The US FAA said on Thursday it would launch an investigation after the crew on a United Airlines Boeing 737 flight from Key West, Florida to Newark, New Jersey, reported a fire in the cabin. The airplane diverted and landed safely at Washington's Dulles airport around 4:45 p.m. ET (2045 GMT) on Thursday, the FAA said in a statement. United said the diversion was prompted by light smoke venting from a galley oven. All passengers deplaned normally at the gate and the airline arranged for a different aircraft to take passengers to Newark on Thursday evening, United added. The plane had 98 passengers and five crew on board.<br/>
star
Competition from Chinese airlines that do not have to avoid Russian airspace is undermining the profitability of Lufthansa's Asian business, despite demand between Europe and China being quite strong, a senior executive said. "It's really overcapacity in Europe from Chinese carriers," Lufthansa's Vice President Asia Pacific, Felipe Bonifatti, said in an interview this week. Lufthansa singled out Asia a number of times last year, including in a profit warning, as the region where yields, a proxy for airfares, were falling sharpest. Chinese airlines have since the pandemic and the outbreak of war in Ukraine in 2022 taken a rising proportion of China's international air traffic, with foreign rivals deterred from some Asian routes by weaker-than-anticipated Chinese traveller demand and higher crew and fuel costs due to the need to avoid Russian airspace. The trend is particularly pronounced in Europe, where Chinese carriers, which still overfly Russia, last year operated 21% more capacity into Europe and Britain than in 2019, according to Cirium schedule data, while non-Chinese airline capacity fell 54%. "Customers flying from different cities in Southeast Asia via China to Europe - this is one of the targets that the Chinese carriers are looking into, which was not the case before the war," Bonifatti said.<br/>Lufthansa Airlines in October cut its Frankfurt to Beijing service, but kept its Munich-Beijing service and routes from both cities to Shanghai.<br/>
A Shenzhen Airlines flight was delayed for two hours after the arm of a member of the cabin crew was bitten when she intervened in a row between two passengers. According to a statement from the airline, the incident unfolded on April 1 when a plane scheduled to fly from Shenzhen in southern China to Shanghai was ready to take off. The conflict erupted between two female passengers sitting near each other. One of the women was complaining about the other’s body odour, while the other was objecting to the strong smell of her fellow passenger’s perfume, according to a report by the media outlet, Shenzhen Business News. Their verbal spat quickly escalated into a physical confrontation. Two women flight attendants and a pair of male colleagues tried to step in and stop the fight. A viral video clip shows that as the melee ensued, one of the flight attendants shouted out: “Open your mouth. You have bitten me!” The attendant suffered slight injuries to her arm, according to her employer. She was immediately sent to hospital where she was said to be in a “non-serious condition”. The two passengers were subsequently taken away by police. It is not clear what punishment they will receive. All other passengers were told to get off the aircraft. They reboarded the plane two hours later.<br/>