news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

German leisure carriers Air Berlin and TUIfly are in advanced merger negotiations, industry sources said yesterday.

The two carriers are understood to be undergoing due diligence by external auditors at this moment. Details of the planned combination — which is likely to take place under the Air Berlin roof — have yet to emerge and neither company is prepared to comment officially.

The sudden turn of events comes after separate and exclusive talks to combine TUIfly, Lufthansa affiliate Germanwings and Thomas Cook’s leisure carrier, Condor, failed. A merger of the three carriers would have created a third large German airline roughly equivalent in size to Air Berlin, but with financially powerful shareholders Lufthansa, TUI and Thomas Cook. The combination would also have taken the three airlines off their parents’ balance sheets, a move the three groups have been trying to accomplish for several years.

source: Aviation Week

Iceland Express, the low cost airline providing cheap flights to and from Reykjavik, has released its summer timetable for 2009. The new schedule sees the airline increase its destination list to include 19 major European cities.

Iceland Express passengers are already able to book cheap flights to Iceland from new destinations such as Cyprus, Geneva and Krakow.

source: IceNews.is

Ryanair was last night stunned to hear a Spanish court backed an online travel agent against its policy of only accepting flight bookings from its own website.

Yesterday, a court in Madrid sided with Spanish online travel website Rumbo, who in August applied for an injunction to prevent the low-cost carrier from going ahead with its plans to cancel flight bookings made through third-party websites.

Madrid’s Mercantile Court No 1 granted Rumbo’s application and has banned Ryanair from cancelling tickets booked by passengers through the Spanish website.

source: belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Budget airline Jet2.com is dropping its Belfast to Barcelona route, but is adding Croatia and Cornwall to its destinations.

The airline is ending the Barcelona service from 26 October due to competition on the route. Jet2.com said customers who have booked flights to Barcelona in 2009 would get refunds or a free destination change.

source: BBC

Low-cost airline Ryanair will allow mobile calls on its flights from next month, but users could end up paying £2 a minute.

The Irish carrier is launching a trial which will see 14 of its 166 planes fitted with the technology needed to enable mobile calls back to land.

But the development will come at a cost with OnAir, the company behind the in-flight calls, predicting a price of up to £2 a minute.

source: Metro.co.uk

EasyJet has scheduled additional flights to three holiday destinations next month following the demise of XL Leisure Group.

Extra flights have been added from Gatwick to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria; Dalaman in Turkey and Arracife in Lanzarote.

source: Travelmole

A senior official at Ryanair, the biggest discount airline in Europe, said Tuesday that the airline would ground more planes than usual as it prepared for a “very difficult winter.“Howard Millar, the chief financial officer said he expected more carriers to go bankrupt in coming weeks as economies slow.

Millar said Ryanair would ground 14 aircraft at London Stansted airport, the Dublin-based airline’s main hub. That is twice as many as were grounded during the winter last year.

source: IHT

Spanish low fares carrier clickair today announced a £40 flat fee, per sector fare to help XL Leisure Group and Futura passengers stranded in Spain – primarily in the Balearic and Canary Islands – get home.

The offer follows the cancellation of flights by the British tour operator and Spanish charter airline and also applies to European originating passengers looking to get back to Spain from the UK.

source: TravelWeekly

Low-cost airline Ryanair has been forced to cancel flights from its new Edinburgh base for the next six weeks because of strike action at Boeing.

Ryanair said the strike meant US aircraft manufacturers Boeing was unable to deliver two 737 planes it purchased to operate on the new routes.

source: BBC

US airline JetBlue is selling more than 300 flights and six holiday packages on internet auction site eBay.

The last-minute budget flights have opening bids set between 5 cents and 10 cents.

The flights are to more than 20 mainly US destinations including New York, Boston and southern California. There are also a handful of “mystery” holiday packages to undisclosed locations.

source: Telegraph.co.uk