Welcome
Hello and welcome to your November 2021 edition of Airliner World. While the commercial aviation industry never sleeps – as anyone who has logged onto Flightradar24 at 0300hrs will safely attest – certain corners have definitely been quieter than normal over the past 18 months. Be it due to a proactive corporate strategy or reaction to statutory governmental regulation, thousands of aircraft have been mothballed and countless crew members furloughed as the sector tried its best to weather the storm. So it was deeply encouraging this week to have my email inbox – typically a rather gloomy place of late – peppered with something I hadn’t seen in a while: good news! As British Summer Time draws to an end, it seems the sun may be starting to emerge after one of our industry’s darkest periods. There were reports of Wizz Air reversing its pandemic pay cuts, Emirates announcing it is on the hunt for 3,000 cabin crew and Ryanair revealing it will need 2,000 new pilots over the next two years. While these developments are not (yet) representative of the entire sector, and only go some way to repair the savage cuts of 2020, they are a step in the right direction and should be celebrated accordingly.