Saudi Arabia’s national soccer team landed safely in Rostov-on-Don, Russia on Monday evening, after an apparent engine fire on the plane carrying the players to a World Cup match. Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsya said that during the landing there was a brief fire on one of the engines and that it would investigate the incident, Interfax reported. Social and Saudi media footage also appeared to show one of the engines catching fire, but a spokesman for airline Rossiya denied a fire had occurred and said the fault was due to a bird strike. The team were travelling on a Rossiya Airbus A319 from St Petersburg to Rostov-on-Don, where they are due to play their second Group A match against Uruguay on Wednesday. As it came in to land, the plane “suffered a technical fault with one of its engines, with a bird getting caught seen as the preliminary cause,” a Rossiya airlines spokesman said. Reports of a fire in one of the engines were incorrect, the spokesman added. The Saudi federation released photographs of the players smiling and looking calm as they boarded a bus for the Mercure Hotel in central Rostov. “All the Saudi national team players are safe, after a technical failure in one of the airplane engines ... and now they’re heading to their residence safely,” it said in a statement on Twitter.<br/>
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Austrian airline Laudamotion, in which Ryanair is buying a majority stake, is in talks with both Airbus and leasing companies to expand its fleet quickly as it seeks to establish itself following its rebirth from the remains of Air Berlin. “It’s very hard. Airbus is sold out until end of 2020,” Laudamotion owner and former F1 racing champion Niki Lauda said in Berlin Monday. “But there are enough leasing firms,” he added. Laudamotion currently has nine Airbus A320 planes and is using a further 10 Boeing 737 jets from Ryanair this year, taking its fleet to 19. It wants to reach a fleet of 30 planes within the next two years. Laudamotion is currently focused on selling tickets at low prices to ensure its planes are full and to attract customers, Lauda said. That’s a strategy similar to that of Ryanair, which regularly cuts prices to fill planes. <br/>
An airplane belonging to a private company crashed in Antananarivo on Monday killing all five people on board, the Civil Aviation of Madagascar said in a statement, without disclosing the cause of the accident. The Piper PA 31 aircraft operated by Madagascar Trans Air, a private airline company, crashed in the western suburbs of the town on Monday morning. “The light aircraft, belonging to the airline MTA, was victim of an accident ... for reasons that are still under investigation,” ACM said. “Unfortunately, all the occupants died in this accident,” the statement added. The plane was on a training flight in the immediate vicinity of Ivato airfield in the main airport in Antananarivo.<br/>
WestJet and JetBlue founder David Neeleman is planning to launch a new budget airline in the US, with $100m in startup capital, according to a report from the Airline Weekly. The airline, tentatively called Moxy, has secured orders for 60 Bombardier CS300 aircraft, the publication said, citing people familiar with the matter. The report also said that former Air Canada CEO Robert Milton and former International Lease Finance Corp CEO Henri Courpron are among early investors along with Neeleman himself. Bombardier declined to comment on the report, while Neeleman was not immediately available for comment.<br/>
American Airlines affiliate PSA Airlines expects more flight cancellations on Tuesday after scrubbing about 400 flights over the weekend as the regional carrier moves into its sixth day of problems with its crew-scheduling system. The technology issue arose on June 14 and has affected nearly 1,100 PSA flights to date, mainly in Charlotte, North Carolina, American spokeswoman Katie Cody said Monday. A few PSA flights at Philadelphia and Washington Reagan National airports have also been affected. PSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of American, is also likely to operate less than its full schedule on Wednesday, she said. “It started on Thursday and they thought they had it fixed and it’s kind of slowly still been remaining an issue,” Cody said. PSA canceled about 675 flights Thursday-Friday, and about 50 on Saturday. But the troubles cropped back up Sunday, forcing hundreds more schedule disruptions for passengers that continued through Monday. American has sent technology staff from its Fort Worth, Texas, headquarters to PSA, based in Dayton, Ohio, to try to help. The problems involve hardware for scheduling and tracking PSA pilots and flight attendants, Cody said.<br/>
Turkish LCC Pegasus Airlines signed a codeshare agreement with Nile Air, Egypt’s largest private airline. Through the partnership, Pegasus passengers will be able to purchase flights through Pegasus channels for Nile Air flights between its home hub at Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport and Cairo as of June 15. Nile Air operates a 4X-weekly schedule to Cairo. The service to Cairo was an initial step for Nile Air in expanding out of its Middle East backyard and the carrier also intends to grow within the African continent. It is also investing heavily in infrastructure projects, such as the full range of Amadeus reservation products. Pegasus now operates six codeshare partnerships, with agreements also in place with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Flynas, Alitalia, Qatar Airways and Delta.<br/>
Fast-growing LCC Wizz Air is planning to launch four routes this winter from London’s Luton Airport, where it has eight aircraft based. The routes comprise: Eilat’s Ovda Airport, Israel; Grenoble, France; Verona, Italy; and Tromsø, Norway. The LCC recently obtained its UK air operator’s certificate and subsidiary Wizz Air UK — which it launched to protect its flying rights amid continuing uncertainty over Brexit — began flying in May. The Central and Eastern European LCC is now the second-largest airline at Luton, having increased its operations there by 10% year-over-year, with 7.9m seats on sale for the coming year, and 51 destinations in 25 countries served from Luton.<br/>
Chinese narrowbody and regional jet operator Chengdu Airlines has applied for permission to fly internationally, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. The carrier, currently limited to mainland China, proposes that it be allowed to fly to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan and to countries adjacent to China, said the CAAC, which counts Taiwan as a Chinese province. Chengdu Airlines is a subsidiary of the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (COMAC). Based in the southwestern city after which it is named, the carrier has five COMAC ARJ21-700 regional jets, five Airbus A319s and 29 A320s. A further 28 ARJ21-700s are on order.<br/>