United Airlines has threatened to block Expedia from selling tickets to United flights. This is the latest United rebuttal in the long-standing feud between the two organisations, as their contracted agreement ends. Essentially, whilst both Expedia and United have not publically admitted why they are at odds with each other, it’s rumoured that United is not happy with the financial terms of their contracted agreement. This agreement in question allows Expedia to sell United tickets to customers on their website and expires at the end of Sept 2019. United has informed Expedia that they will not be renewing the contract and that flights beyond this date should not be for sale on the Expedia website. Expedia, on the other hand, has said that they have every right to sell tickets up to and beyond 2020. <br/>
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Austrian Airlines, reacting to growing competition in Europe from LCCs, is adding services from its hub at Vienna International. The carrier will add 12 weekly flights to Paris, for a total of 39 weekly. An additional daily flight to Amsterdam will bring the route to 34X-weekly service. Copenhagen will see 4 new weekly flights, reaching 31X-weekly. The new services are set to begin May 1. “We see a high demand for a real quality offering on these routes,” CCO Andreas Otto said. The LCC passenger growth at VIE was fuelled by the opening of new bases by Austrian carriers LaudaMotion and Level, and Central and Eastern European Wizz Air. Earlier in February, Austrian said it would increase frequencies to German destinations to 263 weekly flights. <br/>
Aegean Airlines will begin service to 7 new international destinations from its hub in Athens in 2019, according to the company. In 2019, Aegean is launching flights from Athens to Marrakech, Casablanca, Ibiza, Valencia, Sarajevo, Tunis, Skopje, and from Thessaloniki to Hannover. The new flights mean an increase of seat capacity by 700,000 on the international market. The increased capacity will bringing the airline’s capacity on international routes up to 10.3m, and on all its routes to 17.7m. Aegean said revenue in July-to-September 2018 rose by 5% to €939m as its load factor improved to 83.6% from 82.9% in the same period a year earlier. <br/>