Austrian leisure airline Laudamotion, which is majority-owned by Ryanair, plans to double its Airbus fleet to 18 next year, its managing director said on Wednesday. “In 2019, we expect 18 Airbus planes, which adds 9 aircraft to our current (Airbus) fleet,” Andreas Gruber said. Negotiations with a trade union regarding a collective wage agreement are ongoing, Gruber said, adding that Laudamotion will increase the salaries for its pilots from April. <br/>
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BA regional airline, BA CityFlyer, is to base four more Embraer E190s at London City Airport in 2019, adding 20% more capacity from the downtown London airport. BA will use the aircraft to add a number of new routes and extra flights. These include a year-round service to Rome, which will launch Nov. 11, as well as a fifth daily Zurich frequency on week days. “We added 13% more capacity in 2018 and will add nearly 20% in 2019. The new route to Rome will increase the number of British Airways’ destinations from London City Airport to 33,” BA general manager commercial and customer Luke Hayhoe said. The four additional E190s will take BA CityFlyer to a total fleet of 26 aircraft, creating additional jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers, as well as a number of indirect roles.<br/>
Russian investigators are probing a Ural Airlines Airbus A320’s landing on Ulan-Ude's newly-built runway, which was not open at the time. Preliminary information indicates that the aircraft touched down at around 09:00 on 25 August, on the parallel runway being constructed some 180m to the north of runway 26. NOTAMs issued in June advise operators that the new runway is under construction. While there were cumulonimbus clouds in the vicinity, and the airport was overcast at 3,000ft, meteorological data from Ulan-Ude states that visibility was good at the time. The A320 had been bound for Irkutsk but spent around 1h holding. Weather conditions at the airport ahead of the aircraft’s arrival show fog and low visibility, down to around 300m. Ulan-Ude is located some 220km east of Irkutsk and the A320 diverted, carrying out an approach from the east which would normally be the case for landing on runway 26. But the federal Investigative Committee’s eastern Siberian transport division states that the aircraft landed on a runway which was “not commissioned”.<br/>