Ryanair has called on the European Commission to stop French air traffic controllers from striking Thursday. Skies over France are set to shut again for the fifth time in two months. Over 70 flights in and out of France will be grounded Thursday, with delays expected to spill over into Friday. The airline has called on EU chiefs to force French ATC unions to engage in binding arbitration instead of strikes to resolve their claims, or allow Europe’s other ATCs to operate overflights over France while ATC unions are on strike. A spokesman for Ryanair slammed the strikers and labelled them "selfish". <br/>
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The US Department of Justice antitrust division has requested Alaska Airlines and Virgin America to provide additional information regarding their merger proposal. The airlines said they “will be responding promptly” to the request. In general, this so-called “second request” usually involves the govt asking for “business documents and data that will inform the agency about a company’s products or services, market conditions where the company does business, and the likely competitive effects of the merger.” The airlines say they continue to be optimistic that they can seal the deal soon. Alaska and Virgin executives have said they plan to close the transaction before the end of the year. In early April, Alaska announced that it planned to buy Virgin America for an equity value of US$2.6b. <br/>
Qatar Airways' entry into the Atlanta market isn't drawing the response that its publicists would have wanted. Instead, the carrier, which will begin Doha-Atlanta service June 1, is embroiled in controversy, reflecting its battle with hometown carrier Delta as well as with airline labour unions over the rights of subsidised Middle East carriers to expand their US service. Tuesday, Qatar staged a celebratory concert by singer Jennifer Lopez in Atlanta. Lopez didn't respond to a request by the president of the Association of Flight Attendants to skip the concert. In a public letter to Lopez, the union head decried the country of Qatar's exclusionary policies regarding gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as well as labour unions. Delta has been a leader in the effort by the big three US airlines and their unions to convince the Obama administration to limit the Gulf carrier's rapid US expansion. <br/>
With profits still at record levels, Southwest will be returning more of those earnings to shareholders through an increased quarterly dividend and a new US$2b share repurchase program, CE Gary Kelly said Wednesday. Southwest’s Q1 dividend was increased by 33% from $.075 per share to $.10 per share following a vote of Southwest’s board of directors. Boosted by low fuel prices, the Dallas company earned a record $511m in Q1 2016, a 13% increase over last year. The increased returns for shareholders did not go unnoticed by hundreds of Southwest employees who were picketing outside the meeting. Southwest’s pilots, flight attendants and mechanics unions have all been without updated contracts for several years and have been taking increasingly visible steps to bring attention to their situation. <br/>
Business class air fares between Auckland and Hong Kong have been slashed by up to 60% by newcomer Hong Kong Airlines. The independent airline will begin a daily service to Auckland Nov 10. It is offering a special return business class launch fare of NZ$2204. That compares to $5803 on either Air NZ or Cathay Pacific. The special fare is available for Nov this year and between early February to late November next year. An analyst said the fare would grab attention. He said the other airlines on the route would probably respond to the move. Air NZ and Cathay Pacific operate under a strategic revenue sharing alliance on the route. HKA is a full service airline with a fleet of 30 Airbus aircraft and a network with more than 30 cities across the Asia Pacific region. It has been in business for 10 years. <br/>
Indonesia's transport ministry said it plans to suspend the in-house ground handling operations of budget carriers Lion Air and Indonesia AirAsia at two of the country's biggest airports while it investigates possible handling errors. A ministry spokesman said the airlines have until Tuesday to hire other handling services before its investigation begins. He said, without elaborating, that the possible errors involved passenger handling. The suspension will apply to Lion Air at Jakarta's Soekarno–Hatta Airport and to AirAsia at Denpasar Airport, Bali, he said, declining to disclose the duration of the investigation. Lion Air is Indonesia's biggest budget carrier, while Indonesia AirAsia is an affiliate of Malaysia AirAsia, Asia's biggest low-cost carrier. <br/>