Rabat, Morocco  - Morocco

British Airways authorities Sunday onwards suspended its direct services from Kolkata to London - practically applying its last year announcement - saying that the route was not making adequate profit! Coincidentally, the same day, Air India resumed its October 2008-suspended service on the Kolkata-London route, via Delhi.

With the last British Airways flight taking off at around 5 a. m. from the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, the carrier's thrice a week service, direct form Kolkata to Heathrow Airport in London, has been scrapped.

According to reports, India's foremost privately-owned airline Jet Airways intends slashing its fleet capacity - the airline had earlier announced 18-20% reduction in its winter schedule from October to February.

The airline's Chief Commercial Officer Sudheer Raghavan said that the cuts result from "excess manpower," the company would try to redeploy the affected fleet members for providing better customer service.

Bangkok  - Thai Airways International (THAI) will shift all its domestic flights from Don Mueang Airport to Suvarnabhumi International Airport over the weekend, the national carrier confirmed Friday.

"THAI will shift 23 domestic flights back from Don Mueang Airport, Bangkok's former main airport, to Suvarnabhumi Airport on March 29, 2009, making a total of approximately 45 domestic round flights operated to/from Suvarnabhumi Airport," THAI Senior Executive Vice President Air Chief Marshal Narongsak Sangapong said.

Paris - French-Dutch carrier Air France-KLM said on Thursday that it expects to register an operating loss of about 200 million euros (270 million dollars) for fiscal year
2008-2009 because of the effects of the economic crisis and variations in the cost of crude oil.

If confirmed, it would represent the first such negative result for the company since it was formed in 2003.

Air France-KLM is also pessimistic for 2009-2010, "which will begin in the context of an unprecedented crisis," the company said in a statement.

Hanoi - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Vietnam will launch an aircraft component assembly factory in Vietnam in June, local media reported Wednesday.

The state-run newspaper Lao Dong quoted Stanley A Deal, Boeing's deputy chairman of Asia-Pacific sales, as saying the factory would produce wing flaps for Boeing 737 aircraft.

The company is a subsidiary of Japan's Mitsubishi corporation.

The 7-million-dollar factory, located 15 kilometres north of Hanoi, has been under construction since January 2008.