Category Archives: Airline industry

Ryanair ticket sales hit after travel agent websites delist airline

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Carrier says such sites only account for ‘small fraction’ of its bookings but move has affected load factor

Ryanair has said that it has seen a drop in the number of tickets it has been able to sell after a number of major online booking websites stripped the budget carrier’s flights from their listings.

Europe’s largest airline said that in early December “most” of the larger online travel agent sites – including Booking.com, Kiwi and Kayak – “suddenly removed Ryanair’s flights from sale on their websites”.

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Japan jet crash: passenger plane was cleared to land, say officials

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Smaller plane on runway was not cleared for takeoff, however, say authorities as investigations begin

A passenger jet that collided with a coastguard plane at Haneda airport in Tokyo had been given permission to land, but the smaller plane was not cleared for takeoff, Japanese authorities have said, as police reportedly prepared to investigate whether the crash involved professional negligence.

Five people on the coastguard aircraft died but all 379 passengers and crew escaped to safety down emergency slides minutes before the Japan Airlines Airbus was engulfed in flames on Tuesday.

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Victorian woman arrested after allegedly assaulting airline staff

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Australian federal police notified after 23-year-old woman allegedly became abusive on board a plane at Gold Coast airport

A Victorian woman allegedly assaulted airline staff at Gold Coast airport on New Year’s Eve while on board a plane bound for Melbourne.

The 23-year-old was arrested after airline staff notified the Australian federal police that a passenger was allegedly being verbally abusive on the plane, the AFP said.

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Six-year-old boy put on wrong flight from Philadelphia to Florida

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Spirit Airlines sent boy to Orlando instead of Fort Myers, leaving his grandmother to drive 160 miles to pick him up

A six-year-old boy boarded the wrong airplane last week, making a holiday trip look more like a Home Alone sequel in Philadelphia.

Spirit Airlines placed Casper on the wrong flight on Thursday, making his first flight one to remember. His grandmother was expecting him to arrive in Fort Myers, Florida, but instead he landed in Orlando.

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Australia news live: only 54.3% of Virgin flights and 66.3% of Qantas flights on time last month, transport minister says

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‘Very disappointing results, it is no wonder that so many Australians remain fed up with our major airlines,’ Catherine King says. Follow today’s news updates live

‘Very, very clear’ renewables are the cheapest form of energy, Bowen says

Renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy, including its storage and transmission costs, the energy minister told ABC RN.

Its conclusions this year are unimpeachable and very, very clear.

The cheapest form of energy is renewable energy, even including the costs that go with renewable energy around storage and transmission.

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Australia news live: Natasha Fyles resigns as Northern Territory chief minister; PM to visit north Queensland flood zones on Thursday

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Follow the latest updates live

Communities urged to exercise caution amid ‘huge volumes of water’

QFES commissioner Steve Smith has also made some comments on the flood situation up in Queensland.

There’s still huge volumes of water moving down through the systems, so at different points on the water, in the water catchments, they’re going to have rises. So we need people to stay informed, and they’ve done a great job in doing that. So we want that to continue with the support from community.

No. So we have commenced a search and rescue investigation into that. Degarra was one of the communities we couldn’t get into yesterday, but we have been speaking to a local man where there were a number of rescues completed yesterday in Degarra. So we have dispatched the water police vessel this morning, which left in the early hours of this morning and is on the way to that location. And in addition to that, we’ve now got rescue helicopters going that way as well.

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Two in five Australians had flight cancelled or delayed over 12 months, survey says

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Choice poll also finds less than half of all flight refunds are received within a month as government considers additional regulation

Less than half of Australians who seek a refund for a cancelled flight receive it within a month while one-fifth of those seeking a refund wait more than six months, a poll has found, as the government considers a compensation scheme and a passenger bill of rights.

The consumer advocate Choice also found, in a survey of about 9,000 Australians, that two in five respondents had a flight cancelled or delayed in the 12 months between October 2022 and this year.

