A Spirit Airlines vendor at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport has suspended a gate agent involved in a violent altercation that went viral online. An airport police report identifies the agent as Emmanuel Sullivan of Grapevine and the woman as Ayriana Davis of Fort Worth. “Our vendor at DFW has suspended the agent. Spirit Airlines does not tolerate violence of any kind, and we are working with local law enforcement to investigate this matter,” the airline wrote in a statement. The airport’s criminal investigations team declined to comment. The video posted to Twitter shows Sullivan yelling at Davis in the airport, telling her not to touch him. The video has more than 10 million views as of Monday morning. “You touched me first and then you got in my face,” Sullivan said in the video. “Don’t ever invade my personal space.” “Get out of my face!” Davis screamed in response. She later said cameras saw the altercation and that the agent touched her. Davis shoved Sullivan and called him homophobic and racial slurs, then reached out to hit him. Sullivan responded by running at her and hitting her as bystanders intervened. In the police report, Sullivan said Davis exited the jet bridge and started yelling at him, saying there was no seat for her on the plane. He told her to get in line to speak to an agent, then took her boarding pass after she cut in line and became uncooperative, the report said. Story has more.<br/>
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Bjorn Tore Larsen is trying to crack one of the great challenges in aviation: creating a successful low-cost transatlantic airline. The CE of Norwegian start-up Norse Atlantic, which flew the first of its daily services between London Gatwick and New York on Friday, believes enduring demand for travel and a “cautious” approach will help his airline succeed where others have failed and establish a credible rival to dominant carriers like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. “It is definitely very important for us to be conservative, simply because we are already in a business that eats cash if it gets the chance ,” he said. “I would be a fool if I did not admit the aviation or the airline business is a risky business.” In addition to its service between London and New York, it has plans for a gradual expansion including Berlin to New York and Los Angeles, as well as routes already operating from its home base of Oslo. Many others have tried and failed to build a successful business on these transatlantic routes, from Freddie Laker’s Skytrain in the 1970s to Iceland’s Wow Air, which collapsed in 2019. Norse has leased 15 Boeing 787 Dreamliners that used to be flown by Norwegian Air Shuttle, another transatlantic upstart, which expanded rapidly into the long-haul market only to pull out in 2020, struggling under the weight of its own debt. Norwegian is now a short-haul only airline after a restructuring, but its boom and bust experience has not deterred Larsen. “We are very different. We are a very different company with a very different business model,” he said. While Norwegian combined long-haul flying with shorter flights within Europe in a complex schedule, Norse will focus only on a few point-to-point routes flown on aircraft leased at attractive rates at the height of the pandemic. “I know some people say a low-cost long-haul airline does not work, but I would say nobody has tried it, actually,” Larsen said. “You really haven’t seen a pure, long-haul carrier that has been able to manage the financial cycles of getting cheap, great aircraft . . . at a time where you can have low overhead costs.” <br/>
El Al is to explore the possibility of additional Boeing 787s from the second half of next year, once it completes introduction of its current fleet. The airline has 15 of the type – comprising 12 787-9s and three 787-8s – and it is expecting to receive one more 787-8 in the first half of 2023. Delivery of this aircraft, the last in the batch to which it had committed, was deferred from early 2020 – the point at which the pandemic started affecting the airline sector. El Al has since undergone an extensive restructuring, while 787 production itself ran into problems forcing a prolonged halt in deliveries. But the carrier says it will be looking into 787 acquisition in the second half of 2023. The airline’s original agreement with Boeing included options for 787-10s, the largest variant of the 787 family. El Al says the combination of a prolonged period of reduced activity followed by the sharp increase in sales “expose” the carrier to challenges of limited production capacity and its ability to meet demand for flights. The carrier is gradually to return its Boeing 777-200ER fleet to operation from August. It has six of the 279-seat type and four of them – the interiors of which will be upgraded next year with a 787 configuration – will be returned to service by the end of 2023. As part of its exploration of fleet expansion the airline is to look not only at additional 787s but also options for aircraft wet-lease. Under a recently-signed agreement with the airline’s pilots, El Al will be entitled to introduce “a number of additional aircraft” under wet-lease in order to mitigate the limitations of its own production capacity.<br/>
Indian billionaire and co-founder of start-up Akasa Air Rakesh Jhunjhunwala has died, days following the airline’s public launch. Jhunjhunwala, often dubbed “India’s Warren Buffett”, was 62. The cause of death is not immediately known, though Indian media reports state that he has been dealing with health issues. In a statement following news of Jhunjhunwala’s death, Akasa Air says: “We are deeply saddened by the untimely demise of Mr Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.” “We at Akasa cannot thank Mr Jhunjhunwala enough for being an early believer in us and putting his trust and faith in us to build a world-class airline,” the carrier states. His death comes a year since he publicly disclosed plans to start a new carrier. Jhunjhunwala, whose net worth is estimated around $4.5b in 2021, was to invest $35m in the venture, giving him a 40% stake. Akasa on 7 August launched its first commercial flight, from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. Five days later, it launched its second route, flying from Bengaluru to Kochi. The airline operates Boeing 737 Max aircraft on domestic flights, and had ordered 72 examples at 2021’s Dubai air show. <br/>