Gol posted a decline in Q2 sales as Brazil’s weak economy continued to weigh on air travel. Revenue dropped 2% from a year earlier to 2.1b reais ($659m), compared with the average estimate of 2.06b reais compiled by Bloomberg. The Sao Paulo-based airline posted net income of 309.5m reais, helped by an accounting gain of 778.8m reais with the Brazilian currency’s gain against the dollar, according to a regulatory filing. Air travel in Brazil fell 6.3% in June, the 11th consecutive monthly drop, as business and tourist demand declined amid the country’s two-year recession. Gol’s load factor decreased 1.6 percentage points in Q2 to 75.2%, as the company failed to cut capacity as fast as the market shrank.<br/>
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For the fourth year in a row, North Korea’s Air Koryo has claimed the dubious honour of being ranked the worst carrier in the world. But Air Koryo may not be that bad, according to online reviews. The ranking, based on 13.25m survey questionnaires compiled by Skytrax, an air-transport research company based in Britain, named Emirates as the world’s best. The Dubai-based airline, rated four stars on a one- to five-star rating system, wowed passengers with amenities like onboard showers, lounges, gourmet food and 2,500 channels of movies and television. Air Koryo was the only one-star rated carrier, which Skytrax said “represents a poor quality of product delivered across the assessment sectors, combining with low and/or inconsistent standards of front-line staff service.” But to be fair to Air Koryo, several of the 46 reviews posted on the Skytrax website described the carrier as adequate, although not spectacular.<br/>
The owner of a four-year-old marmoset insists he meant no monkey business when his emotional support animal caused alarm on Frontier Airlines Flight 1087 from Ohio’s John Glenn Columbus International Airport to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas last Tuesday. Video released Thursday shows Jason Ellis, barefoot and in shorts, going through the security checkpoint in Columbus with his monkey, Gizmo, on his shoulder. But, according to KTRK and other news outlets, Ellis neglected to let the airline know Gizmo would be joining him on the flight as a registered emotional support animal. A flight attendant saw Gizmo peeking out of Ellis’s shirt during the flight and asked for proof to confirm that the animal was a service animal, but Ellis couldn’t access his paperwork on board. Police were called to meet the plane at McCarran after reports that the monkey was “loose” during the flight, but an airline spokesman later confirmed that the monkey was never actually loose in the cabin, was “always with the passenger it was travelling with,” and was indeed a certified service animal.<br/>