Vijay Mallya owned air carrier, Kingfisher Airlines announced 20 per cent cut in the salaries of its pilots, clearly to mitigate the impact of global slowdown on its business. The salaries have been cut in the range of Rs 50,000 and Rs 80,000 per month according to some unofficial reports.

However, Kingfisher spokesperson said that the company had introduced a production-linked compensation structure (PLCS) after November, 2008 and pilots would get equal scale as that of pilots of Air Deccan, adhering norms followed by all international airlines.

New Delhi, Feb 7  Cabinet Secretary K. M. Chandrashekhar today held a meeting to review the response mechanism of various organizations involved in aviation security in case of an emergency scenario.

The meeting was held against the backdrop of the incident that had taken place at the IGI Airport, Delhi on February 1, 2009, which had resulted in an emergency landing of the Indigo Flight 6E-334, due to the disruptive behaviour of a passenger.

Budapest  - German courier DHL confirmed on Friday that it would close its logistics base at the FlyBalaton airport, in another blow to the struggling provincial airport in western Hungary, next to Central Europe's largest lake.

DHL established a cargo base at the airport in the autumn of 2007, but last summer stopped running daily flights from Dresden in Germany. The base is to close by the end of February.

London - British Airways (BA) Friday reported a pre-tax loss of 70 million pounds (100 million dollars) in the nine months to 31 December, compared with a profit of 816 million pounds in the same period in 2007.

BA said Friday that the decline in the value of the pound and the airline's high costs in dollars added to pressures of last summer's steep oil price rise.

"The industry continues to face very difficult trading conditions on the back of a weak economic environment," the airline said.

Frankfurt  - Despite the crisis gripping the global economy, Germany's biggest airline Lufthansa AG said Tuesday that it had turned in a solid earnings performance in
2008.

The airline said that operating profit for the full year will come in at about 1.3 billion euros (1.67 billion dollars), as a result beating the group's 1.1-billion-euro target as energy costs tumbled during the second half of the year.

Vienna  - , chief executive of Austrian Airlines AG, was forced to step down with immediate effect, ahead of the flag carrier's planned takeover by German airline Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Austrian media reported Thursday.

Lufthansa agreed last December to buy a 42 per cent stake in the ailing carrier currently held by Austria's state holding OeIAG. The deal is pending on approval from the European Commission.