A Norwegian Air Shuttle plane heading to Nice in France with 169 passengers on board has returned to Arlanda airport outside Stockholm after receiving a bomb threat, the company said Thursday. A police spokeswoman said that officers were at Arlanda as a result of a threat made against an airline, but declined to give any further information. <br/>
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Jet Airways has revealed that four of its aircraft have been grounded after it failed to pay their lease rentals. The carrier said that three aircraft previously grounded for "engine normalisation" have returned to service, but four others are "grounded due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors". The airline did not identify which of the 121 aircraft in its fleet have been grounded. Flight Fleets Analyzer shows that the majority of its fleet it leased, with GECAS, Aircastle and BOC Aviation among the most exposed lessors. It is also unclear if the grounded jets will be voluntarily returned to lessors, or if they are subject to repossession orders. "The company is actively engaged with all its aircraft lessors and regularly provides them with updates on efforts undertaken by the company to improve its liquidity," it added.<br/>
Southwest brags about its bags-fly-free policy and lack of ticket change fees, policies that drive passengers to the airline in droves. What the airline doesn't trumpet: It's doing just fine on the fee front thanks to other passenger charges, most notably priority boarding fees. Southwest collected $642m in passenger fees last year, the airline disclosed in a regulatory filing this week, up 13% from $566m in 2017. Airlines have long had to disclose baggage fee and ticket change revenue to the US DoT, but accounting rules now require them to also provide a total figure for passenger fees in regulatory filings instead of lumping them into a broader category called "other" revenue. Southwest is the first to report annual figures. The so-called passenger ancillary revenue category includes a range of fees such as in-flight Wi-Fi and alcoholic beverages, pet fees, unaccompanied minor fees and baggage fees of all sorts, but the the biggest source of fee revenue for Southwest is its 10-year-old EarlyBird Check-In option.<br/>
Spanish charter and wet-lease carrier Wamos Air has been operating flights from the UK on behalf of Turkmenistan Airlines, recently suspended from flying to and from the EU for safety reasons. Turkmenistan Airlines has been attempting to charter flights while its EU operations are grounded, following a Feb. 4 EASA decision to suspend the carrier’s safety authorization “pending restoring of compliance with specific international aviation safety standards.” The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) confirmed in a Feb. 6 Twitter message that Wamos Air was now operating some of Turkmenistan Airlines’ flights. “We are aware that some services to and from the UK have been restored, as flights will be operated by Spanish licensed charter carrier Wamos Air. Passengers are advised to contact Turkmenistan Airlines for further information,” CAA said. Wamos Air operates a fleet of five Airbus A330-200s and six Boeing 747-400s.<br/>
EasyJet has detailed the steps it has taken to Brexit-proof its operations and says it has a plan in place to ensure it meets EU ownership and control regulations, regardless of whether or not airlines are given an adjustment period after the UK departs the bloc. In a Feb. 7 AGM statement, easyJet chairman John Barton said the carrier is 49% EU-owned—just shy of the 50% plus one share required under EU law—but there are a number of steps it can take to quickly close the gap in the event of a no-deal Brexit. “If the EU does not give airlines any adjustment period to comply with the applicable EU ownership and control regulations, the board stands ready to activate existing provisions of our Articles of Association to ensure that the company will comply following Brexit,” Barton said. According to media reports, revisions to draft EU Brexit legislation state that airlines will have two weeks from the law’s adoption to submit plans outlining how they will comply with ownership and control regulations. However, they would then be given until Oct. 27, 2019—seven months after the UK is scheduled to leave the EU—to enact those plans and become compliant. <br/>
A boy who allegedly suffered a scald burn on his leg when a hot chocolate drink he ordered on an Aer Lingus flight spilled onto his lap has settled his High Court action for E70,000. The settlement was without admission of liability. Jason Yonkeu was aged 12 at the time of the accident in 2016. The boy had, through his father Leopold Yonkeu, sued Aer Lingus over the accident on the Nice-Dublin flight on August 8th, 2016. It was claimed, when the aircraft was in the air 40 minutes after taking off from Nice, the boy who was in the window seat beside his father, ordered a hot chocolate. It was claimed the cabin crew member gave the boy the drink with a lid attached to the top of the cup as well as portions of milk. The boy removed the lid to add milk and then replaced it but, as he took a sip of the drink, the liquid spilled onto his lap and in particular the upper right leg. When the plane landed in Dublin, he was taken to hospital where it was noted he had sustained a partial thickness [deep dermal] scald but he later made a good recovery. Aer Lingus had denied the claims and the settlement was without admission of liability.<br/>