Competition just got even tougher for Air France-KLM as yet another low-cost operator offers cheap transatlantic flights from Paris, while the Franco-Dutch carrier struggles with a top management void and labour strife. IAG started discount links between the French capital and Montreal Monday through its low-cost arm Level, taking direct aim at Air France-KLM on the busy route. With additional flights planned from September to New-York, Level is competing with Norwegian Air Shuttle, XL Airways, WOW Air and Primera Air Scandinavia in offering budget fares out of Paris. Discount airlines made up a third of French traffic last year, a trend that’s set to continue at a time when Air France-KLM is in disarray. “Air France has a fantastic brand and a great network, but everybody has to change,” IAG CE Willie Walsh said. <br/>
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Delta Air Lines debuts the first Boeing 777-200 with its new premium products Monday, as it begins to install the on board products on its existing widebody fleet. The carrier is configuring the 777-200 with 296 seats, including 28 lie-flat business class suites, 48 premium economy and 220 economy. Delta succeeded in increasing the density of its 777-200s by 5 seats by shrinking its business class cabin from 37 seats but at the same time maintaining a passenger-preferred 9-abreast configuration in the economy cabin. Delta's first 777 with the new premium products will operate between Detroit and Beijing on alternating days through July. Delta operates 18 777-200s and plans to reconfigure all of them in the new 296-seat configuration by the end of 2019, it says. <br/>
South Korean prosecutors issued an arrest warrant Monday for Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho for charges of inheritance tax evasion and embezzlement, among others. Cho was summoned for a 15-hour questioning last week over such allegations at the Seoul Prosecutors' Office. He has been under probe over suspicion that he evaded taxes for more than US$45m in his inheritance of overseas properties. Cho is also accused of paying his lawyer's fee from the company budget when his daughter Cho Hyun-ah, then the Korean Air VP, was under trial over the notorious "nut rage" incident in 2014. He also allegedly paid another lawyer's fee with the company fund when he was being investigated over a scandal, in which he received an unfair request to hire a lawmaker's relative in 2015. <br/>