Aviation

  Bloomberg American Airlines Group Inc will be the first US carrier to offer a premium economy cabin with more legroom, in a bid to win overseas travelers seeking extra perks at a lower price than in business class. The 21-seat, three-row section will debut Nov 4 on the carrier’s first Boeing Co 787-9 Dreamliner on flights between Dallas-Fort Worth ...

  Bloomberg The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating a Delta Air Lines Inc flight that mistakenly landed at a South Dakota Air Force base, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from its intended destination. Delta Flight 2845 departed from the Minneapolis-St Paul airport Thursday evening en route to Rapid City, South Dakota, carrying 130 passengers on an Airbus Group SE ...

  Bloomberg CFM International Inc., which competes with Pratt & Whitney to power Airbus’s new A320neo aircraft, said it’s confident that deliveries of its Leap 1A engines will stick to the planned schedule even after the European planemaker said its deliveries of the single aisle model this year will be backloaded in the second half. The engine maker, a joint ...

  Bloomberg Boeing Co.’s historic agreement to provide 109 aircraft to Iran’s national airline is coming under increasing pressure from lawmakers in Washington. “I am extremely concerned that by relaxing the rules, the Obama administration has allowed US companies to be complicit in weaponizing the Iranian regime,” Republican Representative Bill Huizenga of Michigan said on Thursday at a hearing of ...

  Bloomberg Virgin Galactic Ltd, the commercial space company founded by billionaire Richard Branson, is set to resume test flights next month in a new spaceship that replaces the craft that crashed in a fatal accident two years ago. The company is due to complete ground tests in August and move to testing the vessel in the skies while attached ...

  Bloomberg Air France-KLM Group Chief Financial Officer Pierre-François Riolacci announced he’s stepping down a week after a new CEO took charge, leaving the airline scrambling to find a successor amid tensions with French pilots over cost-cutting efforts. The stock dropped to a 3 1/2-year low. Riolacci will leave the carrier in November to become CFO at Danish facilities manager ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s plane-servicing business, the German airline’s most profitable unit, is more than quadrupling research and development spending to shore up its dwindling market share and fading margins. The Lufthansa Technik maintenance, repair and overhaul division is in the middle of a 200 million-euro (US$221 million), five-year R&D program that’s come up with products such as sharkskin-like fuselage ...

  Washington / Bloomberg Boeing Co. is proposing to stretch its largest 777 model to create a twin-engine behemoth aimed at delivering a knock-out blow to Airbus Group SE’s struggling A380 superjumbo jet, said people familiar with its plans. The U.S. planemaker has approached several carriers about the plane it calls the 777-10X, including Emirates Airline, the world’s largest operator ...

  Doha / Bloomberg Qatar Airways Ltd. is considering further increasing its stake in British Airways owner IAG SA after the U.K.-based company lost a third of its market value in the fallout from the country’s vote to leave the European Union, according to people familiar with the matter. Qatar Airways, already IAG’s largest shareholder, is exploring boosting its holding ...

  Manila / Bloomberg Philippine Airlines Inc. hired Morgan Stanley to help look for an investor as it seeks to become a five-star carrier, President Jaime Bautista said. The airline, wholly owned by billionaire Lucio Tan, plans to find a “specific equity investor” as early as next year, Bautista told reporters in Manila. “There are on-going talks with possible investors,” ...