Singapore Airlines launched an air route linking Beijing's Dasin International Airport and Singapore on Monday.

Flights on this route are operated by Boeing 787-10 aircraft daily in both directions.

Thus, the number of passenger flights of the aforementioned airline on the Beijing-Singapore route has increased to 28 per week, Singapore Airlines informed.

Dai Haoyu, spokesperson of Singapore Airlines, said the growing Chinese market will be a bright spot in the global civil aviation passenger transportation market over the next 10-20 years.

“China is an important strategic market for us,” he added.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China predicts that the country's passenger transportation volume will reach a record high of 700 million by the end of 2024. China has been the world's second-largest civil aviation sector for 19 consecutive years. Its contribution to the growth of global air transportation exceeded 20 percent.

The average delay for containerships behind schedule has continued to increase in 2024 rising to the highest levels except during the peak of the pandemic and surge in container volumes. Sea-Intelligence is out with its monthly look at the average performance of the container shipping carriers across 34 different trade lanes highlighting the industry remains broadly impacted by the disruptions of 2024.

“While schedule reliability in 2024 has stabilized within the 50 to 55 percent range, it’s been on a slight downward trend since the May peak,” commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence. He however notes that “The low levels of volatility in schedule reliability in 2024 do give shippers a relatively good idea of what to expect month over month.”

Overall, the industry’s schedule reliability slipped a further 1.2 percentage points in September to 51.4 percent. It is the bottom of the range for 2024 and the lowest level the industry has seen in 24 months. From a dismal level of just one in three ships on schedule in 2021, the industry surpassed the 50 percent mark in October 2022 and was able to get as high as 64 percent in mid-2023. The declines resumed in December 2023 as the Houthis began to interrupt containership schedules through the Red Sea.

The current performance compares with 2019 when before the pandemic, the surge in volumes, and now the Red Sea diversions, containerships were reaching 80 percent schedule reliability. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have set an ambitious target of reaching 90 percent schedule reliability on key routes once they launch the Gemini Cooperation in 2025.

Maersk remains at the top of the industry with the best schedule reliability in September 2024 and one of only four carriers among the top 13 that were able to improve performance between August and September. However, Maersk is at just 55.5 percent down from 70 percent a year ago. Zim, PIL, and Wan Hai were the other carriers that were able to improve performance month over month.

All the top carriers are showing a significant decline year over year. From an average of 60 percent in September 2023, the largest carriers are down 13 percentage points to an average of 47 percent in September 2024. Three carriers (MSC, PIL, and Wan Hai) are each down over 20 percentage points year-over-year calculates Sea-Intelligence. The average decline year-over-year is 13 percentage points with a 2.5 percent point average decline in September 2024 versus the prior month.

While schedule reliability has been in a narrow range for 2024, Sea-Intelligence highlights that the September 2024 average delay is “the third-highest figure for the month, only surpassed by pandemic highs of 2021-2022.”

The average delay in September was up a further 0.21 days reports Sea-Intelligence. They calculate that the average delay for late vessel arrivals is now 5.67 days. The average for 2024 is up half a day from the 2023 average. Before the rerouting began, vessels had clawed the delay back to below five days for late arrivals.

The most consistent level of port congestion remains in Asia reports Linerlytica. In addition to the Chinese ports, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, Linerlytica however shows increased levels at Savannah and in Northern Europe’s large container ports on its October 31 snapshot.

With the diversions around Africa and winter weather challenges off the South Africa, ports and carriers highlighted problems with vessel bunching at ports. This was creating the congestion spikes at individual ports which further added to the delays.

Maersk warned the industry last week that it expects the disruptions coming from the Red Sea rerouting to continue well in 2025. The Houthis over the weekend vowed to continue their attacks while the leader of the group reported they have targeted over 200 vessels in the past year.

On Monday, a freight train with 28 passenger buses powered by new energy sources departed from the Dulain International Land Port Station in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, to Vientiane, capital of Laos. Guizhou /Southwest China/ to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. This is the first time that a special train has been launched in Guizhou Province. Guizhou Province has launched a special train to export vehicles to Laos since the opening of the China-Laos Railway.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) today at approximately 04:00 shot down a cargo airplane in the Malha area of North Darfur, claiming that they had eliminated an Antonov airplane used as a bomber by the Sudanese military.

However, evidence from the wreckage suggests that this airplane actually was part of an airlift sponsored by the United Arab Emirates in support of the RSF itself. Jubilant fighters on the ground who filmed the wreckage seemed not to have realized that they had shot down a cargo plane used for their own supply and logistics.

