Lufthansa’s budget airline Eurowings will offer steep discounts to holidaymakers left stranded abroad after insolvent Air Berlin stops flying next week, Eurowings’ CE said Friday. Air Berlin filed for insolvency in August and has said its flights will cease by Oct. 28 at the latest. Lufthansa has agreed to take over 81 of Air Berlin’s roughly 130 planes in an E210m deal to cement its position in Germany and expand Eurowings. Thorsten Dirks, Eurowings CE, said Friday holidaymakers who were due to return home on an Air Berlin flight between Oct. 28 and Nov. 15 may be able to get a Eurowings ticket home at half the normal price. “We will fly these people back, so long as we have enough capacity,” Dirks said. The offer only applies to tickets to destinations outside Germany that were booked before Air Berlin filed for insolvency.<br/>
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An ad hoc pilots group at Ryanair Holdings has demanded double the pay offered by management to its London Stansted crews, who last week voted to reject a peace offering aimed at containing fallout from a flight cancellation debacle. The unofficial European Employee Representative Council made the proposal to pilots two days after Ryanair’s biggest pilot base rejected the existing offer, according to a document seen by Bloomberg on Sunday. The group has asked pilots for feedback and pledged to take industrial action if a new deal can’t be agreed. Ryanair’s London Stansted base voted 60% to 40% on Friday against raises and bonuses of as much as GBP22,000, which would boost basic compensation to GBP74,000, the company said Friday. The group’s demands would see basic pay rise to GBP150,000 for captains across the company, from 64,000 pounds currently. The stand-off between pilots and executives has simmered since the airline was forced to cancel more than 20,000 flights affecting about 700,000 customers due to a mess-up of rosters that left it lacking enough crew to maintain its schedule. The EERC, created after the cancellations last month, is seeking to establish a collective bargaining group across the carrier’s 86 bases.<br/>
She was flying Lucky Air, but that wasn’t enough for an elderly Chinese woman who tossed coins at the jet’s engine to wish for a safe flight, prompting authorities to detain her and ground the flight. The incident occurred on Wednesday at the airport in the city of Anqing in eastern China’s Anhui province, according to authorities, and was at least the second such report this year of a safety scare caused by a coin-tossing elderly Chinese. Fellow passengers reported that coins were tossed at the engine of a Lucky Air jet during boarding, and ground crew later found coins lying on the tarmac next to the plane, according to various statements by the airline, airport authorities, and transport police. A 76-year-old woman was subsequently taken into custody, transport police said. It was not clear whether she would face charges. Lucky Air is under the Hainan Airlines group. The flight, which was to depart Anqing for the city of Kunming in southwestern China, was grounded overnight as a safety precaution. The passengers were subsequently flown to Kunming the following morning, authorities said. In June, a superstitious 80-year-old woman delayed a China Southern flight at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport for nearly six hours after she tossed nine coins at the engine from the tarmac while boarding, with one nestling inside.<br/>
Singapore-based airline Scoot has launched a new route from Singapore to Palembang. The inaugural flight of this route will be on November 23, in the future there will be four flights that travel between Palembang and Singapore in a week. “Palembang is the right choice for us, we want to promote Palembang as a new destination following the other three destinations in Indonesia,” said Scoot CCO, Vinod Kannan. “This is the right choice for a new flight. Singapore and Palembang have historical and cultural relationships. The relationship between Singapore and South Sumatra can be traced back to the Sriwijaya Empire era,” explained tourism minister, Arief Yahya. <br/>
Russia’s Ikar Airline, which operates under Pegas Fly brand, will take over VIM Airlines’ service to Anadyr in Russia’s Far East as VIM ceases scheduled services following financial turbulence, the Chukotka region government said in a statement Oct. 20. Deputy governor Leonid Nikolaev said Krasnoyarsk-based Ikar confirmed it will launch Moscow Sheremetyevo-Anadyr Boeing 767 services from March 2018; ticket sales will start in November. Currently, UTair Aviation is the only carrier to provide service on the route. UTair will carry passengers with tickets for VIM Airlines flights through Oct. 28 if free seats are available. In addition, the Russian government issued a statement saying an agreement had been reached with Far East Yakutia Airlines to increase frequencies on Anadyr-Magadan and Pevek-Moscow services from weekly to 2X-weekly.<br/>