Bloomberg Bill Franke, who helped pioneer bare-bones airlines in the US and around the world, is expanding into Canada. Franke’s Indigo Partners will join a Canadian investment group that intends to revamp charter airline Enerjet into a low-cost carrier in the mold of Spirit Airlines Inc. and Ryanair Holdings Plc. The first flights are targeted for around September. The plan ...

Bloomberg Virgin Atlantic won a court ruling blocking a strike by a group of its pilots during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Judge Akhlaq Choudhury granted the airline an injunction against the pilots, saying the breakaway union didn’t inform the airline how many captains and first officers were striking. The walkout, which was due to start from December 22, ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabian discount carrier Flyadeal will defect to Boeing Co. jets from an all- Airbus SE fleet after ordering 30 737 Max narrow-body planes worth $3.5 billion at list prices. The unit of state-owned Saudi Arabian Airlines or Saudia announced the purchase this week and said it has options to add 20 more of the aircraft, which feature upgraded ...

Bloomberg Black Friday gave UK retailers an unexpected boost in the run-up to the key Christmas trading period. The volume of goods sold in stores and online jumped 1.4 percent in November, the most in six months, following two months of declines. An increase of just 0.3 percent was forecast in a Bloomberg survey. Office for National Statistics says increase ...

Bloomberg London’s Gatwick airport resumed flights after another reported drone incursion caused a brief interruption on December 21. “The sighting was confirmed, so there definitely was a drone in the area,” an airport spokeswoman said. Military measures “have given us the reassurance we need that it is safe to reopen.” Service had been halted as a precautionary measure while the ...

Bloomberg An hour’s drive north of Paris along the River Seine lies Flins, home to Renault SA’s biggest and oldest factory, where 2,700 workers and 900 robots toil in tandem to churn out a steady stream of compact cars. More than half of the vehicles rolling off the line, however, don’t carry the Renault diamond badge. Instead, the factory’s most ...

Bloomberg Huawei Technologies Ltd. has signed contracts with all four UK mobile networks to test its fifth-generation wireless equipment, deepening the Chinese vendor’s involvement in UK’s telecom industry as officials weigh whether to ban the company over security concerns. Huawei’s 5G gear was already being tested by BT Group Plc’s EE, CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd.’s Three UK and Vodafone Group ...

Bloomberg Joshua Hoffman has done plenty of experimentation at Zymergen Inc., the robot-powered microbe factory he founded and leads. By building an army of AI-powered robots to genetically engineer more efficient microbes — the biological building blocks used to create all material — Zymergen revamped existing agricultural and industrial products sold by Fortune 500 companies and helped them increase profits. ...

Bloomberg China’s financial regulators appeared to confirm that tax cuts for 2019 are currently being finalised at a meeting of policy officials in Beijing, in a statement aimed at quelling online speculation that the opposite was the case. Online rumours saying Central Economic Work Conference decided not to cut taxes or fees are “contrary to the facts”, according to a ...

Bloomberg The country that brought robots to car factories looks set to stay resolutely old school in agriculture as it seeks to attract more foreign workers to replenish an aging workforce. This month’s vote by Japan’s parliament to open the door more widely to overseas labourers confirms that despite government support and millions of dollars of investment in high-tech agriculture ...