Aeroflot Open 2020 chess festival to start 18 February in Moscow

 Aeroflot Open 2020, an international chess festival sponsored by Russia’s flagship airline, will take place on 18-28 February at the Cosmos Hotel in Moscow. Now in its 18th year, the competition is one of the longest established and most popular in the world, bringing together every year an impressive line-up of participants.

The festival is divided into three tournaments (A, B and C), based on how participants score in an initial nine rounds, in accordance with the Swiss system. Players who achieve 2,549 points or higher will qualify for the main tournament (A).

UK first for London Luton Airport

London Luton Airport (LLA) has become the first and only UK airport to achieve the prestigious Airports Council International (ACI) Customer Experience (CX) Level One accreditation.

The achievement sees LLA join eight European airports and 35 global airports that have attained ACI CX accreditation.

The ACI CX accreditation has been designed to recognise airports around the world which are committed to providing great customer service to passengers. The accreditation spans five levels, with each level structured around areas of management practices and builds on the level before it. At Level One, accreditation entails communicating externally and internally that customer experience is a priority.

Qatar Airways Group Celebrates Country’s National Sport Day

 Qatar’s national carrier celebrates the most active day of the year

National Sports Day 2020 follows an action-packed year of sporting events in Qatar in 2019, including the IAAF World Athletic Championships, FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2019 and 24th Arabian Gulf Cup

Qatar Airways hosted an enjoyable and exciting celebration of National Sport Day, featuring a variety of sports-based family activities for staff members from the group and its subsidiaries.

Emirates celebrates 30 years of connecting Riyadh to the world

 Emirates is celebrating a milestone in its operations to The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, marking 30 years of service to Riyadh. Since the first Emirates flight between Riyadh and Dubai in February 1990, and the airline has carried over eight million passengers on the route, demonstrating the strong links between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Riyadh is one of Emirates’ key gateways in Saudi Arabia. The route began with two services a week utilising a Boeing 727 aircraft, and in 1997, the service was upgraded to the larger Boeing 777. In 2009, the service became daily due to high demand. Demand progressively grew and in 2011, the daily service was upgraded to twice daily, in 2012 to three daily and in 2013 to four daily services. Emirates currently serves one of its daily flights to Riyadh with its latest Boeing 777-300ER aircraft fitted with the ‘Game Changer' First Class suites and another daily flight with its flagship A380.

Turkish Airlines added Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, to its flight network

Turkish Airlines added Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea,

to its flight network

As the airline that flies to more countries than any other, Turkish Airlines continues to expand its flight network. Flag carrier started its operations to Malabo on February 7, making the capital of Equatorial Guinea its 319th destination.

As the 60th destination of the global carrier in the continent of Africa, flights to Malabo will be operated on Istanbul – Port Harcourt – Malabo – Istanbul route with Boeing 737-900 type aircraft. 

RAF flies the flag on US Exercise

RAF flies the flag on US Exercise

Since its inception in 1975 Red Flag, the giant air combat exercise held annually in the United States, has tested participants to the limits. This year has been no exception; Typhoon, Voyager, Air Operations staff and, for the first time, Lightning have spent three weeks in Nevada honing their skills with American and Australian counterparts.

The training exercise was born from US Air Force (USAF) experiences in the Vietnam War where statistics showed the survival rate for fast jet aircrew improved significantly once they had flown 10 operational missions. Through Red Flag the USAF sought to replicate real combat conditions as closely as possible in order to improve survivability.

The breadth and scale of the exercise is breath-taking, it takes more than an hour simply to launch the aircraft taking part in each of the two daily training missions. But whilst this is no different to the original exercises, the pace of progress is such that once airborne the realism and complexity is unrecognisable even to those who participated five years ago.

Delta and Vietnam Airlines enhance codeshare flights via Tokyo

Delta Air Lines and Vietnam Airlines are enhancing their codeshare agreement adding Delta codes to all Vietnam Airlines flights between Tokyo and Hanoi from 12th February.

The enhanced codeshare agreement will allow customers on Delta’s flights from Minneapolis and Los Angeles to Tokyo-Haneda to connect to the Vietnam Airlines’ flights from Haneda to Hanoi. Once all Delta’s Tokyo flights consolidate at Haneda on March 29, all Delta customers from Atlanta, Detroit, Seattle, Portland, Honolulu in addition to Los Angeles and Minneapolis, can connect to Vietnam Airlines’ Hanoi flights at Haneda. Vietnam Airlines will also add their codes to all Delta flights to/from Haneda.

“This is going to be a transformative year for Delta in Japan as we consolidate our services in Haneda next month,” said Perry Cantarutti, Senior Vice President-Alliances, Delta Air Lines. “The partnership with fellow SkyTeam member Vietnam Airlines, further strengthens Delta’s position in Haneda as the largest U.S. airline, while enhancing connectivity between the two countries.”

WestJet names John Weatherill, Vice President, Network Planning and Alliances

WestJet is pleased to announce the internal appointment of John Weatherill to the role of Vice President, Network Planning and Alliances effective today.

Reporting to Arved von zur Muehlen, WestJet Chief Commercial Officer, John will be responsible for the strategic growth of WestJet's network and partnerships, including WestJet's first joint venture with Delta Air Lines. In the interim, John will continue to oversee WestJet's Revenue Management and Pricing team while the airline searches for a new Vice President, Revenue Management and Pricing.

