oneworld

With the alliance celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2024, oneworld has begun opening its branded lounges worldwide. Its first two lounges were opened in Seoul, South Korea, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in quick succession. But which airlines from the alliance fly to these two airports? Interestingly, the alliance does not have a home carrier based at either Seoul Incheon International Airport (ICN) or Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (AMS), where oneworld’s first two branded lounges have opened in January and February, respectively. Furthermore, both airports are seemingly an insignificant part of the alliance’s flight network. According to data from the aviation analytics company Cirium, the alliance’s 15 airlines have scheduled 335,166 one-way flights in February. Out of those, 987 will be operated to ICN and AMS. Further data showed that out of the 987 itineraries, 736 are landing at AMS. British Airways, one of three European airlines in the alliance, should operate more than half of the flights: 471. The British carrier flies to AMS from three airports in London: Heathrow Airport (LHR), Gatwick Airport (LGW), and City Airport (LCY). The fourth and fifth most popular routes within the alliance’s network are Helsinki Airport (HEL) – AMS and Doha Hamad International Airport (DOH) – AMS, with both routes having 58 scheduled flights during the month. Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD), is close to sixth place, with Iberia planning 55 flights on the MAD – AMS route. Story has more.<br/>

A man who witnesses say stabbed another passenger on an airline flight and told authorities he intended to kill the victim has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. The man made an improvised weapon by wrapping rubber bands around several pens. A grand jury handed down a one-count indictment against Julio Alvarez Lopez on Wednesday over the incident, which occurred on a Jan. 24 Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Las Vegas, according to federal court records in Nevada. The victim was identified as an off-duty law enforcement officer who had been seated with his family across the aisle from Lopez. A woman seated next to Lopez said he returned from a trip to the restroom and began punching the victim. The woman and the victim’s wife screamed at Lopez to stop. The man began walking toward the front of the plane and sat down after the victim ordered him to do so, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. He was restrained with flex cuffs for the rest of the flight and arrested by Las Vegas police after the plane landed. According to an FBI affidavit, Lopez said he had never seen the victim before the morning flight but believed the man was following him and planned on killing him. Lopez told authorities that the mafia had been chasing him for months, and that he was seeking asylum in the United States.<br/>

American Airlines must face a lawsuit claiming it failed to prudently oversee employee retirement funds because it used asset managers that pursued sustainable investment strategies, a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas ruled. U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor said pilot Bryan Spence can move forward with his lawsuit claiming the airline breached its duties to plan participants by choosing investment managers focused on "nonfinancial" issues of environmental, social and governance. "These specific actions -- selecting, including, and retaining ESG oriented investment managers -- allow the court to reasonably infer that defendants' process is flawed because it allowed plan assets to be used to support ESG strategies," O'Connor wrote. A spokesperson for American Airlines declined to comment on Thursday. Spence sued the airline last year, saying it had violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which governs how retirement funds are administered in the U.S. He claimed that American failed its duties to remain loyal to retirees and prudently oversee their assets by engaging investment advisors who "pursue political agendas" through ESG strategies and voting at shareholder meetings. American Airlines asked O'Connor to dismiss the case, saying Spence had failed to allege that the funds in the plan had financially underperformed. O'Connor, an appointee of Republican former President George W. Bush, is known for frequently ruling in favor of conservative litigants challenging laws and regulations governing guns, LGBTQ rights and health care.<br/>

American Airlines will become the only US carrier to connect New York and Tokyo when it launches daily flights to the Japanese city in June. The addition to the Fort Worth-based carrier’s schedule comes a week after US authorities approved the route linking John F Kennedy International airport and Tokyo Haneda airport, the airline said on 22 February. “American looks forward to launching flights between JFK and [Haneda] this summer,” Brian Znotins, American’s senior vice-president of network and schedule planning, says. “This new service will complement flights offered by our joint business partner, Japan Airlines, giving more ways for our customers travel between the US and Japan.” Japan Airlines, American’s OneWorld network partner, already connects the two airports twice daily. American says it will operate the flight with Boeing 777-200s. It will be American’s fourth daily nonstop flight to Haneda. The others connections are from Dallas-Fort Worth, and two daily flights from Los Angeles. “The joint business partnership between American and Japan Airlines will offer customers up to 17 daily flights between the continental United States and Japan next summer, including 10 daily flights to Haneda,” American adds.<br/>

Brussels is preparing to lay out objections to International Airlines Group’s second attempt to buy Spanish carrier Air Europa in a move that signals significant competition obstacles to the deal. IAG, which owns five airlines including British Airways and Spanish flag carrier Iberia, agreed in February last year to buy the 80% of Air Europa it does not already own for about E400m, after abandoning an earlier effort at the height of the pandemic. The European Commission last month opened an in-depth investigation into whether the new deal would harm consumers by stifling competition and is due to decide on whether it meets EU merger rules by June 7. But it is poised to detail objections as early as next month, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who said such a move would amount to a warning that the transaction faces a veto unless credible concessions are made. Regulators fear the deal will reduce competition on Spanish domestic and international routes, and have been studying whether the merger would make it difficult for rivals to offer their services or have other indirect effects such as raising prices. They are concerned that the remedies discussed so far to enable proper competition are weak because the airlines face only small competitors with no credible rivals on the routes they both fly, two of the people said. Europe’s other two major long-haul airline groups also turned to consolidation as the industry emerged from the disruption of the pandemic. Lufthansa has agreed to take a 41% stake in ITA Airways, the successor company to Italy’s Alitalia, while Air France has taken a 20% stake in struggling Scandinavian airline SAS. Brussels opened an in-depth probe into the Lufthansa deal in January. The EC sees IAG’s new deal to buy Air Europa as even “more problematic” than its first, said two of the people familiar with the matter, because the Spanish target is now in a stronger financial position than during the pandemic. “It’s even worse this time,” said one person with direct knowledge of the probe.<br/>

“Good Night. Malaysian Three Seven Zero.” Those six words were the last radio transmission from the cockpit of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, less than an hour after the aircraft took off late at night from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Minutes later, the plane disappeared from air-traffic control radar screens. The huge Boeing 777 jet, almost as long as a Manhattan city block and taller than a five-story building, had somehow managed to make itself invisible in the clear night sky. There were 239 people on board. Ensuing search operations combed through some of the deepest ocean floors in the inhospitable southern Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles off Australia’s western seaboard, and found no trace of the main fuselage or any passengers and crew. Of the 3m components in the 777, just a few fragments washed ashore years later on the east African coast. With no mayday call, no known flight path and no wreckage, MH370 remains modern aviation’s biggest mystery. And while investigators had very little to go on, they were clear on one thing: A plane must never go missing like this again. Yet 10 years on, an industrywide push to rule out a similar case has been stymied by bureaucracy, financial pressure, and a debate about who should have ultimate control of the cockpit, according to years of regulatory amendments chronicling the process. A key aircraft-tracking tool that was proposed by Malaysian authorities weeks after the disaster is yet to be implemented. While the industry has saved hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment costs, there remains an ocean-sized hole in aviation’s safety protocols, meaning that a doomed passenger jet in a remote corner of the planet could remain hidden forever. As search teams looked in vain for MH370, an additional layer of safety regulation spearheaded by the International Civil Aviation Organization proposed new jets should broadcast their position at least every minute if they were in trouble. The aim was to give authorities early warning of an unfolding disaster. Should the plane later go down, rescue teams would at least have a chance of locating the crash site.<br/>