Turkish Airlines has begun talks with Airbus to buy up to 40 A350 jetliners worth $12.4b at list prices, hours after striking a similar deal with its US rival Boeing, people familiar with the airline said Friday. In an announcement coinciding with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the US for the UN General Assembly, Boeing said Thursday the carrier intended to buy 787-9 jets worth $11b at list prices. Hours later, Turkish Airlines also sought prices for up to 40 wide-body A350-900 jets, the people said. The airline is one of the world’s fastest-growing carriers and traditionally maintains a balanced fleet. “We never comment on talks that we may or may not be having with our customers,” an Airbus spokesman. Turkish Airlines was not available for comment.<br/>
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A Lufthansa bid price of E200m to buy assets from insolvent Air Berlin plus E100m to meet operating costs is roughly correct, a source familiar with the talks said Sunday. The newspaper Bild am Sonntag earlier reported the figures, citing sources close to the proceedings. The newspaper said that there could be three months between signing a purchasing contract and implementing the transaction because German and European competition authorities would need to vet any deal. After it filed for insolvency last month the Berlin government granted Air Berlin a E150m bridging loan to keep the airline flying for three months. On Thursday Air Berlin’s creditor committee said it would talk to Lufthansa and Britain’s easyJet as possible buyers for the carrier’s assets, giving three weeks for negotiations. The source told Reuters that slots at Duesseldorf airport are among the assets that Lufthansa and easyJet both want. Sources familiar with the matter said last week that Lufthansa was bidding a three-digit-million sum with the offer covering parts of Air Berlin, its leisure subsidiary Niki and regional unit Luftfahrt Gesellschaft Walter.<br/>
Lufthansa took a swipe at low-cost rival Ryanair with a full-page newspaper advertisement mocking the Irish carrier over the pilot shortage that’s led to the scrapping of 2,100 flights. The ad, which ran on page two of German daily Handelsblatt on Friday, depicts a disgruntled looking Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary under the headline “O’Deary!” and invites customers affected by the cancellations to defect to Lufthansa’s own Eurowings discount unit. Eurowings also took to Facebook and Twitter, asking customers if their booking had been a “Ryanfall,” a play on words relating to the German for “flop.” Ryanair is no stranger to well-aimed advertising barbs of its own, painting “Bye-bye Lufthansa” on the side of a Boeing Co. 737 when it entered the German market about 15 years ago. In recent weeks O’Leary has also attacked Lufthansa over its role in what he says is a state-led German “stitch up” in dividing up the assets of Air Berlin Plc, referring to the insolvent company’s CEO Thomas Winkelmann as a “minion” in thrall to the larger company. Ryanair lacks the market penetration in Germany that it has achieved elsewhere, though it this year pushed into Frankfurt and Munich, Lufthansa two main hubs.<br/>
Swiss International Air Lineswill follow the growing trend for carriers to equip flight attendants with electronic devices by issuing all its cabin crew with tablets. The move follows a successful roll-out of the devices to the airline’s cabin service directors. The carrier will begin issuing tablets to its 3,500 cabin crew members in December, with all personnel to be equipped with the devices in the following two months. The tablets are part of a general drive to embed digitalization in SWISS’s procedures and activities. They will give cabin crew access to a range of information required prior to a flight, such as meal menus, service procedures and passenger data, together with notifications of any irregularities. The devices will also contain details of the crew members’ personal duty rosters, manuals and key contacts and will also allow them to complete forms and reports. Staff will be provided with an app to make the information available solely to the individual crew member. <br/>