unaligned

British air accident authorities are investigating the aborted takeoff of a Laudamotion flight from London's Stansted Airport to Vienna that left eight people injured. Passengers reported hearing a bang on the side of the aircraft Friday evening before it skidded to a stop. Images posted on social media showed evacuation slides deployed. The airline tweeted that the crew "decided to abort the take off due to engine issues and to disembark the passengers on the runway as a precautionary measure." Flights from Stansted were grounded for nearly three hours, and arriving flights were diverted to other airports. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch says it is sending a team to investigate. Stansted says it had received reports that eight people suffered minor injuries.<br/>

Authorities say a plane taxiing at Newark Liberty Airport struck the wing of another plane, but no one was injured. The airport said in a message on Twitter that the Southwest Airlines plane was taxiing shortly after 7 a.m. Saturday when it struck wings with a parked airliner at the airport's Terminal A gate. The airport said there were no injuries, and passengers were to be rebooked. News 12 New Jersey reported that Southwest Airlines Flight 6 bound for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, began to taxi following deicing when its left wing grazed a parked plane being de-iced prior to a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. An airline representative said both planes were taken out of service for review.<br/>

Ryanair reached on Friday a four-year agreement with its main German pilot union VC on pay and allowances, the latest breakthrough in its efforts to end a year of industrial disputes. Ryanair, which has faced a series of strikes across Europe over the last year, has made significant progress in union talks in recent months and has said it hopes to come to agreements with unions in all its main markets before the end of March. But some large unions say problems remain, with Britain’s BALPA last month saying there was “real frustration building up” around the talks. Ryanair said it had reached an agreement with the VC union, which was responsible for Ryanair’s first ever pilot strike in Dec. 2017, on pay and allowances for a four-year period. It said it hoped to complete a Collective Labor Agreement (CLA) by the end of March, while VC said it was targeting a resolution by the middle of that month. “A salary scale was agreed upon which will be an integral part of the CLA remuneration for Ryanair pilots in Germany,” VC spokesperson Janis Schmitt said in a statement. Schmitt added that they had made progress in their negotiations for a social plan.<br/>

Southwest sued its mechanics’ union late Thursday for what the airline claimed was an illegal work slowdown that grounded planes and has resulted in as many as 100 flight cancellations a day since mid-February. The carrier said its mechanics had taken an unusually high number of planes out of service in recent weeks, a move seen as a negotiating tactic in a contract dispute. Negotiations most recently broke down over how much maintenance the airline would be allowed to outsource. Last month, mechanics pulled as many as 62 planes from service in one day, resulting in schedule disruptions across Southwest’s network, according to the lawsuit. By comparison, the airline said, it expects to have about 14 planes out of service on an average day, and can operate a normal schedule with as many as 35 grounded aircraft, out of a fleet of 752. The mechanics, who are members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, have cited safety concerns as the reason for taking the aircraft out of service. The airline argued in its suit that many of the planes had been taken out of commission for relatively minor issues that did not affect their ability to fly. The union’s national director issued a statement last week denying that the mechanics were improperly grounding aircraft.<br/>

Southwest Alans to challenge Hawaiian Airlines for control of Hawaii’s island-hopping market shortly after beginning flights to the state from the mainland. The short, high-demand, inter-island flights are squarely within Southwest’s wheelhouse, Southwest revenue chief Andrew Watterson said Friday. “We see that big market with higher price points and it’s short haul, which is what we’re known for,” said Watterson, who was at Hawaiian Holdings before joining Southwest in 2013. “The size of the market and the prices led us to see that we can do it profitably.” The Dallas-based discounter will enter a market littered with the ghosts of other airlines that took on Hawaiian and failed. Southwest hasn’t disclosed when it will start flying to or within Hawaii, having received regulatory approval just this week. The carrier will fly the 175-seat Boeing Co. 737-800, shifting later to the 737 Max carrying the same number of passengers. Hawaiian operates Boeing 717s with 128 seats between the islands, while its Ohana commuter unit uses 48-seat turboprops. “If you look at the history of inter-island flying, it works with one,” said Andrew Harrison, CCO of Alaska Air Group, which flies to Hawaii but not between islands. “It’s never worked with two. There’s a reason that Hawaiian flies the airplane that they do.” Watterson is undeterred. <br/>

Southwest abruptly jumped the most in a month amid speculation on social media that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway was considering a takeover bid. The carrier declined to comment. The deal talk linking Berkshire and Southwest appeared on Twitter with a mention by StockTradersNET, which called the speculation “unconfirmed.” Berkshire, which bought stakes in the four largest US airlines in 2016, is the second-biggest shareholder in Southwest, with a 9.9% holding. “There has been speculation circulating that Warren Buffett might be looking to acquire an airline for some time and that Southwest might be a good fit,” the company said Thursday. “As a policy, we do not comment on speculation, but appreciate Berkshire’s continued support of Southwest Airlines.” Berkshire didn’t respond to a message left with Buffett’s assistant. Andrew Davis, an analyst at T. Rowe Price, which holds Southwest shares, gave little credence to the deal speculation. But an eventual airline acquisition by Berkshire can’t be ruled out, he said. <br/>

The US NTSB announced March 3 that it has recovered the flight data recorder (FDR) from the Atlas Air Boeing 767-300 freighter that crashed in Trinity Bay, Texas, late last month. NTSB said the FDR—which searchers pulled from the muddy, shallow bay—was being transported to its laboratory in Washington DC for evaluation. On March 1, NTSB reported recovering the cockpit voice recorder (CVR). The two devices will help explain the aircraft’s and the pilots’ status before the freighter crashed Feb. 23 on approach to Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport while delivering packages for Amazon and other cargo. Two Atlas Air pilots and a Mesa Airlines pilot who occupied the jumpseat on the flight from Miami International Airport were killed.<br/>

Hong Kong Airlines could slash the number of planes it flies by more than a quarter in a drastic bid to balance its books as it is badgered once again by the government over its finances and clouded by lawsuits over unpaid dues.<br/>The cash-strapped company is studying plans to transfer some aircraft to its main shareholder HNA, return planes to aircraft-leasing companies or scrap planes outright, the Post understands. It is close to deciding to chop the number of passenger jets from 38 to 28 as part of a massive restructuring effort, focused on removing the smaller variant of its largest jets, the Airbus A330-200. A source familiar with the plans said the decision would mean “quite a big cut of the A330 fleet”. Hong Kong Airlines did not deny a plan to shrink the number of planes it operates, saying: “We are working on consolidating and optimising our network and fleet.”<br/>

JetBlue has taken down a poster of a convicted murderer that it had included as part of a Black History Month tribute at New York's Kennedy Airport. The airline said Saturday it removed the poster paying tribute to Assata Shakur last month after being alerted via Twitter that Shakur is "a convicted cop killer." "The intention was always to unite our crewmembers and customers around the importance of Black History Month and we apologize for any offense the poster may have caused," a JetBlue spokesman said. Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, is a former member of the Black Liberation Army who was convicted of murder for her role in a 1973 shootout that resulted in the death of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. She escaped from prison in 1979 and is living in Cuba, where she was granted asylum. President Donald Trump demanded that Cuba return "the cop-killer Joanne Chesimard" in 2017 when he announced plans to reverse some Obama-era Cuba policies.<br/>