news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

Four JetBlue employees and a city corrections officer have been charged with stealing credit card numbers from several unsuspecting airline passengers.

Prosecutors said the five used the cards to go on a spending spree at restaurants, liquor stores, and shops including Bloomingdale’s and Victoria’s Secret.

Investigators began looking at the group after one traveler rushing to catch a flight accidentally left his credit card behind at a JetBlue counter at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Later, someone used the card to run up $508 in charges, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.

source: USA Today

Ryanair opens new routes from Dublin to Alicante, Spain, and Bydgoszcz and Gdansk in Poland today.

Alicante becomes Ryanair’s twelfth Spanish route from Dublin while the addition of Bydgoszcz and Gdansk brings Ryanair’s Polish routes from Dublin to eight.

source: hemscott.com

The Latvian airline airBaltic carried 129,689 passengers in March 2007, or 34% more than in the same month in 2006, when airBaltic transported 96,851 passengers.

During the first quarter of 2007, airBaltic transported a total of 338,217 passengers, or 28% more than during the same period in 2006, when the total number of passengers was 264,803.

source: Boarding.no

Travel to Latin America has been on the upswing as countries there look to tourism for economic growth, and tour operators in the United States and Canada offer exotic vacations to the south. But until recently, getting around within Latin America ” even in popular countries like Mexico ” was a hassle often involving multiple plane changes or long bus rides over rough roads.

Now, thanks to an increase in low-cost airlines in Brazil and Mexico, which account for 60 percent of the Latin America’s air traffic, it’s getting easier to jet around.

In the last two years, at least five new low-cost carriers, including Click Mexicana, InterJet and Volaris, have started service in Mexico, according to ALTA, the Latin American Air Transport Association. And the low-cost airlines GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes, BRA and WebJet now account for more than 40 percent of Brazil’s domestic market.

Even some budget carriers from the United States have begun expanding to Latin America. Spirit Airlines started service to San Jose, Costa Rica, on April 5 and plans to serve Guatemala City from Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles starting May 10 and 11 respectively. It also has filed for service to Caracas, Venezuela, and to Lima and Chiclayo in Peru.

source: The New York Times

Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline, has launched its first ever flights from Cardiff direct to the French capital city of Paris.

With fares from £34.99 one way including taxes and charges, travellers from Wales have been snapping up seats, bagging a bargain break to the city.

Flybe has the direct service to Paris following the recent acquisition of BA Connect earlier this year, adding the Welsh capital to its list of UK bases and providing the people of Wales, especially from its South West region, with a low cost and convenient travel alternative.

Wizz Air, one of eastern Europe’s biggest budget airlines, plans to float on the London Stock Exchange, in a listing which could value it at up to 500 million pounds ($1 billion), the Daily Telegraph said on Wednesday.

A Wizz Air spokeswoman at the Budapest-based airline declined to comment on the report.

The float is planned before the end of the year and will include fundraising of up to 200 million pounds to finance the airline’s expansion, the newspaper said.

source: Reuters

Ryanair said Thursday it was expanding its route network for its newest hub in Bremen, northwest Germany.

Europe’s largest no-frills airline said it planned to open seven new routes in mid-September, taking the total number of routes to 18, just weeks after opening services in Bremen.

New twice-weekly services would link Bremen with Alghero in Sardinia and Trapani in Sicily; three-times weekly with the Slovak capital of Bratislava, Malta and Stockholm; four-times weekly with Italy’s financial capital, Milan; and daily with Paris.

source: Forbes

Low-cost airline easyJet has called on European governments to remove around 700 of the oldest aircraft from Europe’s skies by banning any aircraft built before 1990 from operating within the European Union after 1st January 2012.

The no-frills carrier argues that older aircraft are far less fuel efficient and, therefore, more environmentally damaging than newer planes. As such, easyJet has called for a strict age-limiting policy to be implemented on aircraft used by European airlines.

source: Forbes

Virgin Atlantic will become the first airline to fly non-stop from London to Australia after buying 43 new, fuel-efficient aircraft from Boeing.

Sir Richard Branson, the airline’s chairman, announced the US$8 billion ($9.6 billion) order for up to 43 787 Dreamliners. They will allow Virgin to launch super-longhaul flights to Perth and later to Syndey and Melbourne.

Qantas considered launching a non-stop service last year using 777s, but it abandoned the idea because the increased fuel required would cut revenues.

source: The Australian

The extreme low-fare airline, already well established in Europe, will try for a comeback in the United States on May 22 with a well-financed start-up, Skybus Airlines, beginning service that day and promising at least 10 seats on every flight priced at $10 one-way ” before taxes.

If it sounds like People Express and Laker Airways ” low-price carriers that made a splash, expanded too fast and then collapsed ” there are similarities.

But the organizers of Skybus are counting on the $160 million cushion that they have raised and on a big change in consumer behavior to help the carrier follow the success of Ryanair, the Irish airline. Ryanair brought ultracheap fares to much of Europe, charging fees for many extras and transforming the short-haul market there.

source: NY Times