A man who allegedly made a bomb threat onboard an American Airlines airplane at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport was arrested Tuesday afternoon. Jerry Lee Manyette, of Minnesota, was taken into custody after he allegedly told someone there was a bomb on their plane, AA flight 2185, which was set to travel to Miami before takeoff, a WSOC TV report said. The plane sat on the taxiway as law enforcement arrived on the scene. Manyette, 54, was removed from the flight as CMPD’s bomb unit swept the plane, which found the threat was not credible. The flight was delayed for about 90 minutes.<br/>
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German pilots' union VC on Wednesday called on its members to strike for 24 hours at Lufthansa Group's leisure airline Discover on Friday to push demands related to pay and working conditions in wage negotiations. The announcement comes after VC members voted in favour of strike action on Tuesday. A Discover spokesperson said management was calling on pilots to return to the negotiation table, adding that it was working to get as many passengers to their destinations. The airline was scheduled to operate 20 flights departing from Frankfurt and 10 flights out of Munich on Friday, she added. Discover Airlines, formed in 2021, focuses on holiday destinations with about 400 pilots and a fleet of 24 planes. VC previously held a five-hour strike at Discover in December ahead of the Christmas holidays.<br/>
British Airways owner IAG's bid to buy out Air Europa may reduce competition on domestic, short-haul and long-haul routes, EU antitrust regulators said on Wednesday as they opened a full-scale probe into the E400m deal. The deal underlines the wave of consolidation among airlines, with Germany's Lufthansa seeking to buy a minority stake in Italy's state-owned ITA Airways, and Korean Air looking to buy Asiana. IAG, which also owns Iberia, said last February it had agreed to buy the 80% of Air Europa it did not already own from Spain's Globalia. They scrapped a previous deal in 2021 after EU regulators indicated their remedies were insufficient to alleviate the competition concerns. The EC said the deal may lessen competition on domestic routes to the Balearic and Canary islands. It said the deal may also reduce competition on short-haul routes between Madrid and the main cities in Europe, Israel, Morocco, the UK and Switzerland.<br/>
Cathay Pacific Airways raised the allowance it gives to pilots to cover their kids’ school fees by 50% and locked in pay benchmarks for two years as it tackles a chronic shortage of aircrew that’s led to mass flight cancellations. Hong Kong’s biggest airline will increase its school-fee cap 50% to HK$150,000 ($19,180) for each eligible child between 11 and 18 years’ old, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News. Other incentives include a pledge to keep a metric of hours flown that’s tied to take-home pay the same through the end of 2025, essentially averting pay cuts. Cathay said in a statement it will continue to listen to and communicate with the pilot community to make enhancements where appropriate. The company has been scrambling to hire more pilots, after Covid-related job losses gutted its ranks and pay cuts for those that remained — more than 45% for some crew — sparked an exodus. The shortage of captains and first officers, and a sudden uptick in seasonal illnesses, culminated in mass flight cancellations through the end of February that prompted the pilots’ union to call for a government inquiry into the carrier’s handling of the issue.<br/>
Japan Airlines’ first Airbus A350-1000 has begun commercial operations between Tokyo’s Haneda airport and New York, and the airline is looking to grow the number of North American cities served by the widebody twin. At around 11:40 local time on 24 January, the aircraft (JA01WJ) took off from Haneda as flight JL6, and will fly more than 12h to New York’s John F Kennedy airport. On its social media pages, JAL says it is “planning to” fly between Haneda and Dallas-Fort Worth “in the future”, but did not specify a timeline. JAL took delivery of its first A350-1000 aircraft on 15 December. The widebody, which is set to be JAL’s new flagship, is configured to seat 239 passengers across four classes.<br/>
The competition watchdog has thrown its support behind Virgin Australia over Qantas Airways as the two airline businesses compete for permission to run extra flights to Australia’s most popular tourist destination, Bali. Australia’s International Air Services Commission received applications from Qantas’ budget subsidiary Jetstar and Virgin to be granted the right to add almost 2500 weekly seats to their services between Indonesia and Australia. The rights have become available under the bilateral air rights agreement between the countries. Qantas would like 2320 additional seats for extra Jetstar services on a new route from Cairns to Denpasar via Melbourne, and another from Adelaide to Denpasar via Perth. Virgin has applied for all the 2464 available weekly seats to operate flights from the Gold Coast and Adelaide to Denpasar via Perth. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission submitted its support of Virgin’s application to the air services commission on Wednesday because it would foster competition. The ACCC argued Jetstar was already the largest airline on routes between the two countries in 2023 and when combined with Qantas, operated 55% of available seats in 2023 to Virgin’s 15%. “The ACCC considers that the proposal from Virgin Australia would appear to be more conducive to fostering a competitive environment, and a broader distribution of capacity, than the proposal from Qantas,” the watchdog’s submission says.<br/>