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Marles will ‘make right decision in Australia’s interest’ over deploying navy vessels to Red Sea, Farrell says – as it happened

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Up to 49 tonnes of illicit drugs prevented from reaching Australia

Australian federal police and international law enforcement partners have prevented up to 49 tonnes of illicit drugs from reaching Australia throughout the past financial year.

The AFP cannot overstate the amount of harm that 29 tonnes of methamphetamine could have caused to the community if it had not been intercepted by law enforcement.

On average, close to 12,000 Australians are hospitalised from methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin use every 12 months.

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Electric plane set to deliver mail across New Zealand in decarbonisation push

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Air New Zealand says using the ALIA electric cargo plane to deliver parcels will help plot route towards zero-emissions passenger flights in a ‘new age of propulsion’

Parcels and letters will soon be distributed by electric aircraft between regions of New Zealand as the sparsely populated country embarks on a “new age of propulsion” in its attempts to decarbonise its reliance on aviation.

On Wednesday, Air New Zealand announced it had purchased a battery-powered, all-electric five seater cargo aircraft, which will be put to use running mail between airports with New Zealand’s postal service from 2026.

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Alaska Airlines to buy Hawaiian Airlines in deal that may face regulator scrutiny

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Deal for $1.9bn, which includes $900m in Hawaiian Airlines debt, would keep both airlines’ brands

Alaska Airlines said Sunday it agreed to buy Hawaiian Airlines in a $1.9bn deal, including debt, putting it on track for a potential clash with a Biden administration that has shown wariness about higher fares in the industry.

The combined company would keep both airlines’ brands, rooted in the nation’s 49th and 50th states. Alaska will pay $18 in cash for each share of Hawaiian, whose stock closed Friday at $4.86 after losing just over half its value in the year so far.

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First transatlantic flight using 100% sustainable jet fuel to take off

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Virgin Atlantic flight, partly funded by UK government, hailed by ministers but criticised by campaigners


The first transatlantic flight by a commercial airliner fully powered by “sustainable” jet fuel will take off from London Heathrow this morning.

The Virgin Atlantic flight, partly funded by the UK government, has been hailed by the aviation industry and ministers as a demonstration of the potential to significantly cut net carbon emissions from flying, although scientists and environmental groups are extremely sceptical.

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EasyJet returns to profit but Israel-Hamas war reduces bookings

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Budget airline says its research has found two-thirds of Britons are more likely to travel abroad next year

EasyJet has experienced a general drop in bookings since the Israel-Hamas war started, which prompted it to pause flights to Israel and Jordan, but said demand was coming back and consumers were keen to holiday abroad next year.

Johan Lundgren, the budget airline’s chief executive, said: “As we saw with Ukraine, there has been a short-term industry-wide impact on [flight] searches and bookings, though this now seems to be coming back with a recent improvement in trading.”

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Australia news live: school strike for climate protests draw huge crowds in Melbourne and Sydney; Albanese says Apec leaders ‘very interested’ in Tuvalu deal

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‘A ceasefire is where we need to get to,’ Zoe Daniel says

Asked by RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas if she supports calls for a ceasefire, Zoe Daniel says:

If you call for a ceasefire, you’re letting down the Jewish community, if you don’t you’re allowing death and destruction to happen in Gaza.

At the end of the day, if I say to you right now, yes, I support ceasefire, that will make zero difference to what is happening in in Gaza.

I’m a former foreign correspondent. I know the logistics of this, of course, a ceasefire is where we need to get to, but you have a terrorist organisation in the middle of this. If there’s just a ceasefire, and there’s no capacity there to try to dismantle Hamas, does that allow Hamas to regroup? What does that actually lead to? That said, I’ve said to you before, very clearly, and I still stick to the position that the Israeli government has to adhere to international law and the rules of war, and I think, in some ways, has not been.

