Air India may see a jump in passengers after the US barred people travelling by some Middle Eastern airlines from carrying large electronic devices on flights bound for the country, its finance head said. Etihad, Qatar Airways and Emirates, which carry about 19% of travellers flying to and from India, may be the worst hit by the move to ban use of iPads and laptops on aircraft originating from cities including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Cairo and Istanbul. The move may impact about 50 flights a day. Air India, which currently flies to New York, Newark, Chicago and San Francisco in the US, will boost its international operations including a new direct flight to Washington as early as July, Vinod Hejmadi said in a statement. He didn’t say if the Washington flight was a response to the US move. The US ban coming just weeks after president Donald Trump sought to stop most citizens of several predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern and African countries from entering the US. That move is being challenged in the court. The latest rules also coincide with attempts by American carriers to have the government stem US access for Gulf rivals they say have benefited from illegal state aid. "For many passengers the laptop and iPads serve as their mini office and generally have a lot of official data stored in them," Hejmadi said. Passengers won’t risk losing their electronic equipment after checking them in and exposing them to potential theft or mishandling, he said.<br/>
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Lufthansa subsidiary Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) is to convert five more Bombardier CSeries 100s to the larger CS300. “I can confirm that SWISS is converting its final five Bombardier CSeries aircraft orders from the CS100 to the larger CS300, to produce a CSeries fleet consisting of 10 CS100s and 20 CS300s by the end of 2018,” a SWISS spokesman said. SWISS originally ordered 20 CS100s and 10 CS300s, plus 30 options, so the switch to 10 CS100s and 20 CS300s shifts the majority of the order to the larger type. The change is not unexpected. In June 2016, before SWISS took delivery of its first CS100, the airline converted five CS100s to CS300s. At the time, ATW reported SWISS was considering converting another five CS100s to the larger variant and could ultimately operate 20 CS300s and 10 CS100s. By the end of 2016, SWISS had taken five CS100s and, in January, the airline said it expected to take a minimum of 12 CS100s, as well as the larger CSeries variant CS300, in 2017.<br/>
An aging mobster who beat a charge that he took part in a legendary heist retold in the hit film "Goodfellas" was accused Wednesday in a less noteworthy crime — getting a group of gangsters, including John "Dapper Don" Gotti's namesake grandson, to torch a car that cut him off in traffic. Vincent Asaro, an 82-year-old third-generation member of the secretive Bonanno crime family, was ordered held without bail after pleading not guilty to the 2012 arson in federal court in Brooklyn. The new case was a harsh reversal of fortunes for Asaro, who was last seen at the same courthouse raising his arms and shouting "Free!" after a jury found him not guilty of charges he orchestrated the Lufthansa robbery with James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke, the late Lucchese crime family associate who inspired Robert De Niro's role in the film. At the time, the heist was called one of the largest cash thefts in American history, with gunmen looting about $5m in untraceable US currency that was being returned to the US from Germany, along with about $1m in jewelry, from the airline's cargo terminal.<br/>