau; Photo Credit: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

The short answer is that no one really knows. The market is experiencing massive overcapacity right now, with too many aircraft that no one needs. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, economic and air travel growth was slowing; arguably overcapacity was already weighing on the industry, although aircraft manufacturers pointed at large backlogs and discipline among the vast majority of customers to take delivery of aircraft as planned.

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4. What Can Pilots Do About License Renewals During The Pandemic?

Fred George; Photo Credit: Rathke/Getty Images

The FAA’s SFAR 118 and 118-1 (Special Federal Aviation Regulation), issued on June 25, grants up to a three-month temporary extension for certain currency, testing, training and checking requirements, if the pilot meets certain eligibility requirements. However, the three-month extension does not change the base month of the original requirement. For instance, if a pilot has a 12-month recurrent check that is extended to 15 months, his or her following check would be due nine months later, not 12 months.

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5. Why Aren’t U.S. Airlines Testing Passengers For COVID-19?

Karen Walker; Photo Credit: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images

The problems with airport onsite COVID tests are multifold. Current tests take hours to process, which poses the problem of having people wait somewhere until the results come through. Hong Kong Airport has been doing this for all arriving passengers for some months, but that means passengers must sit in the adjacent convention center for hours after their flight. Many airports do not have a viable “waiting room,” and many passengers would not accept waiting that long, especially for a short domestic flight, which is the majority of travel that U.S. passengers are taking.

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The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting global economic crisis have created daunting challenges across the aerospace and aviation industries. Companies large and small face myriad questions on how to ride out the storm and position themselves to thrive when better times return.

To help fill that void, we launched our “Ask The Editors” feature. Readers can submit questions to our global team of editors. If we don’t have an answer, we’ll reach out to our large networks of experts to provide one.

Here is a roundup of the five most popular Air Transport related questions from last month. Go to the Ask the Editor's page to view more questions that were submitted by readers and our editor's insightful answers.

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