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A commercial airliner’s engine caught fire Monday at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. United flight 2091 to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport aborted takeoff after flames were reported around 2 p.m. while the aircraft was still on the taxiway, the FAA said. The airline said the plane, an Airbus A320, was towed to the gate. There were no injuries. All 148 passengers were put on a different plane to make the trip, and delays were minimal, United said. Arriving flights were briefly halted into O’Hare, ABC 7 Chicago reported. The fire department and medical personnel met the aircraft out of an abundance of caution, United said.<br/>

As the coronavirus pandemic receded, holidaymakers surged back into the skies last year. And it was then that Lufthansa’s boss Carsten Spohr realised he had a problem, albeit a welcome one: the airline did not have enough first class seats to meet the boom in demand from leisure travellers. “This year is the first [in which] all my team tells me we need to grow first class . . . I never thought I would ever hear that,” Spohr recently told industry analysts. This spring, Lufthansa finally debuted a range of new long-haul cabins that included fully enclosed first class private suites with double beds, part of a E2.5b investment. And these long-awaited cabins illustrate how airlines are racing to set new standards in luxury flying as the industry continues to recover from the worst of the pandemic. After spending decades tailoring premium cabins to corporate travellers, who reliably filled them, airlines now face a challenge to adapt their products to a new kind of high-end passenger — the holiday-maker. That’s because, these days, the customers filling the highest priced seats are more often than not leisure travellers, who have spearheaded a boom in business class and first class travel over the past two years, in a significant shift for the world’s airlines. “In recent years, we’ve noticed a growth in the number of people in our premium cabins for personal leisure travel reasons, which is a shift from the traditional corporate travellers dominating the business and first-class cabins,” says Eduardo Correia de Matos, director of customer care at Middle Eastern airline Etihad. Airlines say they had started to see a rise in premium leisure travellers before 2020, but the pandemic has supercharged the phenomenon.<br/>

Thirty-four Singapore Airlines passengers remain hospitalized in Bangkok almost one week after their flight struck turbulence, underscoring the severity of the fatal incident. In an update late Monday, the airline said 50 people who were on the London-Singapore service on May 21 are still in the Thai capital, including those receiving medical treatment. All the crew from Flight SQ321 have returned to Singapore. Thai authorities have said most of the injuries involved the head or spine, and more than a dozen people needed surgery. Singapore Airlines has since introduced tighter cabin restrictions during turbulence, though stopped short of compelling passengers to wear seatbelts for the whole flight. The airline said it’s cooperating fully with authorities investigating the incident, which left one man dead. The plane made an emergency landing in Bangkok. While injuries or deaths from such events are rare, a Qatar Airways flight over Turkey on Sunday also encountered extreme turbulence before the plane landed as scheduled in Dublin. Twelve people on board were hurt.<br/>

The Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER involved in a deadly turbulence event on 21 May has returned to Singapore from Bangkok, as investigations get under way. The 777 (9V-SWM) landed in Singapore from the Thai capital on 26 May at 13:39 local time, says SIA. It comes days after investigators retrieved the flight recorders of the aircraft, which was operating flight SQ321 from London to Singapore when it was struck by severe turbulence. Singapore transport minister Chee Hong Tat confirmed on 24 May that the country’s Transport Safety Investigation Bureau has “obtained the data” from the cockpit-voice and flight-data recorders. Chee adds: “They are going through the data from these two recorders now to be able to ascertain what happened during those moments.” The accident left one passenger dead, as well as several others seriously injured.<br/>

Air New Zealand has increased its baggage prices for domestic and international flights, as well as the cost of taking pets on board within New Zealand. Travel agents were advised of pricing amendments across all fares and routes, effective from Thursday May 23, 2024, in an industry newsletter called ‘Wingtips’. The price of excess baggage, overweight baggage and domestic pet carriage fees have gone up. Prices have also been raised for pre-paid bag fees for extra bags purchased at the time of booking on top of a seat-and-bag fare, or after booking but prior to travel. For domestic flights, the pre-paid baggage fee has gone from $35 to $45, short-haul is up from $70 to $95, and from $120 to $160 for long-haul. Excess baggage fees went from $45 to $60 for domestic, $90 up to $115 for short-haul and $150 to $195 for long-haul. The fee for overweight baggage has doubled from $20 to $40 for domestic, $40 to $80 for short-haul and $60 to $120 for long-haul. Air New Zealand chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty told Stuff Travel the price adjustments are due to the airline experiencing a “high-cost environment”.<br/>