Air Berlin needs a swift deal with carriers interested in buying all or part of the insolvent German airline because its prospects look bad, German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said. Zypries said she was surprised by criticism of the German government’s E150m bridging loan to keep Air Berlin flying, telling a news conference she expects the money to be repaid. “We hope it goes quickly, as I believe the future prospects are indeed bad, I mean, who is booking Air Berlin at the moment, even if it’s possible?” Zypries said in Berlin Saturday. She said the government had created good conditions for talks on the airline’s future and that there were “enough interested parties,” including Lufthansa, EasyJet, Ryanair and German aviation entrepreneur Hans Rudolf Woehrl.<br/>
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BA has hit out at the Home Office and urged it to tackle “serious inefficiencies” at UK airports that leave passengers facing long immigration queues. The airline said that the UK Border Force was failing to deliver on its commitment to speed up the processing at immigration when it introduced improved automated passport reading technology two years ago. The installation of more advanced electronic gates that can be used by UK citizens and passengers from the European Economic Area was meant to allow more passengers with biometric, or “chipped”, passports, to use them. But BA said passengers at its Heathrow Terminal 5 sometimes faced queues of more than an hour because of the inefficient use of the so-called eGates. “Routinely at Terminal 5 only one-third of the 29 state of the art eGates are open,” the company said. The airline said the problem was further compounded by the arrival of a wave of long-haul flights after 11pm, when it says the Border Force shuts the eGates “prematurely”. It also complained that a ban on children under the age of 12 using the electronic gates means disruptions for whole families. BA said tackling the issue of long queues was even more critical in the run-up to Brexit as “the UK needs to show that it’s an easy place to travel to”.<br/>
Former F1 driver Niki Lauda is interested in buying back insolvent Air Berlin’s Niki, the Austrian airline he once owned, joining a slew of companies and investors vying to grab parts of the German carrier. Lauda expressed his interest in Niki in a letter to Air Berlin’s insolvency administrator but he has yet to look into Niki’s books, he told Austrian newspaper Kronen-Zeitung. “Now let’s see what happens, whether I’ll be invited to the negotiations at all,” he was quoted as saying. Lufthansa, Thomas Cook’s Condor, easyJet and Ryanair are among airlines interested in the carrier’s business or parts of it, sources familiar with the negotiations have said. German aviation investor Hans Rudolf Woehrl is also working on a bid.<br/>
Criminal investigators probing the destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 have received additional radar information from Russian authorities. The Dutch national prosecutor's office had previously expressed irritation that Russian-supplied radar data had not been provided in the internationally-accepted 'Asterix' format developed by Eurocontrol. But the office states that, following a supplementary request for assistance, the additional radar information "should now be" in the required format, and will be "examined in depth" by the joint investigation team. Radar data has been a contentious issue in the probe into the loss of the Boeing 777-200ER, which was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine in July 2014. Russian authorities had originally supplied only video footage of processed radar information, rather than raw data, to the inquiry. None of the information supplied showed the missile in flight. The Dutch-led investigation, which identified a launch site in eastern Ukraine in late September last year, stated that – because a radar rotates in its surveillance sweep – the absence of the missile on radar images "did not mean the [weapon] had not flown". "It may be so that the radar was just working on the [opposite] side of its scanning [sweep] at the moment the missile was launched," it adds.<br/>
Qantas Airways will upgrade the cabins of its 12 Airbus A380 aircraft, increasing premium seating and resulting in a net addition of one seat per jet. Qantas's A380s are equipped with 484 seats, which will rise to 485 after the upgrade, says Qantas. The work will commence in the second quarter of 2019, with all 12 aircraft upgraded by the end of 2020. The carrier did not provide a specific cost for the work, but says it is a "multi-million dollar" project. The carrier says it has yet to decide where the work will take place. The upgrade will see the number of first class suites remain stable at 14. Six business class seats will be added, bringing the total to 70. Premium economy seats will nearly double to 60, from 35 now. Economy seats will drop to 341 from 371. "Structural changes are focused on the upper deck where 30 economy seats will be removed and some partitions and a crew workstation rearranged to use space more effectively," says Qantas. "This allows for an additional six business class and 25 premium economy seats, increasing the overall seat count on the aircraft by one and increasing premium seating by 27%."<br/>