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News of August 2007


easyJet to launch 46 new routes this winter

21 August 2007

easyJet would launch a further two new routes this winter, connecting East Midlands with Palma (Mallorca) and London Luton with Hamburg, bringing the total number of new routes to be launched by the airline this winter to 46 and representing a growth of 14% year on year.

source: Boarding.no


Virgin American with Red Hat

21 August 2007

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Virgin America, the newly launched American airline, has selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the platform on which to host its commercial website.  The airline chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux for its reputation for scalability and security. 

source: Irish dev


New Vatican air service to fly to shrines

21 August 2007

The Vatican is to set up its own charter airline service to fly pilgrims to shrines and holy sites.

The first flight, which is already sold out, takes off from Rome at the end of August and will fly to Lourdes.

Other routes to places of pilgrimage around the world are also expected to be introduced.


Airline SAS, unions work to avoid more strikes

20 August 2007

Scandinavian airline SAS said on Friday it had buried the hatchet with its Danish unions and that four organisations had pledged to work for a “‘no-strike situation'” after 2007 wage negotiations.

The carrier, hard hit by fierce competition from low-cost carriers and higher fuel costs in recent years, has had hundreds of flights grounded this year at a cost of millions of dollars due to strikes at its Danish and Swedish units.

SAS Chief Executive Mats Jansson said the airline should be able avoid new strikes through initiatives including profit-sharing programmes and share-ownership programmes.

source: Reuters


Southwest may become world’s biggest airline

20 August 2007

Southwest Airlines Co. is on pace to unseat American Airlines this year as the world’s biggest airline, measured by passenger traffic.

The domestic-only discount carrier already eclipsed American’s combined domestic and international traffic during the first five months of 2007, according to a government tally released last week.

Southwest carried 40.3 million passengers on domestic routes between January and May, an increase of 4.2 percent from last year.

source: Courierpost Online


Date named for first A380 flight to Sydney

17 August 2007

The Airbus A380, the world’s biggest passenger plane, is to enter service on October 25 with launch client Singapore Airlines, the companies announced today.

After an 18-month delay to the delivery caused by manufacturing problems, the plane is to carry its first paying passengers on a longhaul route between Singapore and Sydney.

source: News.com.au


Ryanair eyes more bases in Spain

17 August 2007

Ryanair sees room to open two more bases in Spain by around 2010 and will double passengers there, the airline said yesterday, a week after announcing its presence in the country would double to four hubs.

“‘We now have four bases and there is space for one or two more . . . in the next three or four years,'” Ryanair’s director of marketing and sales in Spain, Maribel Rodriguez, said. “‘There’s still a lot of space to grow.'”

Rodriguez later said the airline planned to double profits from Spain as well as the number of passengers to and from Spanish airports by around 2012.

source: Independent.ie


Swedish airline stops Iraq flights

15 August 2007

Sweden has suspended its commercial flights to and from Iraq following a report that an aircraft traveling to Stockholm was targeted by attackers, a spokesman for the country’s Civil Aviation Authority says.

Eva-Mari Lofqvist, the agency’s information officer, told CNN that the move was made Friday and will be in effect “‘until further notice.'”

Last Wednesday, a Nordic Airways flight carrying around 120 passengers was headed from Sulaimaniya in the northern Iraqi Kurdish region to the Swedish capital, Stockholm, when the incident occurred.

source: CNN


US: Airline to offer nonstop: Hub-Dominican Republic

15 August 2007

JetBlue Airways Corp. will offer the only nonstop service from Boston to Santiago, Dominican Republic, between Dec. 12 and Jan. 15, on flights that arrive and leave from the Dominican capital in the wee hours of the morning.

source: Boston.com


Aer Lingus ‘anger’ at pilots’ strike

14 August 2007

Management at Aer Lingus has claimed that a decision by the company’s pilots to go on strike over the employment of new pilots at the proposed Belfast hub on lesser conditions than colleagues in Dublin was a “‘veto on essential progress,'” which was “‘unacceptable and deeply regrettable.'”

The company’s 480 pilots are to stage a 48-hour strike next Tuesday and Wednesday in protest at what they said were moves by the airline to employ pilots at its new base in Belfast on less favourable terms and conditions than those applying to staff in Dublin.

source: ireland.com