The Dubai-owned airline Emirates has announced a 60m-euro (£52m, $82m) sponsorship deal with AC Milan.
The four-year deal, due to begin in July, will see Emirates become Serie A team AC Milan’s shirt sponsor in place of the Austrian betting company BWin.
Emirates already sponsors several football teams including Paris Saint Germain, Hamburg and Arsenal.
source: BBC News
US airline Continental has denied responsibility for a deadly Concorde crash that spelt the end of supersonic travel as its mechanics went on trial in France with French engineers.
Judge Dominique Andreassier read out the charges against the US airline Continental and two of its technical staff who are accused of the manslaughter of 109 people on the plane — most of them German tourists — and four hotel workers on the ground.
The court will decide whether to side with investigators and technical experts who say the crash was caused by a strip of metal that fell off a Continental DC-10 that took off shortly before the Concorde on July 25, 2000.
Aer Lingus Group Plc aims to join a global airline alliance to add destinations and attract more passengers after dropping its “no-frills†business model, Chief Executive Officer Christoph Mueller said in an interview.
Aer Lingus pulled out of the Oneworld alliance, which includes British Airways Plc, in 2006, saying the revenue benefits weren’t sufficient. The carrier continues to codeshare with BA, meaning the pair sell tickets on each other’s flights, and has similar pacts with Air France’s Dutch unit KLM and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, members of the SkyTeam and Star groups.
Ryanair Holdings Plc, Aer Lingus’s biggest competitor and a 29 percent shareholder after two failed takeover bids, doesn’t have alliances with other airlines and operates its routes as point-to-point services without connections to other flights. The strategy has made it Europe’s biggest discount carrier.
source: BusinessWeek.com
First it was free flights, hotel rooms and magazine subscriptions. Now, Finnair Oyj, Finland’s biggest airline, has a new idea for attracting frequent flyers: free plastic surgery in exchange for air miles.
About 1.3 million flyers are enrolled in Finnair’s loyalty program. Earning the 3.18 million points for breast augmentation surgery requires 120 round-trip, business- class flights between Helsinki and New York, according to a points table on Finnair’s Web site. Miles earned with the airline are valid for five years.
source: Bloomberg
British Airways and Iberia could seal their merger agreement as early as next month, according to the Spanish carrier’s biggest shareholder, savings bank Caja Madrid.
The regional bank’s chairman Miguel Blesa gave no hint that strike threats by BA’s cabin crew were having any impact on the planned marriage.
source: dailymail.co.uk
Air France has introduced a new economy class seat which it claims will save 1,700 tonnes of fuel a year — the equivalent of 650 flights from Paris to Marseilles.
The new design, being introduced into the airline’s short-haul cabins from January 30, offers passengers 5 to 7.5 cm more leg room and is 40 percent lighter than previous seats used on the airline’s fleet of Airbus A319s, A320s and A321s. The reduction in weight is expected to reduce emissions by 5,200 tonnes of CO2 per year, as each aircraft will weigh approximately 750kg less.
source: The Independent
Lufthansa has become the first major European carrier in 20 years to launch a service to Baghdad.
The German carrier said it was planning to fly to the Iraqi capital and Erbil in the north from Frankfurt and Munich this summer due to high demand and security issues within the country easing.
Lufthansa first started flying to Baghdad in 1956 but halted operation in 1990 because of the Gulf War, when U.S.-led forces reversed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
fuente: breakingtravelnews.com
Continental Airlines has joined rival Delta in boosting the price for checking bags on flights within the USA and to Puerto Rico, Canada and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Delta began charging $8 more for the first checked bag and $7 more for a second on Jan. 5. Continental did the same thing beginning with tickets sold Jan. 16. So far, no other big U.S. airline has followed suit.
Continental and Delta now charge $25 for the first checked bag and $35 for the second if the bags are checked at the airport. The fee is slightly lower for bags checked in online.
source: poughkeepsiejournal.com
British Airways will launch a legal bid later to try to stop a 12-day Christmas strike by cabin crew going ahead.
BA said the move was aimed at avoiding “‘massive stress and disruption'” for passengers threatened by the walkout from 22 December to 2 January.
The airline will claim in London’s High Court a strike ballot by the Unite union was invalid because it involved members no longer employed by BA.
At the centre of the dispute is BA’s decision to reduce cabin crew numbers and introduce a pay freeze.
source: BBC News
At an official ceremony held in Brussels’ historic “‘Grand-Place’†today, the CEOs of the Star Alliance member airlines welcomed Brussels Airlines to the family.
Brussels Airlines is the Belgian airline offering the widest choice of flights to and from the “‘capital’†of Europe. With a fleet of 51 aircraft the airline operates some 200 daily flights to 55 European airports and 14 African destinations.
source: Travel News
