Aviation

  Berlin / AFP Strikes at German low-cost airlines Eurowings and Germanwings led to the cancellation of nearly 400 flights Thursday, stranding some 40,000 passengers, a spokesman for the two companies said. The airlines, owned by flag carrier Lufthansa, are locked in disputes with the Ufo flight attendants union. Eurowings staff are calling for salary increases and improved working conditions ...

  AMSTERDAM / Reuters Qatar Airways expected talks with the European Union on new air traffic services agreements will take several years, and Qatar will focus on ensuring the EU’s planned fair competition clauses do not disadvantage the carrier, its CEO said. “We’re still in the early days of negotiating with the EU, and one area of particular notice is ...

  Bloomberg The plastic explosive was molded into a thin sheet and hidden inside a laptop, the kind of hard-to-detect bomb that keeps airport security chiefs awake at night. Terrorist devices such as this are the reason fliers have to remove laptops from carry-on bags at security checkpoints before boarding airplanes. But at a lab in an industrial park outside ...

  Bloomberg Airbus Group SE promised a year-end sprint to meet its 2016 earnings and delivery goals after a switch to new planes weighed on profit and output in the first nine months. The European company plans to pull out the stops to ship almost as many A350 wide-body jets in the final quarter as it did between January and ...

  Bloomberg Last year, Delta Air Lines Inc. unveiled a unique experiment in upgrades. It gave its very frequent flyers a chance to book a seat most can only dream of—on a private jet. For a few hundred dollars more, the dream could become reality. The carrier later backed away from the offer and is now transforming it into the ...

  Bloomberg Britain’s decision to build a third runway at London Heathrow airport by 2025 gives airlines what they have been demanding for decades, providing the 16 billion-pound bill for lifting the hub’s capacity to 135 million passengers a year doesn’t fall on them. While carriers were unanimous in welcoming Tuesday’s government backing for the expansion of Europe’s busiest airport, ...

  London / AFP The British government approved a new third runway at London’s Heathrow airport on Tuesday in a long-awaited decision that comes amid deep divisions and follows decades of debate over the issue. “The government today announced its support for a new runway at Heathrow — the first full length runway in the southeast since the Second World ...

  Bloomberg Southend airport, seeking to become London’s sixth hub even though it’s almost an hour away on the North Sea, will operate its own flights in a bid to demonstrate the viability of an expanded timetable to carriers frustrated by capacity curbs at the far bigger Heathrow and Gatwick bases. The services to cities in mainland Europe will employ ...

  Bloomberg Alaska Air Group Inc. received permission for a five-week delay in starting service on a prized flight between Havana and Los Angeles, as regulators rejected an attempt by JetBlue Airways Corp. to secure the route and move it to Boston. The U.S. Transportation Department agreed Alaska could wait until Jan. 5 to begin the service instead of the ...

  Bloomberg Rockwell Collins Inc., with its $6.4 billion takeover of B/E Aerospace Inc., is betting big that airplanes will get smarter as everything from lie-flat seats to toilet valves flash data in real time to airline crews and maintenance workers on the ground. The acquisition is the largest in the avionics company’s 83-year history, eclipsing its $1.39 billion takeover ...