A United Airlines jet from Miami to New Jersey made an unscheduled landing in Orlando, Florida, this week after a passenger became “aggressive and disruptive,” the airline said. Video aired by WSVN-TV shows a fight between a woman and a flight attendant in the cabin of the aircraft. The cellphone video appears to show a passenger putting her face on the flight attendant’s shoulder during the struggle, and coming away with a piece of his shirt in her mouth. United flight 762 was enroute to Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday when it was diverted to Orlando after the passenger became disruptive, authorities said. “Our flight attendants worked to de-escalate the situation and protect other customers and after landing in Orlando, law enforcement met the flight, and the passenger was removed,” United said in a statement to The Associated Press. The passenger was taken to a hospital for an evaluation, Orlando police said in an email Thursday afternoon. No arrest has been made.<br/>
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Lufthansa plans to slash costs and cut back on future projects as a “new reality” of lower corporate travel and increased competition drives down fares from post-pandemic highs, according to a letter to staff. The lead carrier of the wider Deutsche Lufthansa AG group said that while its costs have risen sharply, unit revenue has been lower than expected as customers aren’t prepared to pay higher fares, according to the letter from unit Chief Executive Officer Jens Ritter seen by Bloomberg News. With corporate travelers in short supply, the airline isn’t able to compensate for seasonal demand fluctuations, Ritter wrote. “We are experiencing a ‘new reality’: not a crisis, but a structural change,” Ritter wrote in the letter. After two years of soaring demand, “we are seeing a normalization in the market. This is accompanied by high competitive pressure,” he said. Across Europe and the US, airlines are struggling to fill planes in the all-important summer vacation season, which has dragged down ticket prices. On Thursday, Delta Air Lines Inc. warned of worse-than-expected financial results and a weak outlook for the third quarter. Lufthansa plans to cut administrative costs by 20% and marketing spending by 10%, according to the staff letter. It is also instituting a hiring freeze in administrative functions and plans to postpone or cut back certain other projects.<br/>
SAS has signed a codeshare agreement with SkyTeam operator Air France-KLM, ahead of its switch to the alliance in September. Under the agreement Air France and KLM customers will have access to 33 destinations in northern Europe reachable beyond the Scandinavian hubs at Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo. SAS will, in turn, be able to reach 33 destinations through the SkyTeam hubs at Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam. “Intercontinental destinations will be added to the agreement in the near future,” says SAS, which is moving to SkyTeam from Star Alliance as part of its restructuring scheme. The codeshare is accompanied by an interline agreement covering the two sides’ European networks. SAS adds that the pact offers reciprocal loyalty-programme benefits. “Collaboration with Air France-KLM holds great opportunities,” says SAS chief commercial officer Paul Verhagen. “It will not only attract new passengers to SAS, but also elevate SAS’s global visibility and connectivity.” SAS operates up to 44 services weekly to Charles de Gaulle, and 65 to Amsterdam, from the three Scandinavian capitals. Air France and KLM serve the SAS hubs with up to 200 weekly flights.<br/>
Unionized workers of Asiana Airlines reiterated Thursday their opposition to a merger with the nation’s largest air carrier Korean Air, expressing their intention to block further procedures by all means. Asiana Airlines' labor unions urged the air carrier's main creditor Korea Development Bank and the European Commission, the EU's antitrust regulator which gave conditional approval on the merger, to review the deal from the ground up. The possible future actions that Asiana Airlines' general labor union and pilots' labor union unions could take include the resignation of cargo flight attendants and accusing Asiana Airlines CEO Won Yoo-seok of breach of trust. "We made countless attempts to meet with Korean Air's management to discuss the job security and the fair treatment of our employees, but they gave us no answers," Choi Do-sung, head of the pilots' union said during a press conference Thursday at the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions in central Seoul. Choi argued that the recent selection of Air Incheon as the preferred bidder for selling Asiana Airlines' cargo business, which he called "a small cargo airline with no long-distance flight experience," is a scheme for Korean Air to take over the cargo sector. Asiana Airlines' general union head Kwon Soo-jeong argued that the merger between the two companies would significantly damage the competitiveness of the nation's infrastructure industry.<br/>