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Lufthansa plans to end an agreement to lease planes to Laudamotion, saying the Austrian holiday airline has failed to meet payments, leading to a dispute with its backer Ryanair. The row highlights a battle for market share in Germany and Austria after the collapse of Air Berlin and shows how keen airlines are to get planes against the backdrop of recent Airbus delivery delays due to engine issues. Laudamotion, formed out of the remains of Niki that was part of Air Berlin, flies a fleet of 9 Airbus A320s leased from Lufthansa and 10 Boeing 737 jets from new shareholder Ryanair. “Laudamotion has recently failed – repeatedly – to meet its contractually-agreed lease payment obligations,” Lufthansa said Friday. Lufthansa said it needed planes to expand its Eurowings budget carrier and it has therefore exercised a right to terminate the lease agreements. Ryanair denied that it had failed to meet lease payments and said Lufthansa had failed to pay Laudamotion for carrying out flights on its behalf during March-May. “Laudamotion has repeatedly honored both its aircraft lease payments and maintenance reserves to Lufthansa. Lufthansa’s claims of ‘repeated failure’ to pay is false,” the Irish carrier said. Whether Lufthansa can end the contracts depends on a decision by a court in Britain, with a hearing expected on July 20.<br/>

Cathay Pacific Airways has enhanced its European network by signing a codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines, adding to its partnerships with Lufthansa Group carriers. Under the new deal, Cathay will be able to codeshare on seven Brussels Airlines flights beyond its Brussels hub. The destinations covered are Berlin and Hamburg in Germany; Lyon, Marseilles and Toulouse in France; Oslo; and Prague. Cathay’s passengers will connect to these flights from the carrier’s four weekly flights from Hong Kong to Brussels, which began March 25 and are operated with Airbus A350-900s. The deal does not include Brussels Airlines codesharing on Cathay flights, however. Of the seven codeshare destinations, only one—Toulouse—is new to the Cathay network. The others are already offered via existing codeshares. <br/>

Air China will fire pilots of an aircraft that plummeted 25,000 feet in 10 minutes, after the state aviation regulator said that one of them had smoked an e-cigarette and made an error that forced the plane’s emergency descent on Tuesday. “After an investigation to verify the incident, the decision is to suspend the related crew from flying and terminate the contracts in accordance with the law. The crew members who are responsible for the incident have been seriously dealt with,” the airline said Friday. Its statement, issued on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo, also recommended that the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) revoke the pilots’ licences after completing their own investigations. The CAAC earlier said it had launched a full investigation into the incident involving flight CA106, which left Hong Kong International Airport on Tuesday evening for Dalian, carrying 153 passengers and nine crew members. CAAC, which seized the aircraft’s flight data and voice recorders and interviewed crew members, said preliminary investigations found that the co-pilot had, without telling the pilot, tried to turn off a circulation fan to prevent e-cigarette smoke from reaching the cabin. “[But the co-pilot] mistakenly switched off the air-conditioning unit that was next to it, resulting in insufficient oxygen in the cabin and an altitude warning,” said Qiao Yibin, of the authority’s safety office.<br/>