Ethiopian Airlines will fly to 7 new destinations in the next 5 months, the firm said Tuesday. In its new expansion plan, the carrier says that starting February to June this year, it will fly to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Conakry-Guinea, Antananarivo (Madagascar), Oslo (Norway), Jakarta (Indonesia) Chengdu (China) and Singapore. The firm’s CE said the airline wants to tap into the global aviation market which Africa’s share is only about 3%. “As the largest airline group in the continent, we are highly concerned about the low base of air connectivity in the continent and we are setting record expansion to enable Africans to enjoy safe, reliable and economical air connectivity both within the continent and between the continent and the rest of the world,” CE Tewolde Gebremariam said. <br/>
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For the first time in nearly 5 years, Air India will give a 2% salary hike to its permanent employees. The airline has decided to increase the salaries after turning operationally profitable in the last financial year. Aided by lower fuel costs and rise in passenger numbers, Air India posted an operational profit of INR1.05b in the last financial year. It was also the first time in a decade that the carrier turned operationally profitable. Air India's executive director A Jayachandran said in view of last fiscal's operating profit, "it has been decided that yearly increment rate for all categories of permanent employees of Air India and its employees posted in subsidiaries will be applicable at 2%". This would be applicable only for the financial year 2016-17. <br/>
SIA deepened its commitment to 2-stop flights after deploying the world’s newest wide-body jet on services that call in at Manchester, northern England, en route to Houston, Texas. The carrier this week upgraded the flight, which it operates under fifth-freedom rights, to Airbus' A350-900 jet, of which it has only 10 in the fleet, from Boeings older 777-300ER. SIA also serves New York via Frankfurt and will fly to Stockholm with a stop in Moscow from May. There may be scope for adding other such routes, Sheldon Hee, its general manager for the UK and Ireland, said. Fifth-freedom flights, once a mainstay of long-haul operations, have become comparatively rare since longer-range aircraft opened up direct trips between most major population centres from the early 1980s. <br/>
United Airlines has quietly started rolling out new, refreshed versions of uniforms manufactured by Cintas. The outfits are a variation on those supplied by Cintas that United introduced in 2013 under former CE Jeff Smisek. The move to refresh United's outfits was prompted by complaints from employees that the original uniforms were not well designed in some regards and of poor quality. A United spokeswoman said the new uniforms are made of a more durable fabric. Adjustments in the fit of blazers were made to give wearers of the uniforms more flexibility of movement. Pockets, which were a problem on the original uniform, also have been reworked. The uniform colour palette — royal blue, light grey and navy — remains essentially the same as it was in the 2013 uniforms. <br/>