Indonesia's NTSC believes that the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 which crashed Oct 29 had been operating with a faulty airspeed indicator for its last 4 flights. NTSC chief Soerjanto Tjahjono said Monday that the agency had found signs that the airspeed indicator was faulty after downloading information from the jet's flight data recorder. The NTSC is reviewing the aircraft's maintenance records and interviewing maintenance personnel. Tjahjono stresses that the yet-to-be-recovered cockpit voice recorder is critical to the investigation. Local media have reported that the emergency locator transmitter has been found. A crash-survivable memory unit from the flight data recorder had been recovered Nov 1, and a landing gear and its components Nov 2-3. Plans to lift the jet's fuselage from the seabed using an air lifting bag have failed. <br/>
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Aer Lingus grew its business by more than 9% in the first 10 months of the year, according to the latest figures from its parent, IAG. The results show Aer Lingus’s revenue per passenger kilometre rose 9.4% to 20,200 units in the year to date. The airline sold 82.1% of the seats on its aircraft, an increase of 0.3 points. In October, revenue per passenger kilometre rose 9.4% to 2,153, while the airline sold 80.7% of its seats, a slip of 0.6 points. IAG’s figures show its airlines carried 96.269m passengers in the 10 months to the end of Oct, 7.7% more than during the same period last year. <br/>
Six Ryanair cabin crew members pictured sleeping on the floor of a Spanish airport office last month have been sacked, the airline says. The image, which Ryanair said was staged, was widely shared online. A Portuguese union that represents airline crews criticised the airline. The staff were dismissed for gross misconduct, a Ryanair spokesman said. Over 20 crew members were stranded in Malaga airport when their Porto-bound flights were diverted Oct 14. However Ryanair said that despite the issues, "no crew slept on the floor". "The crew spent a short period of time in the crew room before being moved to a VIP lounge, and returned to Porto the next day," the company said. Ryanair said the photo led to media reports that damaged the company's reputation and "caused an irreparable breach of trust with these 6 persons". <br/>
This week, Icelandair purchased its biggest competitor, Wow Air, for around US$18m in an all-stock deal. The two airlines will now have 3.8% of the transatlantic market, but will operate under their own brands. Wow had been offering fares worthy of its name, with prices as low as $55 for international flights, perhaps the lowest of low-cost airlines with prices that would have been unfathomable even a few years ago. Low fuel costs, efficient planes, and heavy competition all worked together to bring costs down significantly and allow too-good-to-be-true prices to actually be true. All of a sudden, a transatlantic ticket for around $300 was possible — and common. But with the recent uptick in fuel prices, the shuttering of Primera Air and other low-cost carriers, and now this acquisition, perhaps the cheap airfare party is winding down. <br/>
VietJet Air has signed a memorandum of understanding with engine maker CFM International, covering long-term support of the Leap-1Bs that will power the 100 high-density Boeing 737 Max 200 jets that the carrier has on order. The support deal has a list-price value of US$5.3b, says VietJet, and was signed during French prime minister Edouard Philippe's official visit to Vietnam. "The Leap-1B has been doing extremely well in commercial service in the last 18 months, and we believe the engine will prove to be an important asset for VietJet over the long term," states CFM VP of sales and marketing Philippe Couteaux. VietJet has 120 A321neos and 5 A321s on order, along with the 100 Max jets. <br/>