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Russia may prohibit its airlines from carbon emission trading in protest against a European Union law it says is unfair, state carrier Aeroflot said on Monday.

A group of nations will gather in Moscow this week to debate possible retaliation to the law, which raises the risk of a trade war by forcing all airlines to pay for their carbon emissions.

Aeroflot said the law could cost it 800 million euros by 2025. It warned that the opposition could change its approach from “‘oral protestations'” to “‘various forms of trade wars with the EU'”.

source: Reuters

Two UK newspaper adverts for budget airline Ryanair have been banned after complaints from readers that they were sexist and treated women as objects.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which received 17 complaints, said they were likely to cause offence.

The adverts showed women posing in bra and pants with the headline “‘Red Hot Fares & Crew! One way from £9.99′”.

source: BBC.co.uk

Thousands of passngers travelling from Hawaii to Thailand were stranded on Friday after the budget airline Air Australia ran out of money and went into voluntary administration, immediately grounding its five jets.

The Brisbane-based international and domestic airline – formerly known as Strategic Airlines – said all flights had been cancelled and it would not be accepting new bookings because it could no longer pay its bills.

Voluntary administration in Australia is similar to bankruptcy protection in the US, and can buy a company time to trade out of its financial problems.

source: guardian.co.uk

Ryanair has swooped in to take on 26 additional routes from the Budapest airport after Hungarian national carrier Malév suddenly ceased all flights Feb. 3 in response to an “‘unsustainable'” financial situation. Industry analysts say the Irish low-cost airline is just the first of a swarm of companies that will try to expand routes to Budapest now that Malév is out of the running.

On the heels of Ryanair’s announcement, several other European carriers, including Lufthansa and Air Berlin, have said they plan to increase services to Budapest to fill in the hole left by Malév’s services to the city, which accounted for nearly 40 percent of all the air traffic at the Budapest airport.

source: praguepost.com

UK-based bargain airline easyJet has thrown its weight behind the development of an electric taxiing system in a bid to cut its fuel consumption and enhance its environmental credibility. The “‘electric green taxiing system'” (EGTS) is a joint venture by engineering and aerospace conglomerates Honeywell and Safran. Safran claims that four percent of easyJet’s fuel consumption is used taxiing aircraft before take off and after landing from and to gates.

Four percent may not sound much, but it’s a figure that’s higher than the norm for budget airlines like easyJet which typically have a high turnover of short-haul flights and so spend a proportionately higher amount of time on the ground. easyJet’s planes are thought to average 20 minutes of taxiing time per flight, amounting to 3.5 million ground-miles a year over its entire fleet.

source: gizmag.com

The recent announcement that Alitalia plans to absorb fellow Italian carriers Blue Panorama and Wind Jet will help the national carrier to gain market share, while at the same time removing two domestic competitors. Last year saw Alitalia’s fleet of 144 aircraft transport almost 25 million passengers, while Blue Panorama carried around two million on its fleet of 12 Boeing aircraft. Wind Jet flew almost three million passengers on its 12 Airbus A320-series aircraft.

Budget airline easyJet saw passenger numbers nudge 0.4% lower last month, but the load factory saw a slightly improvement.

The load factor – a measure airlines use to gauge how full their planes are – increased by three percentage points (pp) from 78.9% to 81.9% year-on-year. This, however, is well under the 12-month rolling average load factor of 87.7%.

source: sharecast.com

Aircraft maker Airbus has been ordered to check all A380 superjumbo planes currently in service after cracks were found in wing components.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has ordered all 68 Airbus A380 superjumbo planes currently in operation to be checked.

The superjumbo’s maker said it had already started implementing a temporary fix  to the problem and a permanent fix would be rolled out shortly.

The move came as Qantas Airways, Australia’s largest carrier, suspended the use of one of its Airbus A380 passenger jets after discovering 36 small cracks in key wing components.

source: BBC.co.uk

The European Court of Justice will today hear a landmark case involving Ryanair and the rights of passengers affected by natural events such as the ash cloud generated by volcanic eruptions.

In March 2010 the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in Iceland, resulting in the creation of a huge ash cloud over Europe which closed swathes of European airspace from April 15th to 23rd, grounding aircraft and leading to the cancellation of hundreds of flights.

Ryanair has argued the closure of airspace went beyond extraordinary circumstances and that it shouldn’t be liable for associated passenger costs.

source: irishtimes.com

Japan Airlines Co. and British Airways applied to form a venture on Japan-Europe routes that would let them share revenue, coordinate schedules and potentially add new services.

British Airways and JAL are both members of the Oneworld global airline alliance that also includes AMR Corp. (AMR)’s American Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. The group fought off overtures from competing alliance SkyTeam, led by Delta Air Lines Inc. and Air France-KLM Group, to lure away JAL, while the Japanese carrier was dealing with bankruptcy in 2010.

source: Bloomberg