No one was hurt when an Allegiant Air passenger jet skidded off a snowy runway in South Dakota. Allegiant spokeswoman Krysta Levy says Flight 456 carrying 155 passengers and six crew members from Las Vegas touched down at Sioux Falls Regional Airport just before noon Sunday when heavy snow and crosswinds caused the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 to slide 6m off the runway. Levy says passengers walked down the plane's rear stairs and were taken by buses to the terminal. She says no one was injured. Maintenance workers are inspecting the jetliner. Levy says the plane came to rest with its front wheels in a patch of grass, and remained upright and level.<br/>
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Months after a couple of sexual harassment incidents took place on board Alaska Airlines planes, the carrier has announced new employee training to address the problem. In an online post to Alaska Airlines employees, CE Brad Tilden said the carrier is adding training to help protect flight attendants and passengers from being the victims of assault or harassment. "To be clear, sexual harassment and assault have absolutely no place in our workplace, on board our flights, or any place," he said. Often such reported incidents involve unwanted touching of flight attendants by passengers or allegations one passenger harassed another. For flight attendants, Tilden said the new training will include"a sexual assault scenario" created by RAINN, a national anti-sexual violence organization, and a Seattle-area sexual-assault resource centre. He also said, "We're developing onboard resources to clarify how guests can support one another and our crews."<br/>
Ukraine’s largest airline may launch new legal action over the entry of Ryanair into the market if its complaints over airport slots are not addressed, its CE said Friday. The Western-backed government feted Ryanair’s expected arrival in September as a sign of its pro-business credentials to attract foreign investors and prise open sectors traditionally dominated by local tycoons. But Ukraine International Airlines, which is part-owned by one of the country’s richest magnates, Ihor Kolomoisky, says the Kiev authorities have gone out of their way to support Ryanair while being slow to help local carriers grow. UIA launched legal action against the government last year and Ryanair walked away from talks saying Ukraine was “not yet a sufficiently mature or reliable business location”. Ryanair returned after more negotiations backed by the president. UIA’s CEO Yuri Miroshnikov said Ryanair has started selling tickets for flights at Kiev’s Boryspil airport without getting permission for the timings. “Slots which they are expecting to receive are all occupied by Ukraine International flights, transit flights, where the connecting times are very important, where we know, we already understand that airport infrastructure in these peak times is a bottleneck for us,” he said. “I can have only one explanation: They (Ryanair) hope and believe that under pressure from various sources the issue somehow will be resolved (in their favor),” he said. “And they don’t care. If that solution will damage Ukraine International, yes we definitely will protect our interests in the court,” he said, without specifying whom UIA would take to court.<br/>
Norwegian Air reported significantly higher than expected March traffic growth and a jump in revenue Friday, driven by strong demand for travel during the Easter holiday. Revenue per passenger kilometres at the budget carrier grew 48% year-on-year, exceeding an average forecast for a 39.9% rise in a Reuters poll of analysts. Norwegian shares were up 3.7% by 0738 GMT, beating a 0.6% drop in Oslo’s benchmark stock index. Norwegian last month raised US$165m in a share issue partly to pay for rapid fleet expansion as it tries to crack the market for transatlantic travel by undercutting established rivals. “Even though Easter strongly impacts this month’s figures, we have a solid passenger growth,” CE Bjoern Kjos said. “The international growth continues, and at the same time, more people are flying with us in Scandinavia”. The company’s passenger capacity grew by 44% in March from the same month of 2017, while its load factor increased to 86.7%, beating the 84.9% predicted. <br/>
Gulf Air expects to take delivery of its first Boeing 787-9 by the end of this month, the airline said April 6, as it unveiled the first look at its new branding. The airline expects its Boeing 787-9—the first of 10—to be delivered on April 27. It marks the start of a complete rollover of the airline’s fleet, with the new orders including 17 Airbus A321neo and 12 A320neo, as well as six further options for 787s. The new aircraft will replace the A320s, A321s and A330-200s that currently constitute the fleet. The first two 787-9s will serve Gulf Air’s double-daily London Heathrow service, offering increased capacity and improved on-board products and services, from June 15. The 787-9s will have a two-class, 282-seat configuration with a 26-seat Falcon Gold business-class cabin, plus 256 seats in economy. A new business class section will be “best in class,” according to CEO Krešimir Kučko, who has said that new business-class seats had been benchmarked not against other carrier’s business class, but first-class, seats. While declining to give further details, he said the cabin would be considerably better than normal business-class offerings from other airlines.<br/>
Indian full-service domestic airline Vistara has taken delivery of its 20th aircraft, passing the Indian government’s threshold for an airline to operate internationally, which is planned for later this year. The airline’s latest A320neo landed at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport April 4, joining six other A320neo and 13 A320ceo models and completing the carrier’s initial aircraft order. Vistara used the occasion to announce orders for a further two A320neos, which are expected to be delivered by June 2018 and indicated it was seeking larger models to undertake medium-haul services. A Vistara spokesman told ATW April 6 that the intention was to start regional international services with the A320s in the second half of this year. It was not yet in a position to name destinations. “At the same time, we are reviewing the type of aircraft we’ll need to support our future plans of international expansion so that we can commence medium-haul routes (between 5-9 hours) after launching the regional/short-haul international routes.”<br/>
Philippine Airlines , which expects the first of six Airbus A350-900s to be delivered by the second half of June, plans to deploy the new aircraft on long-haul routes later this year. The initial A350 will likely be flown on some routes around the Southeast Asia region initially, a PAL spokesman said. The aircraft will then be used for nonstop flights from Manila to New York JFK, replacing PAL’s one-stop service. PAL is tentatively looking at the last week of October for the New York A350 flight, which would be the start of the winter schedule season. PAL, which placed the order for six of the type in 2016, expects to receive four by the end of this year and the other two in 2019, the spokesman said. Other early A350 destinations will be London and Toronto. The A350 arrivals will allow PAL to phase out its remaining five A340-300s. This will not necessarily occur as one-for-one replacement when each A350 is delivered, and the retirement schedule is still being worked out, the spokesman said.<br/>
Estonia’s national airline Nordica transported 125,000 passengers in Q1 2018, up 17% compared to the year-ago quarter. The state-owned carrier said that—based on strong ticket sales for summer destinations—further growth is expected. The most popular destinations were Warsaw, Stockholm and Munich. Nordica accounted for 25% of market share at Tallinn Airport in the first three months of the year. Three new destinations have been added to Nordica’s schedule: year-round flights to the Danish capital Copenhagen, with 11 flights per week; and summer flights to Constanţa in Romania and Ohrid in Macedonia. “We’re heading into our third summer season with a sense of security,” Nordica’s chairman Jaan Tamm said. “Given the number of tickets we’ve sold we’re forecasting continued growth in passenger numbers.”<br/>