Ground staff at Berlin’s Schönefeld and Tegel airports will go on strike Thursday during the peak evening travel period. The Verdi union called the strike for 16:00 on Thursday until 22:00 that evening. The airport operator in a statement warned of “severe disruption of air traffic.” The same airports were hit by a strike last week that caused over 130 early morning flight cancellations. The strike on Thursday is aimed at the peak evening travel period with delays and cancellations expected to have some follow on effects on Friday morning. The airports operator encouraged passengers to check on the status of their flight before leaving for the airport. The union is seeking a wage increase of between one and two euros an hour, or approximately 10%.<br/>
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India is reviving a three-decade-old plan to build its first passenger aircraft as the South Asian country struggles to join an exclusive club of Asian nations that have advanced far ahead in creating their own home-made jets. A 14-seat aircraft, called Saras, is undergoing preliminary tests, Jitendra Jadhav, director of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research at state-controlled National Aerospace Laboratories, said in an interview in Bengaluru on Wednesday. The development of the twin-turboprop plane suffered a setback in 2009 when a test flight ended in a fiery crash, killing all three crew on board. India may need a few hundred small planes that can carry less than 30 people over the next five to seven years for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to succeed in his plan to boost air links in remote areas of the country, according to Sydney-based CAPA Centre for Aviation. India’s air force, which has committed to purchasing 15 of the Saras planes, needs to test the aircraft before certifications and sale to commercial airlines, Jadhav said. The process of getting full certification could take as long as three years, he said.<br/>
US aircraft maker Sikorsky is in advanced talks with some Indian charter operators and other airlines for sales of its small passenger planes, one of its executives said Wednesday. Sikorsky, which is part of Lockheed Martin, is offering the M-28 turboprop passenger airplane that can seat up to 19 people and costs $6m to $7m for what it estimates is a regional market worth some $500m. India wants to boost regional aviation connectivity and reopen closed airports as part of its plans to improve passenger growth in one of the world's most competitive aviation markets. Arvind Walia, Sikorsky's regional executive for India and South Asia, said such connections would bring about 300m people in India's smaller cities into the air travel market. "We are in dialogue with potential operators for regional connectivity and it appears to us there is huge demand," Walia said. "There are some with whom talks are in a very advanced stage and there are some who have sought additional clarification," he said. He estimated demand for smaller planes at 80 over the next two years.<br/>
Malaysia Airports Holdings (MAHB) will spend more than RM100m (US$22m) to upgrade the 39 airports it manages in the country this year and next. Its managing director Datuk Badlisham Ghazali said the works include upgrading the toilets and religious assembly buildings at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang. “We are seeing a lot of umrah traffic. KLIA is not designed to cater for [that kind] of volume [and thus the upgrade],” he said. Badlisham said the airport operator constantly upgrades its airports, adding that the Sultan Ismail Petra Airport in Kota Baru is one of them. He noted that MAHB is in talks with the Kedah state government to upgrade the Langkawi airport. Meanwhile, the airport operator has no plans to revise upwards its 5% passenger target growth for 2017.<br/>
Airbus is shaking up its international marketing organization amid a UK investigation into suspected irregularities in the use of intermediaries to help it land new orders, three people familiar with the matter said. The move is part of a wider internal reorganization as CE Tom Enders tries to turn the group into a leaner and simpler company, but is also gaining top-level management attention in its own right as the company carries out a sweeping review of its sales practices, they said. Airbus has for years relied on sales teams in its planemaking unit backed up in some cases by a headquarters team of international marketers to sell jets to areas including parts of Asia and the Middle East. Like many exporters, it has also relied on a network of external consultants with local business knowledge, a practice which is legal but subject to international guidelines designed to ensure transparency and avoid a risk of corruption. <br/>
Production workers at Boeing’s South Carolina 787 assembly plant have voted against representation by the IAM union. The International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM) held the vote under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Board. It was open to about 3,000 Boeing employees at the North Charleston facility. “We’re disappointed the workers at Boeing South Carolina will not yet have the opportunity to see all the benefits that come with union representation” the IAM’s Mike Evans said. “But more than anything, we are disheartened they will have to continue to work under a system that suppresses wages, fosters inconsistency and awards only a chosen few.” The vote is a victory for Boeing who campaigned hard to fight off unionisation at the South Carolina plant. Workers at Boeing’s other 787 facility in Washington state are already represented by the IAM union.<br/>