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Lufthansa will take the next year to analyse how to integrate Brussels Airlines into the airline group, meaning it will be 2018 before any customers see changes to the brand, a Lufthansa executive said Thursday. Lufthansa announced plans for a full takeover of the carrier, formed in 2002 after the collapse of previous Belgian national carrier Sabena, Wednesday. It wants to look at ways to integrate it into its Eurowings platform, but will also seek to keep more specialist services, such as Brussels Airlines' flights to Africa within the Lufthansa platform, Karl Ulrich Garnadt, head of Eurowings said. "It will be 2018 until customers see any changes," Garnadt said, adding that Lufthansa would first focus on integrating planes on a wet lease deal from Air Berlin into its network and systems. <br/>

Austrian Airlines will add 2 more Airbus A320s to its fleet this year and 1 additional Boeing 777-200ER from summer 2018, representing an investment value of more than E100m (US$112m). As a result, more than 230 jobs will be created at the carrier’s Vienna hub. “The conclusion of the collective bargaining agreement for the flight crew and positive signals from political decision-makers with respect to Vienna as a flight hub ensure a good investment climate,” Austrian Airlines CE Kay Kratky said. The A320s were leased from Lufthansa Group for approximately 8 years, representing an investment value of E50m, including conversion costs. The two aircraft will be deployed on Innsbruck-Frankfurt, Salzburg-Frankfurt, Graz-Frankfurt and Vienna-Munich routes. Austrian currently operates 7 Airbus A319s, 16 A320s and 6 A321s. <br/>

Austrian Airlines will end Vienna-Rome Fiumicino service Nov 9, citing strong LCC competition, a spokesperson confirmed. The service had been launched in 1958. Lufthansa Group LCC subsidiary Eurowings Europe—operating the same route—will add an Austrian code to its flight number. Airberlin’s Austrian subsidiary FlyNiki will operate up to 3 daily flights between Vienna and Rome during the summer 2017 IATA schedule, as well as 1 daily frequency operated by Vueling. Rome became the third destination, in addition to Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca, where Austrian transferred services to Eurowings. Austrian also ended services to Istanbul in winter 2014-15 because of strong competition from Turkish Airlines. <br/>

Elliott Management, the US hedge fund, is leveraging its position as lender to Avianca’s majority shareholder to force the airline into a sale or strategic partnership. The activist fund has become increasingly influential in discussions about Avianca’s future even though it does not hold a stake in the carrier, according to people close to the company. Elliott has held talks with the company’s senior executives in recent weeks and has provided input on what it thinks Avianca should do. Elliott provided loans to Germán Efromovich, the carrier’s controlling shareholder, more than a year ago, say people with knowledge of the financing arrangement. The loans made by Elliott to Efromovich are secured against the value of his 51% stake in the carrier and are linked to its share price — meaning the hedge fund stands to gain if the airline is sold. <br/>

The union that represents 9,000 mechanics at United Continental said it signed off on the terms of a new tentative labour contract and intends to put it out to a membership vote in the coming weeks. If the agreement is approved by a majority of the workers, it would mark the mechanics’ first joint labour contract since the 2010 merger of United and Continental. They would be the final unionised group to cross that threshold, which would represent a victory for new United CE Oscar Munoz, who has pledged to improve labour relations at the airline. The pact would give the mechanics a US$185m signing bonus and immediately raise top pay scales by 28%, to $47.31 an hour. About 80% of the workers are senior enough to be at top scale. Overall, wages would rise 36.5% over the term of the contract. <br/>

It took a posse of aspiring criminologists to help United Continental track down the 10-ton jet bridges causing most of the damage to its arriving planes. Collegiate interns at the airline also helped identify a cause of costly rotator cuff tears in some baggage handlers. Troubleshooting those and other findings have helped United’s new data visualisation project cut injuries among its 85,000 employees by almost a quarter and damage to its aircraft on the ground by nearly a third since 2014. “Data is data, regardless of whether you’re looking at arrest reports or accident reports,” says JJ DeGiovanni, a managing director in United’s corporate safety department. That knowledge has helped United alter training and make other fixes to address the problems. <br/>