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Lufthansa struck a deal with its cabin crew union over pay and benefits, eliminating a major strike threat and removing a roadblock to CEO Carsten Spohr’s efforts to reorganize the German airline. Mediation led by former Social Democratic Party Chairman Matthias Platzeck achieved “comprehensive results,” and both sides have accepted the agreement, the union UFO said Thursday. Some details still have to be concluded, so contract terms won’t be announced before a July 5 press conference in Berlin, it said. “You can imagine we would only accept a result that preserves the needs of our members,” said Nicoley Baublies, who heads the negotiations for the union. Flight attendants and pilots have held strikes in the past two years in a dispute over pay, benefits and retirement that was exacerbated by unions’ concerns about Lufthansa’s strategy for developing the Eurowings low-cost arm. The carrier is still in talks with pilots, targeting an agreement by the end of July. The cabin-crew deal reduces pressure on Lufthansa as the industry grapples with the potential effects of last week’s U.K. vote to leave the EUn and a terrorism attack Tuesday at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.<br/>Lufthansa rose 1.2 percent to 10.56 euros as of 3:09 p.m. in Frankfurt, valuing the airline at 4.92 billion euros ($5.46 billion). That pared the stock’s decline this year to 28 percent, the third-worst performance on the Bloomberg Europe Transportation Index.<br/>Strikes by cabin crews and pilots, including the longest ever walkouts at the six-decade-old airline, reduced group operating profit in 2014 and 2015 by a combined 463 million euros.<br/>

Ethiopian Airlines is considering whether to expand its fleet with the 366-seat Airbus A350-1000 or Boeing's 777X, its CE said. "We have 14 of these A350 and we have more (Boeing) 787s. We are comparing the A350-1000 and also the 777X. Depending on which performs well out of Addis Ababa at altitude and high temperature, we are going to make that decision," GebreMariam said. Asked how many extra aircraft the airline could order, he said, "between 15 and 20". He did not say when the airline planned to make a decision. "We want to know more about the A350-1000," he said. Earlier this month, GebreMariam said the airline was considering whether to order 10 to 15 Boeing 777-8s, one of two planned models still widely known as 777X, the label used before they were launched on the market. The 777-8 will carry about 350 passengers. Until now, Ethiopian Airlines has stuck mainly with Boeing aircraft. "The concern has always been not to diversify too much because different types add complexity to the operation and make the cost of operation very high, so it is not recommended. But we are growing," GebreMariam said. "The fleet is around 80 now. So any fleet type on its own will be around 20: the minimum size to justify the training of new pilots and technicians. This is the right time. At the same time, for competition reasons, it is required.<br/>

Initial evidence gleaned from the flight data recorder (FDR) of Egyptair flight MS804 indicates the Airbus A320 experienced smoke in two separate locations on the aircraft prior to its crash into the Mediterranean Sea. The Egyptian investigating committee said that, following the cleaning and repair of the FDR in France, it has downloaded the data and is now decoding and validating some 1,200 parameters. The committee added that the recovered data covered the entire flight from takeoff at Paris Charles De Gaulle airport to the point at 37,000 ft. over the Mediterranean “where the accident occurred.” The EgyptAir A320 was en route from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Cairo May 19 with 66 people on board when it lost radar contact and crashed. Work is now underway on the next phase of reading and analyzing the data. There have been reports for some weeks that messages sent by the A320's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which sends data on any faults or deviations from the norm to an airline’s home base, indicated the presence of smoke in both an avionics bay under the flight deck and a lavatory. “Recorded data is showing a consistency with ACARS' messages of lavatory smoke and avionics smoke,” the committee said in a statement, adding: “Some recovered wreckage parts of the front section of the aircraft showed signs of high temperature damage and soot.”<br/>