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British Airways will make a third attempt to seal an alliance with its US partner American Airlines within weeks.

Willie Walsh, BA’s chief executive, said he expected final preparations for the deal to be complete within a fortnight, with an application to US regulators to follow shortly afterwards. “‘We want to move on this as soon as possible’,” he said.

BA, which revealed sharply reduced profits last week, has tried to consummate its marriage with American Airlines for more than a decade. It first sought the permission of US regulators in 1997, then again in 2002.

source: Times Online

A budget airline allowed a faulty jet to complete a 6,000-mile round trip from New York to Liverpool and back across the Atlantic despite knowing there was a problem with its engine monitors after it had been struck by lightning, a court heard today.

The company had used some “‘optimistic interpretation'” of rules to allow take-off from, Liverpool, leaving the crew to manually adjust the throttle with the help of another gauge.

source: guardian.co.uk

Lufthansa yesterday put an end to a potentially crippling strike by ground and engineering staff by increasing a pay offer that will set the salaries of more than a third of its workers until early 2010.

The German airline’s willingness to reach a deal had grown as lack of even simple maintenance grounded an increasing number of aircraft – the number of cancelled flights rose from 70 on Tuesday to 130 yesterday.

source: FT.com

If the proposed merger between British Airways and Iberia is given the go-ahead, it will create the world’s third largest revenue carrier and give the two carriers a combined 13.5% share of the transatlantic market based on capacity.

The oneworld alliance partners announced on 29 July that they are in talks with a view to carrying out an all-share merger, which would see both airlines retaining their brands as part of a combined group.

source: flightglobal.com

Budget airline Ryanair has said it will fix a fault on its website that means it is breaking rules on price clarity.

At the moment, its website is breaking rules set by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) by showing prices which do not include taxes and charges.

source: BBC

Deutsche Lufthansa AG said it had to cancel more than 500 flights on Wednesday, affecting thousands of passengers across Europe, as a result of a strike by pilots at two subsidiaries.

Lufthansa already had canceled more than 400 flights on Tuesday after pilot union Cockpit called members at the Eurowings and CityLine subsidiaries out on a 36-hour strike in a pay dispute.

source: IHT.com

Spain is considering changing commercial airline routes to make them shorter and more direct in order to offset high fuel prices, Public Works minister Magdalena Alvarez said Saturday.

Alvarez said she would ask the defence ministry to alter airspace currently reserved for military use in order to make this possible.

“‘If the problem is the rise in fuel prices, the best measure to support airlines is to study how to reduce fuel consumption,'” the minister told reporters in the southern port of Malaga.

source: AFP

As the dust of more job losses, grounded planes and additional capacity cuts starts to settle on the worn tarmac of the aviation industry, three clear things have begun to emerge from the gloom.

The first is that consolidation among the big players in the Asia Pacific is back on the agenda after having been ruled out by regulators such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The second is that the short-lived era of the truly low-cost (as opposed to no-thrills) carrier is over.

The third is that the Qantas name will survive but very few of its planes will be flown under that logo in 10 years’ time.

source: smh.com.au

The national carrier said increasingly tough economic conditions – with oil prices nudging £150 a barrel – made price hikes of up to four per cent “‘absolutely inevitable'”.

The warning came as both BA and Ryanair announced unprecedented cutbacks in their flight schedules to save on fuel costs.

BA has scrapped hundreds of flights over the summer, merging half empty flights to popular destinations to reduce its consumption of fuel.

source: telegraph.co.uk

Ryanair is axing 150 weekly Dublin flights this winter, ending the dramatic Dublin expansion kicked off by the airline three years ago.

The move comes as the world’s airlines batten down the hatches amid soaring fuel prices and weakening economic conditions.

The airline last night warned that up to 500 jobs at the airport could be lost as a result of its decision, although the actual losses are likely to be significantly less.

source: independent.ie