Brussels - Lufthansa is to take over Belgium's airline, Brussels Airlines, the two carriers said Monday in Brussels, just over two weeks after confirming they were in merger talks.

In a first step, the big German airline is to pay 65 million euros to acquire 45 per cent of Brussels Airlines from SN Holding. Lufthansa can acquire the rest in 2011.

Lufthansa had earlier confirmed it was in takeover talks.

London  - European aircraft manufacturer Airbus sold part of its manufacturing site in Britain Monday to engineering giant GKN for 136 million pounds (243 million dollars) as the government revealed it had agreed to give financial backing for the deal.

GNK, one of Britain's leading engineering firms, is to acquire the manufacturing operation at the site in Filton, near Bristol, in western England, where wing components for the Airbus are made.

Business Secretary John Hutton said the government had agreed, in principle, to support GKN with a repayable launch investment of 60 million pounds.

Paris - The schedule of deliveries of the Airbus A380 superjumbo aircraft to its customers will have to be revised for a fifth time, the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche reported on Sunday.

Citing an Airbus source close to the A380 programme, the newspaper said that only 10 A380 planes will be delivered this year, instead of the 12 announced previously.

In 2009, the discrepancy could be even greater, with only 15 aircraft delivered instead of the planned 21, the report said.

Rome - Alitalia's Italian government-appointed commissioner on Saturday told labour union representatives that dwindling fuel supplies at the near-bankrupt airline meant that it could not guarantee flights beyond another day, news reports said.

"For tomorrow we have our flights guaranteed, but not for Monday. They are no longer supplying us with fuel," Commissioner Augusto Fantozzi told the unions, according to the ANSA news agency.

He also warned that Alitalia would begin to lay-off flight crews from 34 planes which have already been grounded as part of cost-cutting measures, ANSA said.

Rome - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi lashed out Saturday at unions representing Alitalia employees, saying their opposition to a government plan to save the troubled state-controlled airline is politically motivated.

Berlusconi was speaking a day after a group of private Italian investors, CAI, broke off talks with the unions who reject an estimated 7,000 job cuts as specified in the cost-slashing rescue plan.

Madrid - The Spanair MD-82 passenger plane that crashed in Madrid on August 20, killing 154 people, already had problems with wing slats that help provide takeoff lift, El Mundo reported Saturday.

The Spanish newspaper said the technical logbook showed that two days before the crash, defects had been detected twice within a few hours in the mechanism operating slats in the wings' leading edges.

Already 11 days before the crash a defect had been registered. In all three cases, pilots had reported that the slats had not deployed properly.