News Archive

The eight cabin crew of Northwest Flight 253 have been honored for the parts they played in preventing a lone bomber from taking down their aircraft on Christmas Day.  The crew received their award from The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) at their annual Board of Directors meeting.

The accolade they received was the prestigious C.B. Lansing Award for Heroism.  The award is named after Clarabelle Lansing who was chief flight attendant on board Aloha Airlines flight 243 on 28th April 1988. 

The struggling Japanese carrier announced today its plans to cut a further 45 routes from its network on 30th September. The carrier had already cancelled 30 routes after going into bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

The routes are broken down into 15 international and 30 domestic in order to accelerate the retirement of aircraft and reach the targeted 16,500 redundancies from within the organisation. The drastic measures are a result of the new government backed management team trying to achieve significant cost reductions.

Boeing is gaining momentum as the economy improves and is looking forward to several years of steady or increasing commercial production, chief executive Jim McNerney told the company's annual meeting on Monday.

"We see an improving business environment," McNerney said. "Clearly this company is gaining solid momentum."

The Office for Fair Trading (OFT) have confirmed that they have “issued a statement of objections” against Virgin Atlantic and Cathay Pacific.  The allegations relate to supposed price fixing on the Hong Kong to London route.

An Emirates Boeing 777 dropped suddenly in the air over India on Sunday morning.  A statement from the airline confirmed the incident and added that as a result 20 passengers sustained minor injuries.

The aircraft was operating as EK530 flying from Dubai to Kochi.  The incident occurred as the aircraft was preparing to begin its descent from 35,000ft in Indian airspace.  After landing safely in Kochi, the Captain requested medical assistance for the injured passengers.

The first three months of 2010 have seen an improving picture in the air transport industry. Passenger and cargo traffic is starting to grow again and load factors are increasing for most airlines.

Senior Managers at all major airlines are hoping this situation will continue, allowing them to re-instate parked up aircraft and return their companies to profit. However, fuel prices have increased again casting further doubt over the health of the industry.

British Midland Airway’s CEO, Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, is adamant that the airline “is here to stay”.  The comment comes amidst a background of speculation that the airline’s parent company Lufthansa is planning to break up the subsidiary.

The airline has warned that its 2009 losses will be worse than the previous year’s pre tax loss of £157.3 million.  However, restructuring plans are in place to halve this deficit in 2010.