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A last-ditch attempt to find a buyer for crisis-stricken flag carrier Alitalia will be made today as Italy’s transport minister warned that the airline’s planes could be grounded within a week.Alitalia’s special administrator will put the national carrier up for sale, but buyers are thin on the ground.

Unions last week rejected a €1bn (£791m) rescue bid by the CAI consortium of Italian businesses because the plan involved the loss of 3,000 jobs and more stringent working conditions for remaining staff.

source: Telegraph.co.uk

Deutsche Lufthansa, the second-largest European airline, agreed to buy 45 percent of SN Brussels Airlines for €65 million as the pace of consolidation in the industry accelerates.

Europe’s largest carriers are vying to buy smaller competitors to expand networks and cut costs amid slowing economic growth and surging fuel bills. Lufthansa has also been linked with bids for Austrian Airlines Group, Scandinavian carrier SAS Group and BMI of Britain. Air France-KLM is the largest European carrier.

source: IHT

Just weeks after American Airline started offering in-flight wireless internet, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants is urging the airline to add filters restricting passengers from browsing porn and other inappropriate sites. Many passengers and attendants have reportedly complained about the issue.

source: Wired

The airline has announced its intention to challenge Eurostar, whose monopoly comes to an end at the start of 2010, when new EU rail laws come into force.

Air France said: “It would seem logical to replace some air transport services with a rail transport solution so that we can continue to provide our customers with a global offer, meeting both their short-distance and intercontinental travel needs.”

The carrier said its plans were in their early stages and that it had not yet worked out which routes it might run.

source: Sky News

Lufthansa is moving aggressively into the north Italian market to take advantage of the parlous state of Alitalia.

The heavily loss-making Italian airline was locked in talks with the government, trades unions and potential investors about the terms for a last-ditch rescue as its operations were hit again by cancellations and industrial action.

The German flag carrier said it was planning to base six Airbus A319 short-haul jets at Milan’s Malpensa airport to launch a network of direct point-to-point services between Milan and leading European cities.

source: FT.com

Continental Airlines Inc. said Tuesday it will discontinue its flights to London/Gatwick Airport from the New York area and Houston, and will add a third daily flight from its New York Hub at Newark Liberty International Airport to London’s Heathrow Airport on Oct. 25.

The launch of the Heathrow flight is subject to government and airport approval.

The move is an effort to satisfy customers’ preference for Heathrow over Gatwick and to face growing competition at the airport, the carrier said.

source: BusinessWeek

A man is suing American Airlines and a funeral home, saying he tried to send his late wife’s body to their native Ecuador for burial, but her remains got lost.

Miguel Olaya said he hired the DeRiso Funeral Home in New York City to ship his wife’s body to Ecuador in April. But, he said, the coffin wasn’t at the airport when he went to meet it.

His lawyer said American Airlines first claimed it didn’t know where the body was, and then later said it was shipped to Guatemala by mistake.

source: wdsu.com

United Airlines’ stock fell more than 75 percent Monday morning after a link to a nearly six-year-old Chicago Tribune news report was circulated through Bloomberg News Service.

United stock, which had closed Friday at $12.30 a share, hit a low of $3 a share before the confusion was cleared up. The stock closed Monday at $10.92.

In a statement Monday morning, United said it is launching an investigation. United exited bankruptcy in February 2006.

source: Sun Sentinel

A combination of factors is likely to have caused the plane crash at Madrid Airport which left 153 people dead, Spain’s civil aviation chief has said.

Manuel Batista said failure in one of the Spanair jet’s two engines should not have been enough to cause a crash.

New footage of the tragedy shows the plane struggling to gain altitude but does not show any explosion as it was taking off, contrary to some reports.

source: teletext.co.uk

British Airways PLC said its planned business-class only flight from London’s City Airport — which is just a 14-minute train ride from the city’s financial district of Canary Wharf — to New York will allow passengers to complete U.S. arrival checks in Ireland.

The airline said that the route’s refueling stop at Shannon airport, in western Ireland, will double as the port where passengers will go through U.S. immigration checks, meaning they’ll be able to skip them when they land in New York, and speed straight into the city.

source: Business week