Sydney - The autopilot on a Qantas Airways Airbus A330 suddenly disconnected 500 kilometres after taking off from Perth in Western Australia last week, a news report revealed on Saturday.
Copenhagen/Stockholm - Shares in SAS, the operator of the joint-carrier Scandinavian Airlines, surged Friday on a report that Lufthansa is interested in the Scandinavian market and is in talks with SAS.
A Lufthansa executive quoted by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, however, did not say if a possible merger was being considered.
SAS shares climbed some 15 per cent in late afternoon trading on the Stockholm bourse.
Kathmandu - An investigation into air crash near Mount Everest in October blamed pilot error for the accident, a government report said Thursday.
The crash at Lukla airport, about 175 kilometres north-east of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, on October 4, 2007, killed 18 people, including 12 Germans, two Australians and four Nepalese nationals. The only survivor was the plane's captain.
A report submitted to the government said the primary cause of the accident of the Yeti Airlines Twin Otter aircraft was misjudgment by the pilots while landing at the airport.
It is time to enjoy cheep air travel as the leading domestic airlines are slashing the air fares significantly. Declining crude rates and low demand in the aviation sector is forcing the air carriers to cut air fares. Domestic air traffic declined significantly with just 30 lakh people using the air services in November.
It will come as a relief to those, who have to travel regularly by air and were frustrated by paying high fares time and time again, since it was announced by Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya that his airlines would cut fares by 1st January. Though he did not quantify the cut, sources confirm that it would be between 10% and 15%. So overall, the fares could further drop between Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. There had been reduction of fuel surcharge by Rs 400 during the last month.
Wellington - Air New Zealand successfully conducted the world's first commercial aviation test flight powered by fuel from the seeds of the African jatropha plant on Tuesday.
Chief executive Rob Fyfe said after the jumbo jet's two-hour flight from Auckland, "It is Air New Zealand's long-term goal to become the world's most environmentally sustainable airline and we have today made further significant progress towards this."
A biofuel blend of 50-50 jatropha and Jet A1 fuel was used to power one of the airline's Boeing 747-400's Rolls-Royce engines.
Air New Zealand, which described jatropha as a sustainable second-generation biofuel, said that more than a dozen key performance tests were undertaken during the flight.
Copenhagen/Stockholm - Shares in SAS, the operator of the joint-carrier Scandinavian Airlines, surged Friday on a report that Lufthansa is interested in the Scandinavian market and is in talks with SAS.
It is time to enjoy cheep air travel as the leading domestic airlines are slashing the air fares significantly. Declining crude rates and low demand in the aviation sector is forcing the air carriers to cut air fares. Domestic air traffic declined significantly with just 30 lakh people using the air services in November. 
It will come as a relief to those, who have to travel regularly by air and were frustrated by paying high fares time and time again, since it was announced by Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya that his airlines would cut fares by 1st January. Though he did not quantify the cut, sources confirm that it would be between 10% and 15%. So overall, the fares could further drop between Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. There had been reduction of fuel surcharge by Rs 400 during the last month. 