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Flight delay compensation would stop Australian airlines from acting like a ‘mafia of the skies’, MP says

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Exclusive: Independent MP Monique Ryan ramps up calls for proposed scheme after Sydney airport CEO accuses airlines of ‘slot hoarding’

Australian airlines are acting like a “mafia of the sky” in continuing to strategically cancel flights they never intended to operate, an MP has claimed, arguing for the urgent introduction of compensation laws so carriers are deterred by immediate penalties.

Monique Ryan, the independent member for Kooyong in Melbourne, has ramped up her calls for a mandatory compensation scheme for airline passengers, saying allegations levelled by Sydney airport this week showed such laws were needed as a matter of urgency and could not wait until the government’s aviation white paper, which is due by the middle of next year.

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‘Poverty pay’: travellers may soon face airport disruption as Virgin Australia crew close in on striking

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Transport Workers Union chief says ground crew and pilots fear ‘mistakes being made due to their unsustainable working conditions’

Travellers could be hit with unexpected disruptions as Virgin Australia’s cabin crew and ground workers close in on strike action over claims of “poverty pay” and “unsustainable” conditions.

On Monday, the Virgin cabin crew members of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) will apply to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) for a protected action ballot, which, if granted, means they can vote to take industrial action that they have been threatening to do over claims of “poverty pay, job insecurity and unsafe conditions”.

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Ryanair to reward shareholders as it heads for record profits after fares rise

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Airline to pay regular dividends as finance boss says consumers are going to continue spending

Ryanair is to hand its shareholders regular payouts for the first time after soaring air fares put the airline on track to make record profits.

The budget carrier said it expects to notch up profits of between €1.85bn (£1.6bn) and €2.05bn in the financial year to the end of March, far outstripping its previous highest profit of €1.45bn in 2018.

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Air fares likely to stay stubbornly high as travel-hungry Australians’ tastes change

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Higher prices see the phenomenon of ‘revenge travel’ turn into a willingness to spend more on bigger trips, industry watchers say

International air fares are set to remain stubbornly high throughout the first half of next year, but the preferences of travel-hungry Australians are shifting.

After the broad reopening of borders by mid-2022, international airlines have largely enjoyed bumper profits by operating fewer flights than an average pre-pandemic year, all while Australians’ pent-up demand for travel meant they were able to charge eye-watering amounts for tickets.

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Qantas chairman heckled by shareholders at AGM as investors reject executive pay plans

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Shouts of ‘shame on you’ after shareholder Chris Maxworthy’s microphone cut off

Qantas’s annual general meeting erupted with shareholders shouting “shame on you” at the board’s chairman, Richard Goyder, as investors overwhelmingly rejected the embattled company’s executive pay deal.

That result, which marked one of Australia’s largest ever protest votes against executive pay, came after Goyder and the airline’s chief executive, Vanessa Hudson, apologised to investors for a year of sagas that had seen the company’s share price plummet.

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Labor accused of ‘dragging feet’ on reinstating program that monitors airlines for potential price-gouging

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Opposition says there’s ‘no excuse’ for further delays on the government reviving the ACCC flight monitoring regime


More than two weeks after announcing it was reviving an airline industry monitoring program, the Albanese government is yet to formally direct the competition watchdog to conduct the investigation.

After months of scrutiny into Qantas’s influence in the government’s decision to block rival Qatar Airways’ push to boost its flights to Australia, the Greens and independent senator David Pocock in October knocked back a proposal to extend a Senate inquiry on the topic.

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Disabled man drags himself off plane after Air Canada fails to offer wheelchair

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Airline was forced to apologize to Rodney Hodgins who flew to Las Vegas with his wife to celebrate their anniversary in August

Air Canada has been forced to apologize after a man with spastic cerebral palsy was forced to drag himself off a plane when the flagship carrier failed to provide a wheelchair for him.

Rodney Hodgins, 49, a hardware salesman from British Columbia who requires the use of a motorized wheelchair, flew to Las Vegas with his wife, Deanna, to celebrate their anniversary in August.

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