Aviation

  Bloomberg Bombardier Inc. has removed from its production schedule an order for C Series aircraft placed six years ago by bankrupt Republic Airways Holdings Inc. Republic agreed in February 2010 to 40 firm orders and 40 options for the CS300 model, with deliveries initially scheduled to start in 2015. While the firm orders remain in the planemaker’s backlog, removal ...

  Hillsboro / AP A high-flying drone that will be used to test precision agriculture methods made its inaugural flight in North Dakota amid handshakes and smiles from aircraft operators and farm officials. The Israeli-manufactured Elbit Systems Hermes 450 aircraft took off from the Hillsboro airport to start a summer-long project that will take pictures of farmland in the fertile Red ...

  Paris / Bloomberg If the sudden disappearance of an EgyptAir flight turns out to be the work of terrorists, it will be the fourth such attack in the past year on air travelers in North African countries battling militant groups. Even as airports in Europe and North America have strengthened security, experts say that gaps in screening of employees ...

  Berlin / AFP The head of Germany’s doctors’ association has lashed out at both Lufthansa and aviation regulators for failing to prevent last year’s Germanwings crash by allowing a pilot who suffered from severe depression to fly. Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed flight A320 in the French Alps in March 2015, killing himself and the 149 others on board. Investigators subsequently ...

Paris / AFP France will test an EU-wide passenger data sharing system aimed at helping to detect extremists at two of its busiest airports later this month, a senior interior ministry official said on Saturday. The Passenger Name Record system, approved by the European Parliament in April, will be tested at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport and that of southeastern Nice ...

  Washington / AFP An experimental, solar-powered aircraft took off from Tulsa in the midwestern US state of Oklahoma early on Saturday, kicking off the latest phase of its record-breaking quest to circle the globe without consuming a drop of fuel. Swiss businessman Andre Borschberg, who has teamed up with adventurer Bertrand Piccard for the Solar Impulse 2 project, piloted the ...

  Dubai / Bloomberg Etihad Airways is confident that Air Berlin Plc and Alitalia SpA are making progress in their turnarounds as the UAE carrier seeks to stem losses at the European affiliates. Etihad wants to strengthen ties between the Italian and German airlines’ route networks and cooperate in other areas to enable them to compete with mainline operators such ...

  Washington / Bloomberg American Airlines Group Inc. is stepping up efforts to reduce delays at U.S. airport security checkpoints after bottlenecks caused passengers to wait for hours and miss some flights this week. The carrier will spend $4 million to hire more contractors to assist Transportation Security Administration personnel with non-screening functions, Chief Operating Officer Robert Isom said in ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Gulf Air and TransSys Solutions announced that they have partnered to enhance Oracle E-Business Suite capabilities and features to utilise latest technologies such as mobility and interface to Hybrid Cloud. The agreement was signed by Dr Jassim Haji, Director Information Technology, Gulf Air and PrabuBalasubramanyan, Executive Director, TransSys Solutions. As part of Gulf Air’s digital ...

  New York / Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co.’s growth plans may be jeopardized by a lawsuit filed by its pilots union over flying Boeing Co.’s newest 737 jetliner, Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said. The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, representing 8,300 aviators, on Monday asked a federal court to block the carrier from flying the 737 Max until the plane ...