Heathrow debut for A380
Watched by thousands of spectators, the first Airbus A380 touched down at London Heathrow last month to test ground handling facilities and airport compatibility. The double-decker super-jumbo, which will enter service later this year with Singapore Airlines on the kangaroo route between London, Singapore and Sydney, seats up to 550 passengers. Its arrival coincided with the official opening of Heathrow’s £105 million Pier 6, designed to handle the aircraft. The new three-storey-high pier is 280m long and is designed to allow passengers to board and leave the jumbo from both levels of the aircraft, which will be fitted with shops, sleeping areas, crêche and an exercise room.
Among the airlines that have orders for the A380 are Air France, Emirates, Eithad, Lufthansa, Korean Air, Malaysia Airlines, Thai Airways, Qantas, Qatar Airways and Virgin Atlantic. Transatlantic trio?
A third all-business airline could be flying on the Atlantic route by the end of the year, joining Eos and Maxjet. Silverjet is planning a twice-daily link between London Luton and New York Newark, with a projected average fare of £999 (US$1,868) for the round-trip. The twice-daily service would be operated by specially configured Boeing 767s, with 100 flat-bed sleeper seats. Meanwhile, Eos is now offering its Stansted passengers complimentary chauffeur-drive transfers within a 60km (37 mile) radius of the airport, which takes in central London. The facility applies to all fare types with the exception of the weekend tariff. As an alternative, passengers arriving at Stansted can opt for a day room at the Radisson SAS hotel adjoining the terminal, before continuing their journey with complimentary return rail travel on the Stansted Express to Liverpool Street station. The airline operates a daily service on the Stansted-New York JFK route with specially
configured Boeing 757s featuring 48 flat-bed seats with a 78-inch pitch. News in brief Aeroflot, is the latest airline to join the SkyTeam alliance, whose members include Air France/KLM, Delta, Continental Airlines, Korean Air and Alitalia. A second Chinese airline is to join the Star Alliance. Air China has been invited to become a member only two weeks after a similar invitation was extended to Shanghai Airlines. It will increase the alliance membership to 20 carriers, offering more than 16,500 daily fights to 912 destinations in 160 countries. BMI has launched a three times a week link between London Heathrow and Jeddah, eight months after the introduction of flights to Riyadh following the withdrawal of British Airways’ Saudi Arabian services. Such has been the success of the BMI operation that it increased the number of business class seats from 24 to 42 on both routes. China Airlines is to resume services on the Taipei-Osaka route from the beginning of July and introduces new links between the Taiwanese capital and Sapporo and Kaohsiung and Nagoya. As part of a major drive to increase its share of the transatlantic market, Delta has introduced services between Atlanta and Nice and Copenhagen, and between New York JFK and Budapest. Singapore Airlines is introducing a thrice-weekly service to Milan and Barcelona from July 19, increasing the number of European destinations served to 12 with a total of 81 flights. Cimber Air, in conjunction with SAS, has introduced a four times daily link between Copenhagen and Norrkoping, with two flights a day at weekends. Ryanair is to establish a base at Marseille later this year. From November, the Dublin-based budget carrier will introduce links from the southern French city to Charleroi, Dublin, Eindhoven, Fez, Frankfurt (Hahn), Karlsruhe Baden, Marrakech, Oujda, Oslo, Glasgow Prestwick, Porto, Rome and London Stansted, challenging Air France on a number of key routes.
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