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Charlotte Ryan

Freelance journalist writing about travel, aviation and lifestyle. Formerly aviation correspondent at Bloomberg and set up the English language newspaper the Bogota Post. Work has appeared in Businessweek, the Independent, the Economic Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News and others.

Bloomberg.com •

Cebu Pacific Set to Favor Airbus in Deal for as Many as 150 Jets

Airbus SE is closing in on a large single-aisle jet order from Cebu Pacific Air, with the carrier planning to sign up for as many as 150 A320neo aircraft that would more than double the Asian airline’s fleet size.A deal would include about 50 optional purchases, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Philippines-based Cebu and Airbus may announce the accord at the Farnborough Air Show later next month, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions ar...
Bloomberg.com •

Branson Plans One-Stop Travel Shop as Virgin Atlantic Turns 40

As Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. celebrates its 40th anniversary, founder Richard Branson plans to more closely integrate the airline with his cruise ships and hotel businesses to offer travelers a one-stop shop. Branson said he would look to make the brands work more seamlessly, with people traveling on Virgin Voyages cruises getting airline loyalty points, while adding more hotels in the destinations the carrier flies to.

As Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. celebrates its 40th anniversary, founde...
Bloomberg.com •

Airfares Set to Moderate, at Least in Economy Class, CEOs Say

After more than a year of eye-watering airfares post-Covid, there’s some good news for fliers this summer, at least for those traveling in economy — prices aren’t expected to go any higher and in fact may moderate.That was the assessment of many airline chief executives gathered in Dubai this week for IATA’s annual meeting. Several singled out the UK as one place where demand is looking particularly weak.

After more than a year of eye-watering airfares post-Covid, there’s some good news for fli...
Bloomberg.com •

British Airways to Hire 350 Staff to Avoid Heathrow Summer Chaos

British Airways will increase staffing at its hub in London’s Heathrow Airport by 5% to minimize the risk of any disruption in the peak summer season. The carrier, owned by IAG SA, expects this summer to be its busiest since the pandemic and will hire about 350 new workers to fill customer service and ground handling roles, a spokesperson for the airline said. The airline is also upgrading some of its computers and other technology at the hub.

British Airways will increase staffing at its hub...
Bloomberg.com •

Fake Plane Parts Scandal Shows Peril of Antiquated Paper System

After falsified records for spare aircraft parts set off a frantic global search for suspect pieces, the aviation industry now faces another daunting task: adapting the archaic paperwork for 100 million components to the digital age.Since the middle of the year, maintenance shops and aerospace manufacturers have found thousands of engine parts with falsified records linked to a distributor called AOG Technics Ltd. Airlines from China to the US and Europe have had to pull planes from service and...
Bloomberg.com •

Branson’s Latest Dare Reveals Aviation’s Green Challenge

Richard Branson has long relished the image of the aviation pioneer, from traversing the Pacific in a hot-air balloon to making space travel available for paying customers. Now the British billionaire is participating in the first flight of a commercial aircraft across the Atlantic powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel, beating arch-rival British Airways to the punch.

Richard Branson has long relished the image of the aviation pioneer, from traversing the Pacific in a hot-air balloon to...
Bloomberg.com •

Where to Escape in Glasgow When COP26 Gets Too Much

(Sign up for the Green Daily newsletter, your best source for climate news and insights on the latest in science, environmental impacts, zero-emission tech and green finance.)Veterans of United Nations climate conferences have plenty of tips for newbie delegates, from bringing a sleeping bag to the final stretch of negotiations to making sure you take a good book to help remain sane. And get a quiet bite to eat away from the shop talk.

(Sign up for the Green Daily newsletter, your best source f...
Bloomberg.com •

Airbus Backs Lightweight Wing to Preserve Lead Over Boeing

A good decade ago, Airbus SE added more fuel-efficient engines to its A320 aircraft family, giving its already bestselling model a dramatic demand boost. Now the European company is seeking to repeat that success, this time with a new set of wings.Airbus aims to produce a composite wing that’s both affordable and capable of a high production rate, according to Sue Partridge, who heads the company’s future-wing project. Assembly of the first demonstrator is set to start in the next few weeks.

A...
Bloomberg.com •

Brits Finally Traveling Again Means Long Lines and Costly Tests

The U.K. government’s decision to loosen border rules frees Britons to feed their pent-up appetite for leisure travel. But getting to a sun spot and back this summer will be neither easy nor particularly cheap.The new policy that takes effect on May 17 lists just a handful of destinations -- including Portugal, Israel and Singapore -- as green in the so-called traffic-light system. For now, Greece and Spain are excluded, and most of the dozen deemed safe aren’t yet accepting visitors.

