Air France will introduce loyalty cards offering 30% discounts on domestic routes to passengers aged 12 to 24 as it seeks to lure young travellers away from trains, long-distance buses and low-cost carriers. The cards will sell for E49 and run for a year, Air France President Frederic Gagey said Friday. They’ll be valid for bookings with Air France and regional arm Hop!, though not at discount unit Transavia. Air France faces a crunch in the domestic travel market as EasyJet and Ryanair add flights and train services get quicker. While state rail operator SNCF has been offering youth discounts for decades, they’re not yet widely available with airlines. “There’s a huge opportunity for us in targeting consumers who don’t currently fly, both in terms of filling our planes and building loyalty at an early age,” said Lionel Guerin, who heads Hop!. The regional unit, formed via a merger of three domestic carriers, should be profitable by 2017, he said.<br/>
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Delta is in talks with planemakers that could lead to the acquisition of dozens of small narrowbody jets, industry sources said. The airline has said it needs to phase out as many as 120 older aircraft as it trades up from regional to larger mainline jets with 100 or more seats. Industry sources said Canada's Bombardier is pushing particularly hard for a deal for its struggling new CSeries aircraft after losing out to Boeing at United earlier this year. A US-based Delta employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said Bombardier executives were in Atlanta this week. He could not say whether Delta would buy the CSeries because the "negotiations are ongoing".<br/>
Two former China Southern executives, including the firm's ex-chief financial officer, have pleaded guilty to accepting bribes, the official news Xinhua agency said. In January, China Southern said its CFO, Xu Jiebo, along with three other senior executives were under investigation and sacked for suspected criminal wrongdoing. Xu, who faced trial in a Shenzhen court on Wednesday, had accepted US$1.07m in bribes and sought gains for others in construction and aircraft renting projects, Xinhua said. Zhou Yuehai, former vice general manager, was also charged with accepting bribes of about CNY600,000 yuan and seeking gains for others in adding air routes and the supply of airline food, according to the court.<br/>