UK airport operator BAA says bids have been received for its sale of Gatwick Airport, but has made no comment on the sale of its other London airport, Stansted. It also has reported lower passenger numbers and higher running costs, with an operating profit of £23 million for 2008, against £P476 milliona year before. … [Read more...] about BAA

Australia’s Melbourne Airport says that in December 2008, for the first time ever, it topped Sydney as the country’s leading airfreight hub and also defied global trends by posting airfreight exports figures up 23 per cent – at nearly 10,000 tonnes – for the month compared with the previous December. Added services in 2009 already are planned by Emirates, Etihad, V Australia, Air Asia X, China Eastern and Philippine Airlines. … [Read more...] about Melbourne Airport

Aviation consultancy Ascend says 2,300 of the global airline fleet of 20,293 jet airliners are in storage, with about1,167 of them grounded last year. … [Read more...] about Ascend

Ethiopian Airlines is reducing flight frequencies and introducing smaller aircraft after experiencing reductions in cargo and passenger loads. Its six weekly flights to the US have been reduced to four and the 14 flights per week to Chinacut to 12 … [Read more...] about Ethiopian Airlines

Low-cost long-haul carrier AirAsia X will begin cargo operations to and from Europe from 11 March when it inaugurates flights between Kuala Lumpur and UK’s London Stansted. The five times weekly direct flights will be operated using an A340-300, with about an eight tonne cargo capacity perflight. … [Read more...] about AirAsia X

Investigators have taken detailed photos of the wreckage of a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 and analysed black box recordings in a bid to establish why the plane crashed, killing nine people and injuring 86, six critically. Flight TK1951 from Istanbul fell out of the sky about two miles short of the runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Wednesday morning, smashing into three pieces and spraying luggage and debris across a farmer’s field. Despite the catastrophic impact, the … [Read more...] about Turkish Airlines