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A man is suing American Airlines and a funeral home, saying he tried to send his late wife’s body to their native Ecuador for burial, but her remains got lost.

Miguel Olaya said he hired the DeRiso Funeral Home in New York City to ship his wife’s body to Ecuador in April. But, he said, the coffin wasn’t at the airport when he went to meet it.

His lawyer said American Airlines first claimed it didn’t know where the body was, and then later said it was shipped to Guatemala by mistake.

source: wdsu.com

US airline JetBlue is selling more than 300 flights and six holiday packages on internet auction site eBay.

The last-minute budget flights have opening bids set between 5 cents and 10 cents.

The flights are to more than 20 mainly US destinations including New York, Boston and southern California. There are also a handful of “‘mystery'” holiday packages to undisclosed locations.

source: Telegraph.co.uk

United Airlines’ stock fell more than 75 percent Monday morning after a link to a nearly six-year-old Chicago Tribune news report was circulated through Bloomberg News Service.

United stock, which had closed Friday at $12.30 a share, hit a low of $3 a share before the confusion was cleared up. The stock closed Monday at $10.92.

In a statement Monday morning, United said it is launching an investigation. United exited bankruptcy in February 2006.

source: Sun Sentinel

Tropical Storm Hanna has flooded highways, delayed flights and halted the U.S. Open Tennis tournament. The storm has dropped more than a month’s worth of rain on much of the New York metropolitan area, but officials aren’t reporting any major damage.

source: abc.com

A JetBlue flight from Boston, Massachusetts, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was diverted Saturday when a fight broke out after someone was smoking in the bathroom, federal officials said.

One passenger aboard JetBlue Flight 455 was taken into custody at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina after the plane landed about 5:45 p.m.

The jet was held at the North Carolina airport for about two hours while FBI investigators interviewed passengers.

Virgin Atlantic has held talks with financial partners over a possible bid to buy Gatwick Airport.

A spokesman for the airline said that the talks were at a very early stage but that it intended to approach other airlines about forming a consortium to table a bid, once it had secured suitable backing.

Sir Richard Branson’s airline already owns a seventh stake in a consortium that owns NATS, the UK’s system of air traffic control and the entrepreneur believes consortium-ownership could be suitable for an airport, now that the Competition Commission has signalled its intention to force BAA to sell up to three of its seven airports.

source: Times Online

The International Air Transport Association on Wednesday significantly cut its air traffic forecast for domestic and international markets, reflecting weakening economic conditions and waning demand.

Global passenger traffic is now expected to grow on average by 2.8 percent this year, compared with a 3.9 percent growth prediction in June.

For 2009, traffic volume growth of 2.9 percent is expected, compared with a previous prediction of 4.5 percent growth.

source: BusinessWeek

Flyglobespan, a low-cost Scottish airline based in Edinburgh, has announced that it will launch direct flights to Turkey next summer.

Considering the rising interest of British tourists in Turkish holiday spots in recent years, Flyglobespan has decided to offer direct flights to Dalaman, a popular Turkish resort.

Similarly, EasyJet, a low-cost British airline, had started offering flights to certain destinations in Turkey last year.

source: todayszaman.com

A combination of factors is likely to have caused the plane crash at Madrid Airport which left 153 people dead, Spain’s civil aviation chief has said.

Manuel Batista said failure in one of the Spanair jet’s two engines should not have been enough to cause a crash.

New footage of the tragedy shows the plane struggling to gain altitude but does not show any explosion as it was taking off, contrary to some reports.

source: teletext.co.uk

British Airways PLC said its planned business-class only flight from London’s City Airport — which is just a 14-minute train ride from the city’s financial district of Canary Wharf — to New York will allow passengers to complete U.S. arrival checks in Ireland.

The airline said that the route’s refueling stop at Shannon airport, in western Ireland, will double as the port where passengers will go through U.S. immigration checks, meaning they’ll be able to skip them when they land in New York, and speed straight into the city.

source: Business week