news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

Air France-KLM filed a complaint to the European Union on Thursday over Austria’s plans to sell its national airline to German carrier Lufthansa, saying the deal depended on unfair state aid.

Air France-KLM said a decision by the Vienna government to cancel a 500 million euros ($659.5 million) loan to Austrian Airlines as part of the sale to Lufthansa had not been on the table when Air France-KLM was itself considering bidding for the airline.

source: Reuters

The price of air tickets should start coming down soon because of the world financial crisis, experts are predicting, while ruling out a plunge that would endanger the health of airlines.

Cut price airline Ryanair’s boss Michael O’Leary forecast a reduction in an average ticket of between 15 and 20 percent by the end of March, and claims to be attracting passengers from more conventional companies like British Airways.

Most airlines nowadays use the yield management system, whereby prices are adjusted by computer on an almost daily basis in line with demand, starting relatively low then rising if a particular flight fills up, or falling if it does not.

Few airlines have yet adopted an aggressive pricing strategy, as they try to recover from the massive cost of fuel which neared 150 dollars a barrel in mid-July, forcing them to slap surcharges on tickets.

While oil has now fallen to a third of this level, companies have held back from price-cutting at the same rate, while from time to time announcing a reduction in the surcharges since September.

source: AFP

British Airways is in merger talks with the Australian airline Qantas in a deal that could create the world’s first global airline.

BA has also been discussing a merger with Iberia, the Spanish national carrier, and hopes to expand its alliance with American Airlines. The combination of the four would create the largest airline in the world which would be capable of carrying 198 million passengers a year – nearly six times BA’s current traffic.

Historically, the aviation industry has been highly fragmented, with each country trying to operate its own flag carrier and guard against competition.

source: Times Online

A New Zealand airliner crashed off the coast of France on Thursday afternoon and rescuers recovered two bodies from the Mediterranean Sea.

Five other people who were aboard the Air New Zealand (ANZ) Airbus A320 are missing and are feared dead. Aboard the ill-fated plane were a captain and three engineers of ANZ, an inspector of New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority and two pilots of German charter company XL.

source: AHN

Australia recently won the top spot of the ‘2008 Country Brand Index’. Nation branding, as it’s officially referred to, is the theory and practice of measuring and building the reputations of countries; basically applying standard commercial brand management that you’d find with commodities and using it to analyzing everywhere from Austria to Zimbabwe.

The 2008 study conducted used rankings from 30 different categories to come up with the final index. Among the categories were History, Standard of Living, Friendly Locals and Environmentalism. It’s like a beauty pageant for countries, with the most well-rounded coming out on top. Here are the top ten:

1. Australia
2. Canada
3. USA
4. Italy
5. Switzerland
6. France
7. New Zealand
8. United Kingdom
9. Japan
10. Sweden

source: Gatling

The supreme court declined to hear an appeal by Air Canada and WestJet, the country’s two largest airlines, on a January 2008 decision by the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), which gave the airlines a year to implement the policy after they failed to show that a “one-person, one-fare” structure would cause undue hardship.

By convention, the court gave no reason for declining to hear the case.

What remains unresolved is when exactly obesity constitutes a disability. The CTA said airlines must develop procedures to assess eligibility, adding that free seats need not be awarded to overweight people who are merely uncomfortable in a single seat.

source: telegraph.co.uk

German leisure carriers Air Berlin and TUIfly are in advanced merger negotiations, industry sources said yesterday.

The two carriers are understood to be undergoing due diligence by external auditors at this moment. Details of the planned combination ” which is likely to take place under the Air Berlin roof ” have yet to emerge and neither company is prepared to comment officially.

The sudden turn of events comes after separate and exclusive talks to combine TUIfly, Lufthansa affiliate Germanwings and Thomas Cook’s leisure carrier, Condor, failed. A merger of the three carriers would have created a third large German airline roughly equivalent in size to Air Berlin, but with financially powerful shareholders Lufthansa, TUI and Thomas Cook. The combination would also have taken the three airlines off their parents’ balance sheets, a move the three groups have been trying to accomplish for several years.

source: Aviation Week

Spanish low fares carrier clickair today announced a £40 flat fee, per sector fare to help XL Leisure Group and Futura passengers stranded in Spain – primarily in the Balearic and Canary Islands – get home.

The offer follows the cancellation of flights by the British tour operator and Spanish charter airline and also applies to European originating passengers looking to get back to Spain from the UK.

source: TravelWeekly

Just weeks after American Airline started offering in-flight wireless internet, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants is urging the airline to add filters restricting passengers from browsing porn and other inappropriate sites. Many passengers and attendants have reportedly complained about the issue.

source: Wired

The holidays of more than quarter of a million people have been wrecked following the collapse of Britain’s third largest tour operator as the crisis engulfing the travel industry intensified.

XL’s failure, which grounded flights around the world, is the biggest to hit the industry in 17 years as soaring oil prices and a collapse in consumer confidence hit home.

More than two dozen carriers have now folded in less than a year, the victims of surging fuel costs and the credit crisis.