Ali Rizkallah ‘Savannah,’ a prominent RSF commander in North Darfur, appeared in one video at the scene of the crash (below), saying they had used “guided missiles” to bring down the “Egyptian Antonov.” (This rhetoric follows the lead of the RSF commander-in-chief, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who recently accused the “treacherous Egyptian Air Force” of bombing his troops).

In fact, the wreckage is that of an Ilyushin-76, and one of the crew members was carrying a crew badge (in the video below) identifying him as the main engineer for “Airline Transport Incorporation FZC,” a company based in the United Arab Emirates, with has ties to Kyrgyzstan. The crewman’s badge said “Manas International Airport,” which is the main international airport of Kyrgyzstan.

Another crewman had a Russian passport. Although these documents survived the wreck, there were no reported surviving crew, and the aircraft was largely incinerated, creating a large impact crater. The typical IL-76 crew has five members.

Another piece of wreckage belonged to New Way Cargo Airlines, which has taken part in a UAE airlift to Amdjarass in eastern Chad, according to a recent investigation by the Conflict Observatory, a research consortium funded by the U.S. State Department.

Conflict Observatory identified several Kyrgyz Ilyushin-76 aircraft involved in the UAE’s airlift to Amdjarass, Chad, including two operated by New Way Cargo Airlines (EX-76010 and EX-76015), which has aircraft based in Ras al-Khaima, UAE.

In total, the investigation identified seven flights by known cargo planes and an additional 35 unidentified cargo flights to Amdjarass Airport between June 2023 and May 2024, when the research period ended. The UAE claims this airlift was for humanitarian purposes, but the researchers at Conflict Observatory said almost certainly the cargo plaines were bringing military supplies, corroborating previous findings by other sources, including a UN Panel of Experts, and The New York Times.

Conflict Observatory noted that one of New Way Airlines’s airplanes previously took part in an airlift supporting General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army forces in violation of a Security Council arms embargo, according to a UN report. The UAE’s arms deliveries to Darfur likewise violate an arms embargo, which the Security Council imposed in 2004 during the previous war in Darfur.

Additionally, unidentified cargo planes have landed recently in Nyala, South Darfur, which observers have speculated were bringing supplies and evacuating wounded RSF fighters. The last such flight landed at Nyala Airport four nights ago, according to eyewitnesses living in the Jabal neighborhood.

RSF troops in North Darfur likely would not have known anything about secret nighttime flights in South Darfur coordinated by the paramilitary’s leadership. Instead, they would have been on the lookout for Sudanese Air Force warplanes, which have routinely carried out bombings in North Darfur against both civilians and RSF targets.

Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023 between the Sudanese military and its former ally, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which originated as a collective of ethnic Arab militias in Darfur. The war has gutted the nation’s capital, displaced a quarter of the population, wrecked the economy, and plunged parts of Sudan into famine.

Turkey’s Ministry of Internal Affairs responded to last week’s capture of a Turkish-owned cargo ship involved in drug smuggling promising cooperation with the ongoing investigation by Spanish and French forces. A Turkish-owned cargo ship drew the attention of the authorities after it embarked on what the Spanish authorities termed a unique “uneconomical” voyage.

Working together as part of an ongoing operation in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, Spanish and French authorities apprehended the Ras while the vessel was 130 miles from Lanzarote. Built in 1994, the cargo ship is 2,500 dwt and 230 feet (70 meters) and is currently registered in Tanzania. According to databases, the ship appears to have changed owners in July 2024.

Spain’s police and tax authority reports it was attracted to the vessel because of the unique nature of its movements, something the Turkish authorities are also confirming after the investigation. Spanish and French forces patrolling in the region were alerted to the ship after an EU monitoring operation based in Lisbon and Spanish forces detected the movements of the ship.

“On this occasion, investigators were struck by the fact that the cargo ship was undertaking an uneconomical voyage, having set sail from Turkey, sailed across the Mediterranean to the Atlantic front, then to Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau without having loaded or unloaded any merchandise and, after carrying out erratic maneuvers, heading for the Iberian Peninsula,” stated the Spanish authorities.

The Special Operations patrol boat Petrel of Spain’s Customs Surveillance Service and the French customs patrol boat DPF-3 intercepted the Ras on October 4. Aboard they found a crew of 10 consisting of seven Turkish nationals including the captain, two Azerbaijani nationals, and one Dutch citizen. All of them were initially detained and questioned and now have been arrested as part of the ongoing investigation.