Aviation

  Bloomberg After losing more than $50 billion in the decade following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. airlines have been enjoying some financially robust times of late. On the front lines, airline employees are reaping billions of dollars in wage and benefit increases, plus profit-sharing plans that spell record payouts amid record income. At almost $81,000, average airline worker ...

  Bloomberg United Continental Holdings Inc. may convert a $12.4 billion order for Airbus Group SE’s largest twin-engine jet to smaller long-range models. It’s also interested in a new Boeing Co. 737 Max that’s still on the drawing board. Those are among the multibillion-dollar changes under consideration as a new management team reviews the Chicago-based carrier’s order portfolio and revamps ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG sought to defuse an escalating pilots strike by offering an improved wage deal as well as a show of humility. The German airline proposed a 4.4 percent raise plus a bonus that will exceed 20,000 euros ($21,200) per pilot on average, dropping a demand for employee concessions on benefits. In a move away from more ...

  Bloomberg Fastjet Plc is considering expanding in South Africa as new Chief Executive Officer Nico Bezuidenhout evaluates growth opportunities for the unprofitable discount airline and says the continent’s most industrialized economy is too big to stay out of. While the Africa-focused carrier already connects Johannesburg with its hubs in Tanzania and Zimbabwe, it has no internal services in South ...

  Beijing / AFP A Chinese pilot has been suspended, his airline said, after social media footage showed he told passengers to deplane and protest against a flight delay, the latest outburst over the country’s notorious air transport services. The flight, operated by Lucky Air, was scheduled to leave the tourist destination of Xishuangbanna for the southern city of Kunming ...

  AFP / Bloomberg German heavyweight airline Lufthansa cancelled a further 890 flights on Wednesday as pilots remained on strike in a long-running wage dispute. Lufthansa said some 98,000 passengers were grounded by the walkout, which flight crew extended to long-haul flights after Tuesday’s action affected only short-haul services. The airline has sought to limit the impact of the strike ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG lost a German court bid to prevent pilots from resuming strikes on Tuesday in a labour dispute that has caused almost 4,500 flight cancellations this month. The Munich Labor Court denied the airline’s request for an injunction preventing the two-day walkout at the mainline Lufthansa brand, putting the pilots on track for their longest-ever work ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabian low-cost airline Flynas expects to decide “very soon” on an order for as many as 100 planes from either Airbus Group SE or Boeing Co. that it previously targeted for mid-2016. The carrier will communicate a decision to the planemakers “within the next few days or weeks,” Flynas Chief Executive Officer Paul Byrne said in a ...

  Bloomberg Bombardier Inc. is on track to overcome delays in shipments of engines for its brand-new C Series jetliner by the end of next year, according to the head of the company’s commercial aircraft unit. “It’s going to take mostly through 2017 to get right back on track,” Fred Cromer, Bombardier’s commercial aircraft president, told reporters Monday in Mirabel, ...

  Bloomberg Ask a harried air traveler about the basics of modern flight, and you’ll probably elicit surprise when they discover commercial airplanes fly only as fast as they did in the 1950s. Given the range of aerospace advances in the past half-century, plus the technological leaps in almost every other area of human endeavor, it seems reasonable to ask: ...