The air line industry is facing new challenges. The global price of crude oil is increasing while number of passengers is decreasing. It is adversely affecting the growth of global aviation sector.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said that the aviation industry has suffered a loss of about of $6.1 billion in current fiscal as compared to loss of $5.6 billion in last year. The international aviation body released the traffic data for June. It observed that the growth rate is decreased by 0.8 percent compared to June 2007.

Berlin  - German airline Lufthansa faced further industrial action in the weeks ahead as flights slowly returned to normal Monday after a five-day strike by ground and cabin staff.

The airline, Germany's largest and Europe's second-largest, said around 130 flights would not take-off Monday, 100 of them on domestic routes, as a result of the knock-on effects from last week's strike.

"We aim to return to normal services as soon as possible," a spokeswoman said, adding, however, that this could take two weeks.

Sydney - A Qantas flight bound for Manila on Saturday returned to Sydney and made an emergency landing.

An Air Services Australia spokesman said the pilot declared an emergency, dumped fuel and turned back shortly after take off.

"Air traffic controllers received a call from the pilot declaring an emergency and proceeded to give priority clearance for a landing at Sydney," the spokesman told Australia's AAP news agency.

The cause of the emergency is as yet unknown.

Berlin  - European aircraft maker Airbus said Friday it had sold its plant at Laupheim in Germany to German armaments company Diehl and its partner Thales.

No details were provided on the financial details of the sale, which is effective from October 1 and is subject to competition authority approval.

Diehl, based in Nuremberg in the southern German state of Bavaria, is to hold 51 per cent of the company, while French defence concern Thales holds the rest.

Oil PSUs hiked the prices of jet fuels by 3% on Thursdat, and consequently the domestic airlines Jet and Kingfisher-Deccan decided to increase their basic fares from Friday. The hike in the air fare has been on constant increase from past some time now, due to basic reason of rise in the crude oil prices.

London - British Airways Friday reported an 88-per-cent drop in pre-tax profits in the last fiscal quarter to 37 million pounds (73.3 million dollars) as a result of rocketing fuel costs.

The figure for the three months up to the end of June compares with 298 million pounds for the same period in 2007.

British Airways has blamed a doubling of fuel costs for a sharp profits fall, saying the airline industry faced the "worst trading environment ever."

Fuel costs were 8 million pounds a day and were expected to reach 3 billion pounds in the year to the end of March 2009, said the airline.