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Angola’s national carrier, TAAG-Angola Airlines, is set to make its final flight from Europe on Thursday amid a deepening row with the European Union over aviation rights, a senior company official said.

TAAG was put on the European Union’s blacklist due to safety concerns but its UK country manager, Joao Rodrigues, told Reuters the firm hoped the EU would reverse its decision.

“‘It’s a critical situation. Angola will try to negotiate for the EU to meet again soon so that they can re-evaluate the situation,'” he said.

source: Reuters

Scandinavian airline SAS said on Friday group traffic (revenue passenger kilometres) rose 6.6 percent year-on-year in June after a rise of 1.7 percent the previous month.

The total load factor, a measure of how efficiently it filled planes, fell 0.1 percentage points to 76.4 percent in June.

The yield for May, the latest month available, was up 7.6 percent. The airline said it expected June yields to rise in line or slightly less than in May.

source: Reuters

Virgin America has asked regulators to let the start-up airline begin selling tickets, amid signs that market conditions in the US are more favourable than many industry executives had expected.

The San Francisco-based group could launch flights as early as August after finally securing approval to start domestic services following a 17-month battle with rivals and watchdogs over its ownership structure, which includes a 25 per cent stake held by Sir Richard Branson and the Virgin Group.

source: MSN

U.S. airline delays worsened in May for a fifth straight month, and the passenger-complaint rate surged 45 percent, the Transportation Department said.

Only 77.9 percent of May flights arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, down from 78.3 percent in the same month in 2006, the agency said today on its Web site. The complaint rate jumped to 1.13 per 100,000 passengers, compared with 0.78 last year.

source: Bloomberg.com

JetBlue Airways Corporation (Nasdaq:JBLU), in partnership with Twentieth Century Fox, today announced it has been named “‘The Official Airline of Springfield'” — the hometown city of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson — to celebrate the summer theatrical release of The Simpsons Movie. In honor of America’s favorite animated family of comedy, the low-fare, high-frills airline will unveil its first-ever specialty aircraft, christened “‘Woo-Hoo, JetBlue!'” and featuring an image of Homer along with a permanent logo of the airline’s new Springfield status.

source: CNN

Eurostar, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn AG and France’s SNCF joined Dutch, Austrian, Swiss and Belgian train companies to form a rail alliance, Railteam, that aims to make international train bookings far easier and simpler by building a single online reservation system.

They want to attract at least 25 million travelers by 2010 ” 10 million more than now ” taking a 5 percent chunk out of the short-haul airline market by promoting four-hour business trips and up to six-hour leisure journeys across western Europe.

They said rail travel can and will compete with low-fare airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet that have revolutionized European travel by encouraging people to fly more often and take weekend trips away.

source: International Herald Tribune

U.S. airports began tightening security Saturday after the second incident in two days in Britain, although officials said there were no plans to raise the color-coded terrorism threat level.

“‘At this point, I have seen no specific, credible information suggesting that this latest incident is connected to a threat to the homeland,'” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a written statement.

“‘We have no plans at this time to change the national threat level.'”

Chertoff noted that U.S. airports have been operating under an elevated “orange” threat status since last fall.

source: LA Times

All airlines from the Indonesian Republic will be banned from flying to the European Union (EU) from next week, an official from the union said yesterday. The decision was made after EU air safety experts deemed all 51 airlines to be unsafe.The experts’ decision, which includes national flag carrier Garuda, comes after four recent crashes in the Asian archipelago and Indonesian authorities’ failure to provide adequate safety assurances, an EU official said yesterday.

source: Brunei Times

easyJet PLC’s chief executive Andy Harrison rejected predictions from Ryanair Holdings PLC that the airline market is heading for a serious downturn.

Economic indicators across Europe pointed to continued growth for low-cost carriers despite a recent softening in demand for air travel, Harrison told the Guardian.

source: hemscott.com

The Spanish airline Spanair cancelled 60 flights to 14 destinations Monday because of a strike by a part of its cabin personnel, media reported.

Most of the cancellations hit inland routes. International flights were cancelled on routes from Madrid to Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Zurich and Vienna.

Source: M & C