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The fate of an Indonesian airliner missing with 102 people on board remained in doubt late on Tuesday after senior officials apologised for erroneously stating that its wreckage had been found.

Officials had earlier said what was left of the plane, a Boeing 737-400 operated by budget carrier Adam Air, had been located in the mountains of Sulawesi island where it had crashed in heavy rain. Reports said 12 people had survived the crash.

“‘The location has not been found. We apologise that the news that we conveyed was not true,'” First Air Marshal Eddy Suyanto, commander of Hasanuddin air base in Makassar, told reporters.

source: Reuters

Malaysia’s budget airline AirAsia is in discussions to form the world’s first low-cost global air network with Britain’s Virgin and easyJet, a company official said Tuesday.

Talks have begun to form an alliance that would result in long-haul, low-cost flights, the AirAsia spokeswoman said on the condition of anonymity.

“The discussions aren’t finalised yet, so we’ll have to wait for an official announcement before we can give details,” she said.

AirAsia was expected to make an “important announcement” by Friday, fuelling speculation that statements would be made regarding its long-haul plans, the Star daily reported Monday.

Potential buyers for Alitalia must guarantee the airline’s 18,000 jobs, national routes and the Italian identity of the Alitalia brand, the Economy Ministry said Friday.

The ministry, in a document published on its Web site, said expressions of interest for its stake in the struggling flag carrier must be presented by Jan. 29. Buyers must have minimum capital of 100 million euros ($131.73 million).

The government is seeking an investor or group of investors to buy at least a 30.1 percent stake in the airline as it sells down its 49.9 percent share.

China’s Southern Airlines will launch the first airline connecting Beijing with Lagos, former capital of Nigeria, on Saturday, according to the airline’s Beijing office.

This will be the first regular flight offered by a Chinese airline between China and an African country, said deputy manager Zhao Fengsheng.

Flight CZ331 will take off at 11:40 p.m. from Capital International Airport in Beijing, fly via Dubai, capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and land at 11:10 a.m. local time in Lagos. The total flight time is around 16 hours.

source: People.com

A holiday fog bank that stranded thousands of travelers in Britain also stranded thousands of suitcases that are still being sorted out.

British Airways tells The Telegraph that it could be weeks before the “‘baggage mountain'” at London’s Heathrow is cleared out and luggage reunited with owners.

The airline said the problem began even before the bad weather rolled in when a conveyor belt at the airport’s Terminal Four broke down.

“‘As we cleared this initial backlog, a new backlog of several thousand bags appeared due to the cancellations because of fog,'” an airline spokesman said Friday.

LTU, a German holiday-charter airline which has shown interest in taking over Air Madrid, said Friday it had ended talks on acquiring any stake in the Spanish airline.

“‘LTU has no intention of acquiring shares in Air Madrid,'” a spokesman for the Dusseldorf-based company told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. The talks had ended and there were no arrangements to resume them. He did not state the reason.

source: Playfuls

A car bomb placed inside a Renault Traffic van exploded at 9am this morning in the car park of Terminal 4 of Madrid’s Barajas airport, slightly injuring four people. Prior to the blast, two warning calls were received, the second of which was to claim responsibility for the attack in the name of the Basque separatist group, ETA, which gave police sufficient time to evacuate the area and transfer people to the main terminal building.

Two police officers were injured by flying glass and only two other people were very slightly hurt, although a number of passengers have been complaining of ear-ache caused by the noise of the explosion.

source: Thinkspain

Startup airline Virgin America Inc. got an expected rejection from the government Wednesday, when the Department of Transportation ruled that the company must change its corporate structure before it can get an operating certificate.

The Burlingame, Calif.-based branchild of Sir Richard Branson — head of England’s Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. — had planned to begin low-cost flights in 2007. Branson raised $177 million in startup capital for the airline in December 2005 from U.S. private equity firms and from himself.

However, the DOT said Virgin America doesn’t meet a requirement that the president and two-thirds of the board of directors are Americans, and Virgin America’s relationship with the British Virgin Group in the U.K. “‘indicates that the carrier is not under the actual control of U.S. citizens.'”

source: Dallas Business Journal

Lufthansa’s low-cost airline Germanwings is gearing up for further expansion after posting its first profit just four years after beginning operations, says Germanwings CEO Thomas Winkelmann.

“‘Germanwings has just had the best year in its history,'” said an ebullient Winkelmann over a lunch of wiener schnitzel at Berlin’s Cafe Einstein, a popular meeting place for movers and shakers in the German capital.

Germanwings – which began operating in 2002 – is set to make a profit this year, said Winkelmann who declined to reveal any figures.

source: Playfuls

Spain’s development minister said Wednesday the government would have zero tolerance in future for airlines failing to heed safety regulations, as she defended her handling of the Air Madrid crisis which left thousands of people stranded before Christmas.

The airline suspended operations on December 15, leaving 330,000 passengers stranded in Latin America and Spain. It had its flying license revoked by Spain’s Civil Aviation authority a day later.

source: International Herald Tribune