news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

The government is to hold a formal consultation on UK aviation – including controversial plans for a new airport in the Thames Estuary.

The study, to begin in March, will look at options for “‘maintaining the UK’s aviation hub status'”.

David Cameron has ruled out expanding Heathrow but his deputy Nick Clegg is said to be opposed to the estuary idea.

The airport would be built partly on reclaimed land and could be on either an island or a peninsula. But concerns have been raised about damage to the environment.

source: BBC.co.uk

Australia’s consumer watchdog has taken budget airline AirAsia to court for allegedly failing to disclose the full price of fares for international flights from Australia.

The regulator began legal proceedings in Melbourne seeking penalties and orders for the Malaysian airline to issue corrective notices on its website.

In documents filed in the Federal Court, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission claims that fares sold on the airline’s website disclosed only part of the total price for flights from Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Perth to destinations in Asia, Europe and India because they excluded taxes, fees and other charges.

source: Heraldsun.com.au

Ryanair has said it plans to hire 1,000 people this year, an increase in its workforce of more than 10%, as it boosts its fleet to 305 aircraft from 270. Europe’s biggest budget airline is opening new bases in Billund, in Denmark, Wroclaw, in Poland, Palma, on the Spanish island of Mallorca, Paphos, in Cyprus, and Manchester. A spokeswoman for Ryanair said some of the new jobs would be created in the UK, including Manchester, though details are still being finalised.

source: Guardian.co.uk

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has predicted that the airline will continue to seize business from rivals in Spain as the Irish low-cost carrier became the biggest passenger carrier in the country last year.

Figures from Spanish government-owned airport operator AENA show Ryanair shifted 32.2 million passengers through the country’s airports last year — 21.1pc more than in 2010.

source: Independent.ie

A major new global study released last week outlines how transformative technologies and evolving social values and trends will combine to establish a new era of collaborative travel over the next decade and beyond.

The report, ‘’From chaos to collaboration: how transformative technologies will herald a new era in travel”, demands increased partnership across the travel industry, in turn removing the stress, uncertainty and chaos which is usually associated with travelling in the 21st Century, as well as providing much richer, deeper and more personal travel experiences at the same time.

source: breakingtravelnews.com

TUI Travel waltzed into the spotlight on Monday after UBS initiated coverage on the holiday company with a “‘buy'” rating and 220p target price.

The broker added TUI to its merger watch-list following recent speculation that its parent company, TUI AG, is looking to buy out the remaining 45.5pc of the business it does not already own.

UBS also initiated coverage on TUI’s beleaguered rival Thomas Cook, which it handed a “‘neutral'” rating. The broker said it preferred TUI because of its developed product mix and stronger balance sheet.

source: Telegraph.co.uk

The Finnish airline Finnair has been ranked as the safest air carrier in Europe and the second safest in the world by Germany’s Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre (JACDEC).

The report also indicates that flying has never been as safe as it was in 2011. The top ranked airline in the international survey was Japan’s All Nippon Airways.

source: yle.fi

The websites of Israel’s national airline, El Al, and the Tel Aviv stock exchange have been disrupted just hours after they were reportedly threatened by a Saudi computer hacker.

Flights and trading on the stock exchange have not been affected.

There has been a series of hacking attacks affecting Israeli businesses in the past two weeks.

The most serious saw details of tens of thousands of Israeli credit cards posted online.

source: BBC.co.uk

Airline Easyjet has amended its pricing amid government plans to ban excessive surcharges when buying tickets online.

The company has introduced a £9 flat administration fee to replace the previous £8 booking fee levied on anyone paying with most debit cards.

The government vowed in December to make online prices clearer so consumers could shop around.

However, Easyjet believes its new fee will not be subject to new legislation.

source: BBC.co.uk

Built during a boom and now deserted, Spain’s growing ranks of “‘ghost airports’” may not be the international air hubs their creators dreamed of ” but they are still burning up cash.

The ghost sites appear a paradox in a country whose public airports overall received 204 million passengers in 2011 ” described by AENA as the second best results in their history. The first of the two private airports, in Ciudad Real, south of Madrid, opened in 2008 and may close now following its last flight by budget airline Vueling in October.

Apart from these, “‘airports that have less than 100,000 passengers a year that is less that one flight a day, are really ghost airports too,’” says Germa Bel, an economist at Barcelona University.

“‘In Spain, there are some 15 airports like this,’” adds Bel. “‘There is certainly going to be a lot of debate about what to do with them. It is quite annoying to close an operating theatre in a hospital and keep open an airport with 30 or 40 people working there and no planes landing.’”

source thenews.com.pk