Alaska Airlines’ flight attendants union said Friday that it reached a “record” tentative labor deal with the carrier, ending a drought of new contracts for cabin crews that have clamored for pay raises for years. The details of the deal, struck under federal mediation, weren’t immediately made public. It will be reviewed by union leadership and then voted on by rank and file members, the Association of Flight Attendants said. “With our combined efforts, we’ve been able to reach an agreement that provides quality of life and continued career growth at Alaska,” the airline said in a statement. A day earlier, American Airlines’ flight attendants union said talks had broken down for a new contract, and that its members should prepare for a possible strike. However, a company spokeswoman said the two sides had made “good progress in negotiations this week, adding even more to the industry-leading proposal we’ve had on the table for months.” United Airlines is also negotiating a new contract with its flight attendants union. Strikes in the U.S. airline industry are extremely rare. If a deal cannot be reached, there could be a 30-day cooling-off period before a possible work stoppage.<br/>
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American Airlines’ CEO Robert Isom has said the airline – the world’s largest – will implement new measures, including an advisory group, after eight Black passengers were wrongly removed from a Phoenix to New York flight after a complaint about body odor. The removal caused outrage, and three of the passengers involved in the January incident – who were not seated together and did not know each other – sued the carrier. They said in a statement that “American Airlines singled us out for being black, embarrassed us, and humiliated us”. In a note to employees, Isom said that the passengers’ treatment was unacceptable and that the company “fell short of our commitments and failed our customers”. He also said the airline was committed to working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, to “rebuild trust”. “I am incredibly disappointed by what happened on that flight and the breakdown of our procedures,” Isom wrote. “We fell short of our commitments and failed our customers in this incident.” The airline said in a statement that it was “holding those involved accountable, including removing team members from service”. The airline is also updating its process for handling customer allegations of discrimination or bias as well as criteria for removing passengers from a flight. The civil rights group had previously advised Black travelers to avoid the airline over “discriminatory” behavior and “corporate culture of racial insensitivity and possible racial bias”.<br/>
Finnair has successfully argued, in a long-running legal case, that it does not have to pay compensation over a flight cancelled after a previously-unknown technical fault was discovered in one of the carrier’s then-new Airbus A350s. The case centred on cancellation of a Helsinki-Bangkok flight on 25 March 2016, after a fault occurred with a fuel gauge as the aircraft was being prepared for departure. Case documentation shows the aircraft involved was an A350-900, a type which had only been in Finnair service for five months. Finnair was the first European carrier to receive the A350, taking its first aircraft in October 2015. Finnair used a reserve aircraft to conducted the flight the following day, but the 20h delay became the subject of a compensation claim by one of the passengers. During the subsequent eight years the case been appealed, up to the Finnish Supreme Court, over the question as to whether a previously-unknown technical fault in a new aircraft model should be considered an exceptional circumstance – absolving the carrier of responsibility to compensate – or regarded as part of its normal activity. The Supreme Court requested a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union, which presented its judgement on 13 June. This judgement acknowledges that the defect on the aircraft was “unknown” prior to the failure, and neither the manufacturer nor the aviation safety authorities were aware of it. The failure was ultimately remedied after 24h by draining and refuelling the tank.<br/>
A Japan Airlines Co. plane returned to Aomori airport Saturday after a system message signaled one of its engines had caught fire mid-air, the company said. Flight JL2154 bound for Osaka was carrying 47 people — including five crew members — when it was forced to return to Aomori because of the message in the cockpit that suggested the left engine had caught fire, the carrier said. No injuries were reported in the incident. “We are confirming whether the engine actually caught fire,” JAL said in a text message, adding that the Embraer SA jet landed at Aomori as the fire signal disappeared after the crew halted the engine. JAL’s operations have been under intense scrutiny since January, when one of its aircraft collided with a small coast guard plane on the runway at Haneda airport. Five people were killed in the incident and the Airbus SE jetliner burst into flames, although all passengers and crew were safely evacuated from the A350-900. The carrier has attributed these incidents to factors such as time pressures and staffing shortages.<br/>