Ryanair reached a settlement with Google and online travel agent eDreams to end legal proceedings in the Irish High Court over what it said were misleading advertisements for Ryanair flights, the airline said Thursday. Ryanair accused Google in 2015 of allowing eDreams to use “misleading” subdomain www.Ryanair.eDreams.com and a website with branding similar to Ryanair’s to sell plane tickets at higher prices than on the Irish airline’s own website. Ryanair said terms of the settlement would remain confidential. Ryanair, Google and eDreams said in a statement that they were pleased to have resolved the issue.<br/>
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JetBlue Airways has withdrawn its flights from a dozen online travel agents in the first phase of a broader effort to trim $20m from its ticket-selling expenses. JetBlue is remaining with larger agencies including Priceline.com and Expedia Inc., along with Expedia’s Travelocity.com and Orbitz.com units. The airline favors sites like Kayak.com where consumers can comparison shop for prices and schedules, but then are redirected to the website of the selected airline to book their travel. The changes are the latest skirmish between airlines and online travel agencies that sell tickets based on fare and flight data provided by global distribution systems, or GDS. Carriers in general pay five-times more for a typical booking made through such travel sites than on their own website, said Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group. Airlines are trying to get more control over the information and the so-called distribution costs involved. “It tends to be the lowest-revenue customers coming through in a market where we pay the same distribution costs for a customer paying $39 as one paying $339,” Marty St. George, JetBlue’s executive vice president for commercial and planning, said in an interview. “Distributing really low fares through these channels is very, very expensive for us.”<br/>
HNA Group, one of the four Chinese enterprises under regulatory scrutiny since June for its outsize overseas purchases, said its airline will commence flying to New York next week from two of the biggest cities in southwestern China, in a sign that its business operations are uninterrupted under the government’s spotlight. Hainan Airlines will begin flying non-stop to the US east coast from Chengdu and Chongqing from October 27, using Boeing’s 787-800 aircraft. The Chengdu-New York service will depart every Thursday and Saturday in summer and autumn, switching to every Tuesday and Saturday in winter and spring, HNA said on its website. A separate service from Chongqing will serve New York every Wednesday and Friday in summer and autumn, switching to depart on Mondays and Fridays in winter and spring, HNA said.<br/>The two new routes, following the September 20 commencement of Hainan Airlines’ Shenzhen-Brisbane route using the Airbus 330-200 jetliner, shows the company’s sprawling operations appear to be unaffected, even as its acquisitions had been put on a short leash. Capacity growth among airlines serving routes between North America and China’s second-tier cities is growing fast. The frequency of travelling more than tripled in the first seven months of 2017, compare with a 79% increase in the same period last year.<br/>
Hawaiian Airlines reported a 27% drop in Q3 net profit as fuel and staff costs jumped. Net profit for the quarter to end September came in at US$74.6m, down from the previous year quarter’s $102.4m, as fuel costs rose 16.1% to $110.1m and staff costs by 18.1% to $161.1m. The third quarter operating income of $173.8 million was down 2.9% from 3Q17’s $178.9m, despite an increase in passenger revenue of 7.3% to $634.5m. Hawaiian flew three million passengers during the quarter, up 2.9%, with scheduled RPM passenger traffic up 3.0%. ASM capacity increased by just 1.2% leading to an improvement in load factor to 86.7%, up 1.5 percentage points. Operating revenue per ASM (RASM) rose 5.8% to 14.53 cents, but CASM (cost per ASM) increased by 9.4% to 11.02 cents.<br/>
Saudi hybrid carrier flynas operated the first direct flight between Riyadh and the Iraqi capital Baghdad Oct. 17, ending a 27-year gap in services between the two countries. Services ceased at the time of the first Gulf War in 1990, when Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime invaded Kuwait. It took until August 2017 for the atmosphere between the two Arab nations to warm sufficiently for them to sign an MOU on the resumption of direct air services. An agreement was signed this week in Baghdad allowing the start of services. Flynas said it plans to start flights between several Saudi and Iraqi cities “in the coming weeks,” without giving further details.<br/>
A Canadian man is suing an airline for serving sparkling wine instead of champagne on a flight. Daniel Macduff flew from Quebec to the Cuban island resort of Cayo Coco on Sunwing Airlines which he says advertised a “glass of champagne”, The National Post reports. The retired civil servant filed a lawsuit against the airline after he was served a cheaper alternative, not from the Champagne region in north-east France, on his return flight. Sunwing argues that terms like “champagne service” and “champagne vacations” it uses in its marketing is not in specific reference to the type of drink served on board. The airline now states on its website passengers will receive a “welcome glass of sparkling wine” during the flight. Macduff claims it was misleading advertising and is seeking compensation for the cost difference of the wine products and punitive damages<br/>