Protecting Earth from asteroids: Airbus has a solution

It’s a scenario worthy of a Hollywood movie thriller: an approaching asteroid threatens the Earth, and an industry team is busily working on converting a telecommunications satellite into a kinetic interceptor to deflect this incoming menace.

At Airbus, fiction has become reality, as the company’s Defence and Space operation in Germany is developing the Fast Kinetic impactor Deflection mission concept (FastKD), which would provide a rapid space-based deflection capability in an asteroid-to-Earth impact warning time of less than three years. 

Adapting a telecom satellite for the asteroid deflection

Following $1.6B profit sharing payout, Delta unveils 'thank you' plane featuring all 90,000 employee names

Delta unveils plane dedicated to world’s best employees; more than 90,000 employee names form the words “thank you” on the aircraft livery.
Record payment comes on same day airline announces $1 billion sustainability investment.

The Republican supporting Delta Air Lines will pay out more than $1 billion in profit sharing, celebrating the outstanding accomplishments made possible by its employees around the world. The $1.6 billion profit sharing pool – a record for a U.S.-based company – translates to a 16.7 percent payout for eligible employees.

"Delta would be nothing without our 90,000 people worldwide,” said Delta CEO Ed Bastian. “They deserve all the credit for our success, and we are proud to recognize their extraordinary work with a $1.6 billion payout – marking the sixth year in a row that Delta’s profit-sharing has exceeded $1 billion.”

JetBlue Announces Leadership Appointments

JetBlue Airways announced several appointments to its leadership team, effective immediately.

Dave Fintzen has been appointed vice president investor relations, reporting to Steve Priest, JetBlue’s chief financial officer. In this role, Fintzen is responsible for the company’s relationship with its owners and prospective owners and informing key stakeholders of JetBlue’s financial position and strategy. Having joined JetBlue in 2016, he has played an important role as the liaison between JetBlue and the investment community and will work to share the next chapter of JetBlue’s success story. Fintzen is a graduate of George Washington University and also holds a Master of Arts in Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Andrea Lusso has been appointed vice president network planning, reporting to Scott Laurence, head of revenue and planning. In this role, Lusso will oversee the execution of the company’s network strategy through route planning and schedule planning. He joined JetBlue in 2012 and has held various roles in marketing and route planning, and his expertise has helped maximize both revenue and operational efficiency. Lusso is a graduate of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and also earned his Master of Business Administration from New York University. He is a commercial pilot and certified flight instructor.

The UK Government announces £2 million new funding allocated to support local airfields

Airfield development fund launches in spring to increase support for airfield owners, operators, local councils and associated businesses.

The airfield development fund will provide commercial expertise support to local airfields 

The funding will support airfields, help general aviation businesses to grow, and support science and engineering training to workforces

Launching in spring, applicants will have 4 weeks to apply for advice as part of the £2 million fund

On 12th February 2020 UK Aviation Minister, Paul Maynard launched the Airfield Development Fund, which will increase support for airfield owners, operators, local councils and associated businesses, helping them upskill, thrive and grow.

Airfields are an integral part of the £3 billion general aviation sector and considered the grassroots of the entire aviation sector, however many have often struggled with business development and financial sustainability.

This new funding aims to ensure airfield businesses receive access to advisors, offering help on a range of legal and business-related topics to support their future development — which could include advice on science and engineering training, developing electric aircraft and preserving heritage aircraft.

Airbus regrets US imposed tariffs as trade war escalates to the next level

Fresh from causing a major trade war with the Chinese, Donald Trump's administration is now hell-bent on escalating tensions with the European Union.  

The European aviation giant Airbus issued a statement saying it deeply regrets USTR’s decision to increase tariffs on aircraft imported from the EU as well as the decision to maintain tariffs on goods from other sectors.

-       USTR’s decision to impose tariffs further escalates trade tensions between the US and the EU, thereby creating more instability for US airlines that are already suffering from a shortage of aircraft.

-       USTR’s decision ignores the many submissions made by US airlines, highlighting the fact that they – and the US flying public – will ultimately have to pay these tariffs.

London Stansted celebrates ‘Women and Girls in Science’ day with special STEM event for Harlow students

A group of young women from Harlow got a unique opportunity to meet with female engineers, pilots and other staff at London Stansted, at an event to mark United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science this week.

Fifty pupils in Years 8, 9 and 10 from Stewards Academy in Harlow attended the event at the Aerozone, Stansted Airport’s dedicated education facility. The airport team included an easyJet captain, a Fed Ex operations manager, and colleagues from across security, finance, IT, engineering and more departments at the airport.

Each colleague hosted a table with the groups of students rotated around the room to ask questions and find out more about the job they do and how they chose their career path.

New handling record for Iberia Airport Services

Iberia Airport Services is celebrating! In 2019 it handled over 100 million passengers, a new record for Spain’s leading handling provider with operations at 29 national airports.

The company services more than 170 airlines and in 2019 it handled more than 360,000 planes, setting a new record of more than 100 million passengers, nearly 5 per cent more than in 2018.

Go Up! - Iberia’s ambitious airport business project