London  - Britain's competition watchdog, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), Thursday brought charges against four past and present British Airways (BA) executives over price-fixing on fuel surcharges.

The probe would be the first to threaten managers at a leading multinational company with jail, the Financial Times said Thursday. Conviction could lead to prison terms of up to five years.

The watchdog decided to charge the four men over a "conspiracy" between BA and rival Virgin Atlantic between 2004 and 2006 to fix the price of passenger fuel prices on transatlantic flights.

The case concerns Andrew Crawley, BA's current head of sales, and three previous top executives Martin George, Iain Burns and Alan Burnett.

Singapore  - Low-cost carrier Tiger Airways reported on Thursday an annual net profit of 37.8 million Singapore dollars (27 million US dollars) despite soaring fuel costs.

Stockholm  - The SAS Group, operator of the joint carrier Scandinavian Airlines, flew more passengers in July than in the corresponding period in 2007, the group said Thursday.

Singapore - Thai Airways has edged out Singapore Airlines (SIA) as the top choice for business travellers in the Asia-Pacific region, a study said on Thursday.

Singapore  - Singapore Airlines marked its 1,000th flight of the world's largest passenger jet since the carrier became the first to operate the Airbus A380 in October, the airline said Tuesday.

Flight 322 departed Monday from Singapore's Changi Airport for London's Heathrow Airport.

The superjumbo has clocked 8,500 flying hours and carried 400,000 customers for Singapore Airlines, the company said in a statement.

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.