news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

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.

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

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

Controversial airline Ryanair has attracted the ire of unionist politicians over an ad for its services in the North.

The ad shows a mock-up of Martin McGuinness with the caption that Ryanair flights are “‘so cheap even the British army used them to go home'”.

Michael Copeland, an Ulster Unionist MLA in east Belfast, has described the promotion as insensitive, crass and provocative to people who consider the North a part of Britain.

source: independent.ie

A U.S. Customs computer outage that stranded more than 17,000 passengers at LAX was blamed Sunday on faulty hardware and an insufficient backup system that left frustrated travelers sitting on planes or standing in long lines.

Saturday night’s delays in screening people arriving on international flights were unprecedented, said Kevin Weeks, director of Los Angeles field operations for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.

The computer malfunction, which began at 2 p.m. Saturday and lasted about 10 hours, came on a peak summer travel day, when nearly 25,000 international passengers arrived at the airport.

source: LA Times

The number of passengers carried by Latvian airline airBaltic in 2007 reached one million this July. For the first time in its history, the airline has carried a million passengers in seven months.

source: Boarding.no

German charter airline LTU said Saturday it reached a new wage agreement with its pilots, averting the threat of a strike.

LTU said the deal with the Cockpit union calls for pilots to receive a 3 percent pay rise this year and 2 percent next year.

The union last week had voted 96 percent in favor of a strike if a new agreement could not be reached.

Pilots had been seeking a 6 percent raise, while the airline had offered 3 percent.

fuente: iht.com

British Airways was today hit with a record £121.5m fine after it admitted to collusion over fuel surcharges on long-haul flights.

BA is facing a second fine from the US Department of Justice, which will be announced later today. The airline said the combined sum was likely to be consistent with the £350m it set aside in May.

The penalty from the OFT is the highest ever imposed by the regulator for infringements of competition law.

source: thisismoney.co.uk

A low-cost airline plans to begin providing non-stop service from Milwaukee to the vacation destination of Cancun, Mexico, later this year. Today Frontier Airlines is announcing plans to begin flying from Mitchell International Airport to Cancun on Dec. 15.
Denver-based Frontier would be the only regularly scheduled carrier offering non-stop service from Milwaukee to Cancun throughout the year. The only other airlines offering that route are charter carriers, such as Milwaukee-based Funjet Vacations.

source: JS Online

The airline’s expansion to Bucharest and Gdansk represents the airline’s commitment to growth in Central Eastern Europe, whilst the addition of Innsbruck to the network will continue to position the airline as the first choice for independent skiers.

This announcement follows the recent news that the airline will also expand with new services from; Bristol to Madiera and Lisbon (starts 29 October and 31 October respectively); Gatwick to Lisbon (starts 1 October); Stansted to Madiera (starts 29 October); Edinburgh and Bournemouth to Krakow (starts 29 October and 30 October respectively).

source: Boarding.no