Ryanair announced it would open its 49^th base at Palma Airport in March 2012 with 4 based aircraft operating 47 routes (17 new), delivering 2.8 million passengers a year.

In addition to Ryanair’s existing 30 Palma routes, the airline will open 17 new routes from Palma to Aarhus, Cork, Gothenburg, Haugesund, Kaunas, Krakow, Maastricht, Malaga, Magdeburg, Marseille, Oslo, Paris Beauvais, Poznan, Santander, Santiago, Stockholm, and Tampere.

Norwegian launches 34 new routes from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden to destinations all over Europe. The new routes will commence with the summer schedule starting in March 2012.

New routes from Norway:
Oslo: Ajaccio/Corsica, Andøya, Bratislava, Kiev, Reykjavik, Skiathos
Bergen: Edinburgh
Sandefjord/Torp: Antalya, Bergen, Berlin, Evenes, Las Palmas, Nice, Palma/Mallorca, Trondheim
Trondheim: Berlin

New routes from Sweden:
Stockholm: Amsterdam, Corfu, Krakow, Riga, Vaasa
Gothenburg: London Gatwick

New routes from Denmark:
Copenhagen: Belgrade, Bratislava, Burgas, Marseille, Milan, Riga, Szczecin
Aalborg: Berlin

New routes from Finland:
Helsinki: Corfu, Palma/Mallorca, Paris, Rhodes

Photo by Jeffrey Schäfer

Indonesia’s Lion Air has agreed to buy 230 Boeing 737 aircraft with a list price of $21.7 billion with options for another 150! The White House said on Thursday.

Officials said the Lion Air order was for 201 Boeing 737MAX aircraft and 29 Next Generation 737ER planes. With 230 airplanes at a list price of $21.7 billion, this order represents the largest commercial airplane agreement ever for Boeing

The Boeing 737MAX in Lion Air livery (image: Boeing)

Dutch lowfare carrier Transavia.com celebrates their 45th birthday today. On 16 november 1966 the first flight on a Douglas DC-6  from Amsterdam to Naples was a fact.

On Transavia’s website are special birthdayfares bookable!

easyJet has today announced that it will operate a new route from London Luton to Reykjavik in Iceland.

The inaugural flight will take off from London Luton on 27 March 2012 operating three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays with an Airbus A319.

easyJet will operate the A319 aircraft to Reykjavik

On november 6 the first ANA B787 (JA801A), operating a flight from Tokyo to Okayama, could not be confirmed main gear down short before landing and made a tower fly-by.

The second attempt was succesfull and the plane landed safely at Okayama airport.

photo by flyteam.jp

A LOT Polish Airlines Boeing 767 made a belly-landing at Warsaw (WAW) airport this afternoon. Flight LOT16 from Newark with 220 passengers and 10 crewmembers on board, encountered serious problems with the landing gear. Just after take-off at Newark the crew indicated an error, but the dispatchcentre of LOT advised the

crew to continue to Warsaw. Underneath some pictures:

Some details according The Aviation Herald:

A LOT Polish Airlines Boeing 767-300, registration SP-LPC performing flight LO-16 from Newark,NJ (USA) to Warsaw (Poland) with 220 passengers and 10 crew, was on approach to Warsaw’s runway 33 when the crew aborted the approach at 3000 feet reporting an unsafe gear indication for all three gear struts at about 13:10L (12:10Z) and entered a holding to troubleshoot the problem for about 80 minutes. Visual verification by fighter aircraft showed none of the gear struts was down, attempts to lower the gear alternatively failed. The aircraft subsequently performed a text book gear up landing on runway 33 at 14:40L (13:40Z), the aircraft was evacuated after stand still. No injuries occurred.

Photo by Robert Szymczak

Photo by Pawel Guray

Photo by Damian Lesniak

Spanish lowcost carrier Vueling will expand their Barcelona network in february 2012 and introduce a bunch of new destinations. One of their remarkable new destinations is Groningen in the Netherlands.

Others are: Aalborg, Brest, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Strasbourg, Florence, Lyon, Marseille and Nice.

Remarkable; the route Barcelona - Groningen

The last Martinair (MP) passenger flight ever has landed in Amsterdam. The Boeing 767, tailnumber PH-MCM from Havana, landed around 13:15 local time in Amsterdam.

A special welcome was organised at gate Delta 4 where the firebrigade was waiting with a water salute. Also lot’s of other airport employees were there to see this happening!

Photo by member B767-300ER, Scramble Forum

Dutch airline Amsterdam Airlines has some serious financial troubles. Lease-company ILFC has confiscated one of the Airbus A320 planes in Woensdrecht (WOE), PH-AAZ. Another one; PH-AAX is undergoing maintenance in Istanbul (IST) and after that it will also be confiscated by ILFC. The only remaining plane, PH-AAY is still flying around.

Source: Scramble.nl forum