Pakistan’s national airline announced Tuesday that it had slashed its flights to Europe by nearly 50 percent after the European Union barred most of its planes due to safety concerns.
The EU’s executive commission said Monday it would allow Pakistan International Airlines to use only its seven Boeing 777 planes on services to EU airports due to worries about the age and maintenance of its other long-haul aircraft.
source: BusinessWeek
N.C. Officials say a problem with a computerized reservation system has caused delays for at least 500 U-S Airways passengers this morning at the airline’s largest hub.
Airline spokesman Phil Gee says passengers in Charlotte, North Carolina, faced delays of up to an hour and a-half when U-S Airways’ automated kiosks didn’t work.
Delays also occurred at Philadelphia International Airport.
source: kold
US Airways will apply for a nonstop route from Shanghai to Philadelphia later this year. If approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation, service will begin in March 2008. It would also be the airline’s first service to Asia.
source: Philadelphia Business Journal
Nigeria’s flag carrier, Virgin Nigeria, has been voted Airline of the year. The honour was bestowed on the airline at the 12th annual ThisDay awards which was held at MUSON centre, Onikan, Lagos. Virgin Nigeria beat the other three competing airlines that were also nominated.
Virgin Nigeria’s Airline of the Year award is coming on the heels of the nomination of Virgin Nigeria as one of the three best African carriers by the Association of South African Travel Agents (ASATA). The South African awards come up on Friday, March 23, 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
source: AllAfrica.com
Qantas has collaborated with Airbus380 and Los Angeles World Airport to make the airline the world’s first carrier to operate the new Airbus A380 from LA on flights to Australia. The A380 will make its inaugural touch down at LAX airport on 19, March, 2007, making it one of the first cities in the US to see the landing of the new aircraft. The A380 will also simultaneously land at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on the same day. The news was announced through a joint statement made by the Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R.Villaraigosa and officials of Airbus and Qantas Airways on Tuesday.
Northwest Airlines is considering becoming the first U.S. airline to switch over to a system in which only electronic tickets will be issued to customers.
With the airliner already enjoying a 99.9 percent issuance rate of electronic tickets to its U.S. customers as of December, the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press reported, NWA’s top executives will likely soon make the operations entirely based on “‘e-tickets'” rather than their paper counterparts.
source: UPI
The European Commission is set to ban Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) from flying into the 27 EU member states amid safety concerns, EU sources have said.
Experts from EU nations made the proposal after meeting in Brussels and agreeing that most of its fleet falls short of European safety standards and should therefore be added to the European flight blacklist, the sources said.
The Pakistani international carrier flies to France, Britain, the Netherlands and Italy among European destinations.
source: Konkaniworld
Air France announced this week that its daily non-stop flight service to Seattle will commence as of June, 11, 2007. The route will be serviced by the Airbus A330-200, which offers 219 seats, and will be equipped with the New Travel Concept.
The airline asserts that the service will best suit business and leisure customers, allowing for fast transits to and from cities in Europe and worldwide.
Spain’s Iberia is a takeover target from Germany’s Lufthansa according to a report in the French economic daily newspaper La Tribune.
It said Lufthansa has opened discussions – but not negotiations – on possibly buying a key stake. Iberia has denied the report and Lufthansa refused to comment.
Such a tie up would create an airline carrying carry 100 million passengers annually, bigger than the current European number one – Air France-KLM with 70 million.
source: Euronews.net
American Airlines is adding flights to and from New York, raising the stakes in a showdown pitting the nation’s largest carrier against Continental Airlines Inc. and storm-battered JetBlue Airways Corp.
American said Thursday that it will begin nonstop service between New York and Las Vegas — a JetBlue stronghold — in September, and add a few flights to other cities, including San Francisco.
The appeal of New York is obvious. It is the nation’s largest city, a major tourist destination and a hub for international flights.
