Airlines | featured news

If it's an April Fools' Day joke, it's an awfully elaborate one. If not, Samoa Air has become the first airline in the world to do what was previously unthinkable: Charge passengers by weight. Yes, you get weighed. By a stranger. At the airport.

The airline business is transforming into a profitable industry, thanks to fewer flights and higher fares. Mergers have helped bring rationality to the market, Smisek told an aviation conference Thursday. For far too long, he said, too many airlines were chasing too few passengers.

A judge on Wednesday approved AMR Corp's plan to merge with US Airways Group , a step toward creating the world's largest airline. AMR, parent of American Airlines and in bankruptcy since November 2011, must still construct a formal restructuring plan incorporating the merger that meets court and creditor approval before the airline can emerge from bankruptcy.

Should overweight passengers pay more for their flights than skinny fliers? One Norwegian economist thinks so. In an article in this month's Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Bharat P. Bhatta writes that "All passengers are not alike in terms of their weight and the space they take in a plane." Weight and space, he said, are the major concerns on board an aircraft."

The International Air Transport Association credits "a backdrop of improved optimism for global economic prospects" for raising expectations above its previous forecast of $8.4 billion in profits for this year.

The subject of CEO compensation looks like it will get time under the microscope in American Airlines' Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. The U.S. trustee overseeing the bankruptcy case of American parent AMR has filed an objection to the $19.8 million severance package that current CEO Tom Horton is set to get when he leaves the company next year, according to Reuters. Also included in the objection are severance and retention payments slated for other company employees.

If Kerry Drake missed his connecting flight, he wouldn't get to the hospital in time to say goodbye to his mother. Drake got the news on the morning of January 24 that his mother, who had been ill for years from rheumatoid arthritis and had been especially sick the last four months, was dying.

Some family members of Sept. 11 terror victims are angry over new flight-safety rules that will permit small knives on planes. The head of the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday that air passengers will now be allowed to carry folding knives with blades that are 2.36 inches or less. The rules go into effect next month. They'll also permit souvenir baseball bats, golf clubs and other sports equipment. Debra Burlingame says small pocketknives can be just as lethal as the box cutters that are still banned.

Airline passengers will be able to carry small knives, souvenir baseball bats, golf clubs and other sports equipment onto planes beginning next month under a policy change announced Tuesday by the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

Delta Air Lines' president said the carrier this year expects to achieve its first first-quarter profit since 2000.