Qatar Airways has plans to fly to New Zealand. The airline has eyed this market before and Bloomberg reports its CE Akbar Al Baker as saying flights to Auckland were part of new expansion plans. Al Baker said last week that it would use long-range Boeing 777 aircraft to fly to this country and to Chile. The New Zealand govt said then the opportunity now existed for the airline to serve New Zealand and "this would be a welcome development." In 2013, when those negotiations began, it was revealed the airline had approached Auckland Airport about flights to this country. Qatar services would be the latest in a growing list of new flights announced during the past 6 months. AirAsia X is resuming flights to New Zealand in March, Sichuan Airlines is eyeing flights here and American Airlines and United Airlines will return to New Zealand with flights across the Pacific later this year.<br/>
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Almost 2 years after one of its Boeing 777s went missing, Malaysia Airlines is grounding its remaining fleet of the aircraft - and cancelling the route on which one of the planes was shot down. The Malaysian carrier’s last 777 operation is scheduled to take off from Amsterdam Monday. It ends 19 years of flying the twin-jet - and 4 decades of the route between the airline’s hub, Kuala Lumpur, and the Dutch capital. At about the same time, another Malaysia Airlines 777 is due to arrive at Kuala Lumpur from Guangzhou in China. While that route will continue, the plane is being downsized to a Boeing 737-800 - a predominantly short-haul jet with about half the capacity. The move comes as Malaysia Airlines seeks to move on after the 2 tragedies involving the 777 in 2014.<br/>
The president of the American Airlines pilots union is blasting the airline for an “on the cheap” philosophy, and ranking it below Delta and United for employee relations, after a series of contractual disputes. “We have all witnessed a culture gone awry,” Keith Wilson, president of the Allied Pilots Association, wrote Saturday in a letter to the airline’s 15,000 pilots. Titled “Going for the Bronze?,” Wilson ranks American third among the three global carriers as a result of “industry-trailing total compensation (including United Airlines, whose pilots just inked a 2-year contract extension); fatiguing and low quality of life trips; degraded hotels; pay check miscalculations; pilot scheduling (and) obsession with D-zero door slamming on all customers and non-rev passengers under heavy threat of discipline for non-compliance.”<br/>