The U.K....
Bloomberg.com •

Airlines to Try Ultra-Cheap Fares to Get the World Flying

The nightmare year of 2020 brought the airline industry’s first decade of sustained profitability to a shuddering halt. The coronavirus pandemic tore through in a tumultuous, unprecedented way -- leaving carriers in a deep hole, along with a constellation of aerospace manufacturers, airports and leasing firms.2021 is shaping up to be a transition year for an enterprise that takes passengers on the equivalent of 208 million annual trips around the globe. At best, the path ahead will be bumpy, wit...
Bloomberg.com •

How Safe Is Flying in the Age of Coronavirus?: QuickTake

How safe is it to fly? This remains a troubling question. The hopes of airlines for a rebound in travel after an initial collapse ran up against a resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 around the world starting in late 2020. Overall, the demand for flights fell in 2020 by a record 66%, as measured by the number of kilometers traveled by paying passengers, according to the International Air Transport Association. Quarantines and travel restrictions account for much of the slide, but in addition, would-be pass...
Bloomberg.com •

Covid Threatens Female Airline Pilots’ Progress

Growing up in Amsterdam, Rachna Sharma Reiter felt like the exception. At age 7, she knew she wanted to be an airline pilot but never met any girls her age who shared that ambition. At flight school in the U.S., she was one of three women in a class of 150. After 16 years in the cockpit, she still finds herself being viewed as an anomaly. “It seems like things haven’t really changed,” says Reiter, who works for U.K. discount airline EasyJet Plc. “Whenever I go somewhere, they always tend to thin...
Bloomberg.com •

Airbus CEO Warns Workers It’s Bleeding Cash and Needs Cuts

Airbus SE chief Guillaume Faury warned employees that the planemaker is “bleeding cash” and needs to quickly cut costs to adapt to a radically shrinking aerospace industry.With airline customers fighting to survive and unable to accept new aircraft, Airbus is juggling its delivery schedules while reassessing its long-term outlook for the aerospace industry, Faury told staff in a letter sent Friday and seen by Bloomberg News. A plan to slash production by one-third announced earlier this month ma...
Bloomberg.com •

Tories Consumed by Brexit Face Up to Mortality

There’s one man whose name kept coming up at the annual conference of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives this week, and it wasn’t her would-be successor and Brexit adversary Boris Johnson.Jeremy Corbyn and his opposition Labour Party stripped May last year of the parliamentary majority she so badly needs to see through her road map for Britain’s departure from the European Union. As May rallied her divided party to her cause with her leader’s speech on Wednesday, she turned her fire on C...
Bloomberg.com •

What People Really Think of Brexit, With One Year to Go

Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the worldConnecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world


A year before Britain is supposed to formally break away from its nearest neighbors in continental...
Bloomberg.com •

Cult of Corbyn Smells Another Election

A small church hall in the northern English city of Manchester with sandwiches and cups of tea is not the most obvious venue for an insurrection that would reverberate across Europe.After glorious defeat at the British general election in June, supporters of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn are mobilizing for what they see as inevitable with U.K. politics in disarray: their bearded, 68-year-old socialist cult hero getting another shot at becoming prime minister.

A small church hall in the nort...
Bloomberg.com •

The London Tower Blaze Exposes a Divided Britain

The black, smoldering shell of a London apartment block is the harrowing symbol of everything locals say has gone wrong in their city.The inferno that ripped through the 24-story tower in the small hours of Wednesday morning left at least 30 people dead, 24 hospitalized and many more missing. For devastated locals, some still searching for loved ones, it was emblematic of how they have been abandoned by an uncaring government that spent the last seven years slashing spending on vital services....
New Statesman •

How are graduates who move abroad getting away with not paying off their student loans?

As the government throws out a petition by UK students opposing a freeze on the student loan repayment threshold, some UK graduates are choosing to opt out of the repayment system entirely by moving abroad. The National Audit Office found in November 2013 that around 14,000 former students with debts of £100m were living overseas and behind on payment.  

In February this year, universities minister Jo Johnson vowed to take more action to chase up these non-payments, saying: “We will take stron...
New Statesman •

The naval battle for Brexit: Remain and Leave campaign boats have been warring on the Thames

Just when we thought the campaigning on the EU referendum couldn’t get any more ridiculous, that ship has now officially sailed. 

That’s right, Nigel Farage came sailing up the Thames this morning in a flotilla, while Bob Geldof blared muzak at him from a rival boat. 

The flotilla was organised by the Scottish-led Fishing for Leave campaign, and left from Ramsgate at 3am, and Southend at 6am, before heading to Tower Bridge.
It found an enthusiastic group of Leave supporters there to meet it...

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