Alaska Airlines on Tuesday lost an appeal in an approximately $160 million trademark case with Virgin Group, after a London court last year ruled Virgin was entitled to royalties even though the U.S. airline no longer uses the Virgin brand. Virgin units Virgin Aviation TM Ltd and Virgin Enterprises Ltd successfully argued Alaska is liable to pay a roughly $8m "minimum royalty" payment every year until 2039. It said a 2014 trademark licence agreement between Virgin and Virgin America Inc, which was acquired by Alaska's parent company in 2016, required the annual payment even if Alaska stopped using its branding. A judge at London's High Court ruled last year that the minimum royalty was "a flat fee payable for the right to use the Virgin brand, whether or not that right is taken up". Alaska Airlines, which had argued that an agreement requiring it to pay $8m a year for trademarks it has no intention of using was "commercially nonsensical", tried to overturn that ruling. But the Court of Appeal in London rejected its appeal on Tuesday, with Judge Stephen Phillips saying in a written ruling that Virgin's interpretation of the agreement was correct.<br/>
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A British Airways service from London to Texas turned back just as the aircraft reached North America, resulting in passengers enduring a nine-hour flight to nowhere. Flight records show that the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, headed to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, had just crossed the Canadian border before backtracking on Monday. British Airways later said the turnaround was a precaution due to a “minor technical issue” and it had apologized to customers on the flight. The exact cause of the issue was not specified by British Airways, but several outlets reported that it was connected to the aircraft’s engines. The flight left London Heathrow at 9.27am BST on Monday, and landed again at the same airport at 6.54am the following day – a total of nine hours and 27 minutes in the air.<br/>Similar, successful flights to Houston only take about 30 to 40 minutes longer on average. The Independent understands that the issue was not serious enough to have the plane grounded immediately but required inspection and potential engineering work. Rather than grounding at Houston or another US airport, the flight returned to London where British Airways has technicians and resources to resolve the issue. A statement from British Airways read: “The flight returned to London Heathrow as a precaution due to a minor technical issue. It landed safely and customers disembarked as normal. “We’ve apologized to our customers for the disruption to their journey.”<br/>
British Airways parent IAG offered new concessions to European Union competition regulators in a bid to allay concerns over its E400m takeover of Air Europa. “We submitted a new remedy package with some adjustments compared to the previous one,” IAG said in an emailed statement. “It includes improvements that have come from the constructive dialog we have been maintaining with the European Commission, with the aim of ensuring that the acquisition of Air Europa is carried out with all guarantees for consumers.” The commission said on its website it set a new deadline of Aug. 20 to decide if the deal should be cleared after the proposed remedies were handed in on June 10. IAG’s move comes after doubts were cast on the future of the deal following a formal warning that the takeover could hamper competition on multiple routes within Spain as well as connections with the rest of Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. Domestic routes lacking high-speed train alternatives could be particularly hard hit, the regulator warned in April. <br/>