Travel News

British Airways' Biofuel Plans 

British Airways has announced plans to power part of its fleet with biofuel from 2014. The carrier is working in partnership with the Solena Group, “a next-generation, zero-emission, bioenergy company based in Washington DC”, to open a factory in East London that will convert organic waste into biofuel.

BA claims that the volume of biofuel it will produce annually would be more that twice the amount required to make all of its flights from London City airport carbon neutral – the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road per year.

New Manchester service to Athens and onwards to Iraq

Greek carrier Viking Hellas has started scheduled flights from Manchester to Athens, as well as several services to destinations in Iraq.

The new airline – a subsidiary of charter carrier Viking Airlines – commenced three times-weekly flights (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) from Manchester to the Greek capital on February 1, and plans to increase this to four times per week from the start of March.

The carrier has also launched weekly scheduled services to Erbil, Sulaymanyiah and Baghdad in Iraq, and says that timings have been designed to provide onward connection opportunities for UK passengers looking to reach Iraq.

Brussels Airlines expands into Africa 

Star Alliance member Brussels Airlines will offer four new African routes to Accra (Ghana), Cotonou (Benin), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and Lome (Togo) from this July. The airline already offers an extensive African network, and the new routes means it will operate a total of 18 destinations on the African continent. The routes will be served by A330 aircraft, with four flights per week to Accra, and two per week to each of Cotonou, Ouagadougou and Lome.

Scandinavian Airlines speeds transfers in Copenhagen  

Scandinavian Airlines has announced the introduction of its World Class Transfer at Copenhagen Airport. The project objective is to enable passengers to travel with SAS via Copenhagen and connect to another flight within 30 or 35 minutes making connections to their onwards connections to Scandinavia and its entire network more seamless.