Ryanair has been ranked as the sixth worst airline in a survey of 72 international airlines, based on a number of factors including its punctuality and the quality of the airline, both on the ground and in the sky. A report by AirHelp, a company that advocates on behalf of air travellers for compensation in cases of delays or cancellations, found Ryanair to be in the bottom 10 of all the airlines surveyed. The airline was beaten at the bottom by other budget airlines including EasyJet and WOW air, with the latter coming in last place. While budget airlines generally didn’t perform well in the survey, Norwegian Air bucked the trend and came in 12th place overall. A spokesman for Ryanair said the rankings were produced by “compensation chasing websites to generate publicity”. <br/>
unaligned
JetBlue Airways is looking to team up with other players throughout the travel journey to offer a joint platform for innovation tests. JetBlue would use the network as an extended test platform for the start-up projects that it is backing, to give them wider reach and exposure to the industry. “We are looking partner with airports, airlines, hotels, ground transport providers to form a block of companies, to use as a broad group of partners for proof of concepts,” JetBlue Technology Ventures MD Raj Singh said. He said aviation has failed to keep pace with innovation and push boundaries, compared with technology giants like Google and Facebook. To catch up, airlines are investing in start-ups, because they see that not everything can be achieved internally. <br/>
Less than 2 months after inaugurating year-round non-stop flights between Denver and Paris, Norwegian Air has decided to cut those flights out for nearly half the year. “As with any airline, we cannot operate unprofitable routes, and therefore decided to seasonally adjust the service to when the demand is strong,” said an airline spokesman. He said Norwegian Air will only operate the flights between Denver and Paris from the end of March through the end of October. The airline is dropping the service for the other 5 months of the year. “Norwegian’s original intent was to operate the route year-round, but advance booking figures showed that whilst the route was popular during the summer months, demand was significantly less during the winter season,” he added. <br/>
RwandAir will take delivery of 2 Airbus A330neos and 2 Boeing 737 MAX 8s in 2019 and has confirmed new services to the US and China. The A330neo will be deployed on the Kigali-New York route, which will launch in June 2019 to bring more tourism to Rwanda, CE Yvonne Manzi Makolo said. Tourism is the No. 1 industry in the Eastern African nation of Rwanda. Kigali-Guangzhou (China) services will also begin early next year. To balance the network in terms of additional long-haul routes, more short- and medium-haul destinations will be added. For example, Makolo said routes to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Djibouti (East Africa), Bamako (Mali) and Conakry (Guinea) are on the immediate list. RwandAir is also focusing on fleet harmonisation. “We are phasing out the CRJs and are discussing a replacement,” she said. <br/>