AIRLINE NEWS

IBERIA will fit a new premium economy seat to 37 long-haul aircraft from summer 2017. The seat will be 19in/48cm wide with a 37in/94cm pitch and 40 per cent more recline than in economy. Passengers will benefit from priority boarding, an extra suitcase allowance and upgraded dining options. The first routes to feature the seat will be from Madrid to Buenos Aires, Lima and Chicago. OMAN AIR is to consolidate its twice-daily services between Heathrow and Muscat into Heathrow Terminal 4. It currently operates daily out of both T3 and T4 but on January 31 all flights will move to T4. The carrier will start a new Manchester route on May 1. An A330 will depart Muscat at 1400, arriving at 1905, then leave Manchester at 2045, landing back into Oman at 0720 the following day. EMIRATES was set to launch the world’s shortest scheduled A380 flight – between Dubai and Doha, a distance of only 379km – on December 1. The carrier is rostering the superjumbo on to one of its nine daily flights, departing Dubai at 0745, arriving at 0805, with the return leaving Doha at 0950, landing at 1200. AEROMEXICO has taken delivery of its first B787-9. The aircraft has 238 economy seats in a 3-3-3 configuration, and 36 fully-flat Clase Premier business seats in a 1-2-1 layout. It is the first of ten Dreamliners the carrier has on order, to be used on its routes to Amsterdam, London, Madrid, New York, Paris, Santiago, Shanghai and Tokyo. QATAR AIRWAYS has expanded its codeshare with BA. The carriers recently announced a joint business agreement on UK-Doha routes, and Qatar will now also codeshare on domestic BA flights to Aberdeen, Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Leeds, Bradford, Manchester and Newcastle, and selected BA flights from Heathrow to Europe, including Dublin, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Bilbao. SAS has taken delivery of its first A320 Neo. The Scandinavian carrier has 30 of the next-generation aircraft on order, configured with 174 seats in a single-class layout. It will be used on medium-haul routes throughout Europe. SINGAPORE AIRLINES’ planned Singapore-Jakarta-Sydney service has been postponed. A B777 would have operated the Jakarta-Sydney sector using “fifth freedom” rights three times a week but the Indonesian civil aviation authority has now withdrawn permission. No revised launch date has yet been made available. ETIHAD AIRWAYS was set to place its three-class B787 Dreamliner on to its Abu Dhabi-Tokyo service on December 1.