The first commercial flight from Ethiopia to Eritrea in 20 years landed safely in Asmara Wednesday to be greeted by dancers waving flags and flowers, cementing a stunning rapprochement that has ended a generation of hostility in a matter of days. As Ethiopian Airways flight ET 0312 made the momentous switch from Ethiopian to Eritrean airspace, CER Tewolde GebreMariam took to the on-board intercom to remind the 315 passengers they were part of history. “This is the first time that this is happening in 20 years,” he said, to cheers and applause from passengers and crew on the brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Families separated from loved ones since the start of a brutal 1998-2000 border war sat next to dignitaries on the flight, one of two that took off from Ethiopia on Wednesday. The airline marked the departure of the planes, the other a Boeing 737, with a message on its Facebook page: “The bird of peace has just flown to #Asmara #Familyreunion #Ethiopia #Eritrea.”<br/>
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United and Embraer are facing a higher hurdle in selling their newest regional jets to United Continental because the carrier is increasingly reluctant to add the costs of managing a new aircraft type in its fleet. The airline has become more sophisticated about “understanding the cost of complexity” in its fleet, Gerry Laderman, United’s acting CFO, said Wednesday. Even if a particular new aircraft is perfect for a route, “if that means bringing in a new fleet type, you’ve got to burden that with all the cost associated with that," he said. For several years, United has analysed various options for smaller, single-aisle aircraft. The carrier currently flies older Boeing 737-700s with 118 seats and Airbus A319s with 128 seats. That’s led to speculation that United may be in the market for a newer generation of larger regional jets such as the E2 family from Embraer or the Airbus A220, a model developed as the C Series by Bombardier. The A220 has typical seating capacity in the 100 to 150 range. The E2 models seat 80-146 people. United’s labour contract with its pilots limits how many jets the airline can fly under agreements with its regional partners. The carrier isn’t considering moving large regional jets into its mainline fleet because it would cost more than $1m annually in additional pilot compensation for each of the planes, which generate only about $10m in revenue per year, President Scott Kirby said Wednesday.<br/>
After rescheduling its flights at Houston and Chicago, United enjoyed double-digit revenue growth in serving smaller markets that send travellers to or through those hubs, executives said Wednesday. Denver is next for what the industry calls "rebanking" flights, or a way of scheduling waves of flights at hubs. The Denver rebanking is scheduled to launch in February 2019. The goal is to better match connecting passengers with flights. United says it was rescheduling flights to have fewer "peaks" when customers are making the most connections. In Houston, the clusters dropped from 10 to eight. That fewer clusters may lengthen the connection times for some fliers, but it also boosts the number of connecting itineraries that can be booked. Andrew Nocella, United’s CCO, said he was “very pleased” with the results during April, May and June. Houston and Chicago each had a 10% increase in revenue for the available seat miles from passengers flying to big or medium cities to smaller cities, Nocella said. And Houston had a nearly 20% increase in revenue for connecting travellers flying between two small cities via that hub, he said.<br/>
Lufthansa said Wednesday it will launch four weekly flights to Eilat, the Red Sea resort which Israel hopes to turn into a winter vacation spot for foreign tourists. More than 175,000 foreign tourists flew into Ovda, a converted military airfield 60 km from Eilat, in the first five months of 2018, double the amount for all of 2017. Helping spur growth is a government grant of 60 euros per passenger for airlines starting routes to Eilat. Lufthansa said it would fly to Ovda from Frankfurt and Munich twice weekly starting Oct. 28. Eilat, Israel's southernmost city, borders Jordan and Egypt. It will later be served by the new Ramon International Airport which is expected to open in early 2019.<br/>
Airways will cancel 378 domestic flights operated by Boeing 787s during August to accommodate mandatory inspections on their Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines. The planned cancellations are down significantly from the 619 reported during July, which were triggered by a Japan Civil Aviation Bureau move to extend the scope of inspections on ‘Package C’ Trent 1000s to include ‘Package B’ engines. ANA adds that it owns 66 Package C and 70 Package B Trent 1000 engines. Flight Fleets Analyzer shows that the engines power its fleet of 36 787-8s and 28 787-9s. “Safety is always our top priority for our customers, and we consider these cancellations unavoidable to maintain our highest safety standard,” says the carrier. The inspections have been triggered by durability issues with intermediate compressor blades in both variants of the Trent 1000 engine. <br/>