news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

The Canadian Transportation Agency will review a policy at the country’s biggest airlines allowing cats in the cabin to see if it interferes with air travel for allergic customers.

The independent tribunal announced the review on Thursday after ruling that three people who are allergic to cats are, in effect, persons with disabilities because the airlines’ pet policies affect their ability to fly.

The passengers had complained about Air Canada, the country’s biggest airline, its regional carrier Jazz Airline, and WestJet Airline, the No. 2 airline in Canada.

source: Reuters

Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. said Tuesday it has signed an initial pact to join the Oneworld Alliance, comprising 11 global carriers such as American Airlines and British Airways.

Kingfisher, controlled by billionaire Vijay Mallya, also applied to India’s civil aviation ministry to seek approval for its membership of Oneworld, India’s biggest airline by market share said. The airline will add 58 cities in India to the Oneworld network, expanding the alliance’s total network to 800 destinations in nearly 150 countries.

source: The Wall Street Journal

German carrier Air Berlin on Tuesday confirmed that it is planning to raise its stake in its Austrian partner Niki, the airline of Formula 1 legend Niki Lauda. The German budget airline said it is “in advanced negotiations” on increasing its share and indicated that its board of directors would discuss the matter on Tuesday.

So far, Lauda’s budget carrier has profited from the Austrian Airlines takeover last year because the European Commission gave the go-ahead on the condition that the enlarged Lufthansa group hand over landing rights to Niki.

source: earthtimes.org

EasyJet put its staff in French airports on British labour contracts in an attempt to avoid the costly welfare contributions required under Gallic employment legislation.

Prosecutors called for the low cost carrier to be fined €225,000 and be ordered to pay more than €10 million in outstanding social security charges as easyJet went on trial yesterday on charges of flouting French labour law. The case follows a lawsuit filed by unions and social security officials.

The company denied the claims and told the court in Creteil outside Paris it had no obligation to register employees under French labour contracts at the time of the alleged offences between 2003 and 2006.

source: Times Online

An Ethiopian airliner that crashed off the coast of Lebanon was on fire before it plummeted into the Mediterranean with no known survivors.

Although Lebanese government officials were quick to rule out terrorism, they confirmed witness accounts of a “ball of fire” falling into the sea. An investigation into the cause of the crash has been launched. According to one aviation expert, speaking anonymously, the aircraft probably caught fire after what he described as a “fuel tank ignition event” that may have had nothing to do with the weather.

Until yesterday, the airline had not been involved in a major crash since November 1996, when a Nairobi-bound passenger jet was commandeered by hijackers and was forced to crash land in the Indian Ocean, killing 125 people on board.

source: Telegraph.co.uk

First it was free flights, hotel rooms and magazine subscriptions. Now, Finnair Oyj, Finland’s biggest airline, has a new idea for attracting frequent flyers: free plastic surgery in exchange for air miles.

About 1.3 million flyers are enrolled in Finnair’s loyalty program. Earning the 3.18 million points for breast augmentation surgery requires 120 round-trip, business- class flights between Helsinki and New York, according to a points table on Finnair’s Web site. Miles earned with the airline are valid for five years.

source: Bloomberg

A new airline is to operate out of Glasgow Airport following the collapse of Flyglobespan. Kiss Flights, which operates from eight UK airports outside Scotland, will be offering 12 summer routes to Mediterranean destinations from April. They include Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey.

Flyglobespan was grounded on 16 December when its Edinburgh-based parent company, Globespan, was put into administration.

source: BBC News

In November, the U.S. airline industry had its best on-time performance in nearly 15 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. With 88.6 percent of flights arriving on time in the month, the performance beat the last high of 88 percent in September 2002.

No flights fell under the chronically delayed category of being late 80 percent of the time or more in the month, and no flights had tarmac delays longer than four hours. Two Delta flights had tarmac delays more than three hours long.

The improvements come as airlines have cut back on capacity and fewer people book trips by air.

source: ajc

A battle for low-cost airline revenue in Asia intensified on Wednesday as Malaysia’s AirAsia and Jetstar, owned by Qantas Airways, finalised a passenger handling and aircraft maintenance deal they said would cut millions of dollars from annual costs.

The agreement signed by Jetstar and AirAsia stops short of equity participation, and will not involve code sharing – the revenue-generating arrangement under which airlines book passengers directly onto each other’s flights.

The deal also includes co-operation on airport passenger and ramp handling services, and reciprocal arrangements for switching passengers to available flights if one airline’s service is disrupted.

source: FT.com

Scientists have proposed an unusual method for cutting aircraft fuel consumption – they want to fly jumbo jets in formation like geese.

The prospect of flotillas of airliners soaring across the sky in V-shaped flocks, like migrating birds, is startling. Nevertheless, research by aviation experts has shown that it could lead to major reductions in aircraft fuel consumption.

The work follows research carried out almost 100 years ago by a German researcher, Carl Wieselsberger. In 1914, he published a paper in which he calculated that birds flying in V-formations use less energy to flap their wings than those on solo flights. Birds in flocks can therefore fly for longer periods than those travelling on their own.

source: Guardian.co.uk