news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

It could all be dismissed as just another Ryanair publicity stunt.

Michael O’Leary, chief executive of the budget airline, has challenged Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the largest shareholder in easyJet, its arch-rival, to a race round Trafalgar Square to settle a dispute over insults concerning “‘high fares’” and the portrayal of Sir Stelios as Pinocchio.

But the latest Ryanair insults have provoked a counter-threat. For the first time in the history of their rivalry, easyJet and Sir Stelios are threatening to sue Ryanair ” on two counts.

“‘If Stelios does not want to run, maybe he can go round in a wheelbarrow,’” said Mr O’Leary. “‘Or maybe we could do sumo wrestling.’”

source: Times Online

The Dubai-owned airline Emirates has announced a 60m-euro (£52m, $82m) sponsorship deal with AC Milan.

The four-year deal, due to begin in July, will see Emirates become Serie A team AC Milan’s shirt sponsor in place of the Austrian betting company BWin.

Emirates already sponsors several football teams including Paris Saint Germain, Hamburg and Arsenal.

source: BBC News

US airline Continental has denied responsibility for a deadly Concorde crash that spelt the end of supersonic travel as its mechanics went on trial in France with French engineers.

Judge Dominique Andreassier read out the charges against the US airline Continental and two of its technical staff who are accused of the manslaughter of 109 people on the plane — most of them German tourists — and four hotel workers on the ground.

The court will decide whether to side with investigators and technical experts who say the crash was caused by a strip of metal that fell off a Continental DC-10 that took off shortly before the Concorde on July 25, 2000.

source: themovechannel.com

A ”hotel in the sky” powered by renewable energy could be the future of green travel, according to its designers.

The Aircruise, a gigantic vertical airship, would use hydrogen gas to keep it aloft and solar energy to power its engines.

Mega-corporation Samsung has embraced the concept that fits well with the emerging South Korean dream of rebuilding its economy in a greener shade, and has appointed designers Seymourpowell to refine the idea and produce a detailed computer animation of the proposed experience to illustrate it.

The initial design proposes a bar/lounge zone, four large apartments, a penthouse and five smaller apartments. Although only a conceptual proposal, Seymourpowell has developed detailed and, it claims, achievable technical specification for the craft.

source: edie.net

Germany’s second-largest airline says it will begin regular flights to Iraq from Saturday. The new route forms another link in the carrier’s expanding global network of destinations.

Low-cost air carrier Air Berlin said it will begin scheduled fortnightly passenger flights to Iraq as of Saturday, the first German airline to do so since the Iraq War.

The airline said connections would be offered from Munich to Erbil in northern Iraq and Sulaimaniya in northeastern Iraq, alternating every second week between the two destinations.

source: dw-world.de

Aer Lingus Group Plc aims to join a global airline alliance to add destinations and attract more passengers after dropping its “no-frills” business model, Chief Executive Officer Christoph Mueller said in an interview.

Aer Lingus pulled out of the Oneworld alliance, which includes British Airways Plc, in 2006, saying the revenue benefits weren’t sufficient. The carrier continues to codeshare with BA, meaning the pair sell tickets on each other’s flights, and has similar pacts with Air France’s Dutch unit KLM and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, members of the SkyTeam and Star groups.

Ryanair Holdings Plc, Aer Lingus’s biggest competitor and a 29 percent shareholder after two failed takeover bids, doesn’t have alliances with other airlines and operates its routes as point-to-point services without connections to other flights. The strategy has made it Europe’s biggest discount carrier.

source: BusinessWeek.com

The year 2009 saw the biggest decline in air passenger traffic in the post-war era, according to the International Air Transport Association (Iata).

Passenger traffic dropped by 3.5% from a year earlier, while freight traffic fell 10.1% as the downturn hit demand.

Despite the improvement at the end of 2009, Iata said 2010 would be a tough year for airlines the world over.

Iata has estimated that airlines collectively lost $11bn (£6.8bn) last year, and stand to lose a further $5.6bn this year.

source: BBC News

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