Business Travel Management

United Airlines plans to launch daily nonstop flights between Newark Liberty International Airport, and Istanbul, effective July 1, 2012, subject to government approval. Istanbul will be the 76th international destination that United serves from New York/Newark and the 37th city in United's trans-Atlantic route network. United flight 904 will depart New York/Newark daily at 7:27 p.m. and arrive in Istanbul at 12:20 p.m. the next day. Flight 905 will depart Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport daily at 1:55 p.m. and arrive at New York/Newark at 6:02 p.m. the same day.

The airline will initially operate the services with three-cabin Boeing 767-300 aircraft with 183 seats – six in United Global First, 26 in United BusinessFirst and 151 in United Economy, including 67 Economy Plus seats with added legroom.  Both United Global First and United BusinessFirst feature flat-bed seats, along with a wide range of premium-cabin services and amenities.

Source: United Airlines

The GdF union, representing air traffic workers, has called for an extended strike through Wednesday at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport. The union indicated it is ready to continue the strike action for several weeks, if necessary. The strike is over wages paid to ground control workers and continues from last Thursday and Friday when nearly 500 flights were canceled at this busy airport.  On Monday, Frankfurt airport handled only 230 flights out of 1,250 scheduled, stranding or delaying about 130,000 passengers. 200 of the flights were for Lufthansa, which uses Franfurt heavily as a major hub.

Source: Air Transport World, Lufthansa

Nearly 300 flights have been cancelled today at Frankfurt’s airport due to strike action from the GdF trade union. Ground workers are demanding pay increases stating their work has become more complicated with the addition of a fourth runway added in October. Most of the cancelled flights were operated by Lufthansa. The carrier has cancelled a number of flights in Germany and other cities in Europe in order to keep long-haul flights operational.  The union must give at least 24 hours notice of strike action, and has stated they may continue to strike next week. Frankfurt is Europe’s third busiest airport behind London and Paris.

Source: Airwise, Lufthansa

Frontier Airlines will offer seasonal nonstop service connecting Portland International Airport and Colorado Springs Airport three days each week, May 20-Sept. 16. Nearly 450,000 passengers travel annually between PDX and the Colorado Springs/Denver area.Frontier will operate its 138-seat Airbus A319 aircraft on the route. The Airbus aircraft features leather seats, DirecTV® in every seatback and five rows of comfortable STRETCH seating with 5-7 additional inches of legroom. The flight schedule will be as follows:

Source: Port of Portland

U.S. airlines set a record for on-time arrivals in December with 84.4% of all domestic flights arriving within 15 minutes of their scheduled time. The U.S. Department of Transportation also reported that there were no long tarmac delays exceeding DOT standards, while turning in the lowest flight cancellation rate for December in 17 years. Industry on-time performance for the year was closer to historical norms, but airports benefited from a mild winter across the country in December.

Source: Department of Transportation