AgustaWestland, a Finmeccanica company, is pleased to announce that it has finalised the transaction with Bell Helicopter Textron for the acquisition of the 609 tiltrotor programme. All legal and regulatory approvals have now been successfully completed. The development of the AW609 tiltrotor programme is now moving forward under full AgustaWestland control with civil certification expected in late 2015, early 2016 and deliveries following immediately afterwards.

The flight was carrying 14 passengers and was progressing normally until, about 30 minutes from a holding pattern for LaGuardia, the captain left the cockpit to use the lavatory and got stuck there.

Eurocopter has successfully tested a hybrid helicopter that combines a turboshaft internal combustion engine with an electric motor for a world premiere, marking a new milestone in its innovation roadmap that opens the way for further enhancements in rotary-wing aircraft safety.

The world’s fastest business jet–the wide-cabin Gulfstream G650–received provisional type certification from the FAA, Savannah, Ga.-based Gulfstream Aerospace announced today. This action clears the way for the company to begin completing G650s in preparation for customer deliveries in the second quarter of next year, keeping the program exactly on its original schedule despite the loss of test aircraft S/N 6002 in April.

Less than a week after saying it had landed its biggest order ever, Boeing claimed Thursday it had beaten its own record with another giant offer.

This time, the order comes from Lion Air, a private carrier in Indonesia, which has ordered 230 airplanes.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (TheStreet) -- Ancient airline history once made US Airways(LCC_) a major player in New York as it served destinations where air service was pioneered by predecessors Empire Airlinesand Mohawk Airlines.

But today's airline industry, with its emaciated profit margins, allows the carrier little room for sentimentality beyond the airplanes it has painted in the colors of four predecessors and the memorabilia in the lobby of its Tempe, Ariz., headquarters. So the biggest piece of US Airways' action plan for 2012, assuming the Justice Department does not move in opposition, is to further reduce its historic position at New York's LaGuardia Airport.

That reduction is part of a slot trade with Delta(DAL_), which will make Delta bigger at LaGuardia and US Airways bigger at Washington's Reagan National Airport. National, too, has long been important to US Airways. Predecessor Allegheny Airlines once had its headquarters in a National hangar. The CEO of US Air once overlooked National's runways from the window of his Crystal City office.
 

Austrian airline Comtel is investigating claims that some of its passengers were forced to pay for refuelling when their plane stopped in Vienna.

The incident is said to have taken place on a flight from Amritsar in India on Tuesday, causing a six-hour delay as travellers on board initially refused to hand over cash.

However, they were told the flight would not get to its final destination, England’s second city Birmingham, unless they collectively came up with more than 23,000 euros.

Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris (Y4) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Airbus for 44 A320 aircraft, comprising 30 A320neos and 14 A320 family aircraft.

Y4 is the first Mexican airline to order the A320neo, which will be used to continue the airline’s expansion into the US and renew its fleet, Airbus said. The carrier will announce its engine selection at a later date.

Y4, which launched in 2006, operates 33 Airbus aircraft and has a backlog of 15 more, Airbus said.

“Fuel efficiency and reliability are critical to keeping Volaris among the top low-cost carriers in Mexico,” said Volaris CEO Enrique Beltranena. “These new A320s will allow us to maintain the youngest fleet in the country, while further improving our environmental performance,” he said.

WASHINGTON – This weekend marks the beginning of the Thanksgiving holiday travel surge. More than 23 million passengers are expected at the nation's airports, and to make travel a little less hectic, the federal Transportation Security Administration is showcasing some major changes to airline security.

In one key change, kids 12 and younger won't need to take off their sneakers at the screening check points. Although that change has been in place for a couple of months, the Thanksgiving rush is its first major test. TSA chief John Pistole told Fox News that the new approach is driven by the intelligence gathered on potential threats.

“Children themselves, of course, are not terrorists. But we also know that they can be used by terrorists to do bad things, which we've seen overseas," he said. "Fortunately we haven't seen that here."

The Department of Transportation's $900,000 fine Monday against an American Airlines regional affiliate for holding hundreds of passengers on board 15 planes for hours in Chicago earlier this year may only fuel more debate over whether the government's get-tough policy is making air travel better or worse for passengers.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has hailed his department three-hour limit on such tarmac delays a success. Between May 2010 and April 2011, the first 12 months after the time limit was in effect, airlines reported 20 tarmac delays of more than three hours, none of which was more than four hours long.

In contrast, during the 12 months before the rule took effect, airlines had 693 tarmac delays of more than three hours, and 105 of the delays were longer than four hours

But a recent Government Accountability Office report concluded, "The rule appears to be associated with an increased number of cancellations for thousands of additional passengers — far more than DOT initially predicted — including some who might not have experienced a tarmac delay."

With the fine against American Eagle Airlines, the first imposed on an air carrier under new rule, cancellations will shoot up even more, said airline analyst Michael Boyd.

"If there's a 20 percent chance of this happening, an airline will cancel," Boyd said, because of the potential for massive fines.

Ken Quinn, a former Federal Aviation Administration chief counsel who now represents airlines, said the three-hour limit is "having an inadvertent and anti-consumer effect."?

Airlines that violate the rule can be fined as much as $27,500 per passenger, but transportation officials had held off fining air carriers in any of the several dozen instances where the rule has been broken until this week. Industry officials are watching for any action from DOT on a similar incident at the Hartford, Conn., airport during a freak snowstorm in October.

The fine imposed on American Eagle was the largest penalty to be paid by an airline in a consumer protection case not involving civil rights violations, although airlines have paid much higher fines for violating federal safety regulations.

The transportation department "understands that many of these instances are outside of an airline's control," said Steve Lott, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents major carriers. Sometimes, airports have a shortage of Customs officials on hand for international flights, or an airport may not have enough buses to transport passengers safely to the terminal, or experience other emergency shortages.

But officials apparently felt the case involving American Eagle was particularly egregious and wanted to send a warning to other carriers the week before Thanksgiving travel.

American Eagle kept passengers cooped up for more than three hours on 15 flights arriving at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on May 29, according to a settlement agreement between the department and the airline. A total of 608 passengers were aboard the delayed flights.