Brussels Airport Friday said its departure hall would partly reopen May 1, after deadly terrorist attacks struck the facility last month. Islamic State suicide bombers hit the airport’s departure hall March 22 killing at least 16 people and injuring many more. A subway station in the Belgian capital also was attacked. The airport reopened days later using a quickly erected temporary check-in facility. “Sunday is an important day in the recovery of Brussels Airport. The doors of the departure hall to passengers will open again,” said Arnaud Feist, the airport’s CEO. The airport initially projected it could take months to restore the facility to accommodate passengers before it completed a detailed assessment of the damage. But Brussels Airport said 111 check-in counters would be in service Monday in the departure hall. The temporary facility with 36 check-in counters would remain open.<br/>
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Aviation industry leaders want European Union transport ministers to intervene to help settle a dispute between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar's airport which threatens proposals to smooth travel across the bloc. The dispute over whether the territory's airport should be included in EU legislation on aviation could paralyse a shake-up of European airspace and has blocked progress on matters from passenger rights to ground-handling liberalisation. The airport's runway crosses the only road connecting Spain to Gibraltar, a British overseas territory. Spain claims the whole of Gibraltar but views the isthmus containing its airport as a distinct issue. Madrid argues that it was not included in the treaty ceding Gibraltar to Britain three centuries ago, and so has always been Spanish territory. Representatives of airlines, airports, traffic controllers and plane manufacturers have written to ministers of both countries and the Netherlands, which chairs EU meetings, protesting at the damage to a sector caused by the dispute. They want EU transport ministers to discuss the four-year-old impasse at a meeting on June 7. "Unfortunately, and unacceptably, this deadlock has led to major delays in advancing some of the most important European air transport files to the detriment of consumers," the heads of 10 industry groups said in the letter, seen by Reuters. "The industry believes that this situation has now become unsustainable."<br/>
Police say a Miami computer programmer hacked into the American Airlines accounts of travelers and stole $260,000 worth of frequent flyer miles. Milad Avazdavani has been jailed for a year on 19 felony counts including grand theft. Police say Avazdavani used the frequent flyer miles to take trips around the world and to rent cars. Avazdavani, an Iranian who was a student at Florida International University, tells the Herald he is a victim of "bargain shopping" on the internet. He says a third party is to blame for his predicament.<br/>
Bombardier plans to continue to offer discounts on its new C Series narrow-body jets even after winning a 75-aircraft order from Delta Air Lines Inc., one of the planemaker’s top executives said. “Aggressive” pricing was part of the strategy that allowed the manufacturer to secure the Delta deal, Fred Cromer, president of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, said Friday in an interview. He wouldn’t provide financial details of the accord, which also comes with options for 50 more aircraft. Carriers placing large jet orders typically negotiate discounts with aircraft manufacturers. Discounts on the CS100 jets that Delta bought -- which carry a list price of $71.8m -- may have been as high as 75%, according to Aviation Week. “Sure, I would use the term aggressive,” to describe the pricing offered to Delta, Cromer said in Mirabel, Quebec, after the Bombardier annual meeting. “Let’s face it -- we are still in the beginning stages of the program. The plane isn’t even in service yet, so a company that’s going to come in and place a volume order is going to expect a discount.”<br/>
Southwest Airlines caught rivals and Wall Street by surprise when it cut many US fares by $5 each way. The reduction this week applied to tickets bought within seven days of departure, which are usually favoured more by last-minute business travellers than vacationers. Meanwhile, Delta was busy raising fares on domestic routes by $5 each way. And it did not match Southwest’s lower fares where the two carriers compete, a Delta spokesman said Thursday. Spokesmen for American and United said that their airlines matched the Southwest reduction on routes where they overlap with Southwest but did not match Delta’s fare hike. Southwest’s decision to cut base fares was particularly eye-catching. JPMorgan analyst Jamie Baker, who tracks fares, said he could not recall such a “plain vanilla fare decrease by a large airline.” Baker said he was “troubled” because the decrease unwound a fare hike from February. Airline stocks have fallen in recent days over renewed concern that average fares, which began dipping early last year, will continue to drop throughout 2016. <br/>
A fire in a basement at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport that killed two people has been put out, China Central Television (CCTV) said on its microblog, while an airport official said there had been no disruption to flights. Four people were also injured, CCTV said. The fire started underground in a pile of insulation material. "There's been no impact on airport operations," an airport official, who only gave his surname as Wang, told Reuters. The People's Daily said on its official microblog the fire broke out in the basement of Terminal One at the airport at around 07:00 (7 am) local time during an underground renovation project.<br/>
Little Simba couldn't wait to check it out. The toy poodle was among the first to try a special bathroom just for animals at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, among a growing number of "pet relief facilities" being installed at major air hubs across the nation. The 70-square-foot room, at JFK's sprawling Terminal 4, allows dogs and other animals to relieve themselves without needing to exit the building to find a place to go outside — a step that requires an annoying second trip through the security line. "We had seen an increase of passengers traveling with pets and we decided to do it sooner rather than later," said Susana Cunha, vice president of the management company that operates the terminal. Guide and service dogs, emotional support animals and other pets traveling with passengers are all welcome to use the facilities. A federal regulation will require that all airports that service over 10,000 passengers per year install a pet relief area in every terminal by this August. Airports that already have them include Dulles International outside Washington D.C., Chicago's O'Hare and Seattle-Tacoma International.<br/>