ExecuJet Cambridge, the company’s first full-service UK FBO, has appointed Karen Hein-Jones to the position of FBO Manager.

Karen joins from another FBO company at Stansted Airport where she held the position of Operations Controller for five years having  started her career in aviation as cabin crew with Monarch Airlines in 1986. In her new role, Karen will report to Nicole Gut, Director European FBOs working alongside a strong team committed to maintaining ExecuJet’s prestigious world class business aviation FBO brand.

“I feel very privileged and excited to be part of the highly respected ExecuJet team and look forward to using my knowledge and experience to play a key role in developing business aviation at Cambridge,” Karen commented.

“We are delighted to welcome Karen to the team at our new state-of-the-art FBO at Cambridge,” said Nicole Gut. “We are looking forward to developing business aviation at our first full-service FBO in the UK to make it an internationally renowned, dedicated business and VIP centre of choice. Having someone with Karen’s experience and knowledge will help us tremendously in realising our plans, especially as London will host the Olympics this year and we anticipate an extremely busy summer at Cambridge.”

Cambridge Airport is one of just five regional airports in the UK capable of accepting business and passenger services with a 24/7 slot allocation during the 2012 Olympics period. ExecuJet will be able to support Cambridge Airport’s ambitious Olympic traffic plans, by bringing its experience of the South African World Cup and – with its extended FBO network – will be able to help with the additional temporary roles which the Airport will need to maintain levels of service during the extended traffic and opening hours of the 2012 London Summer Olympics. ExecuJet Cambridge is already taking bookings for the Olympic period.

Lufthansa has announced the launch of a new daily service from Birmingham to Berlin.

The new flights will commence on 3 June 2012 and operate daily to Berlin-Brandenburg “Willy Brandt” Airport.

Announcing the new service Karsten Benz, Lufthansa Vice President Sales and Services Europe, said: “The addition of direct flights to Berlin reaffirms the importance of Birmingham within the Lufthansa network. The opening of the new Berlin-Brandenburg ‘Willy Brandt’ Airport next year provides new opportunities for Lufthansa to increase its offering to Birmingham passengers.”

Wizz Air has announced the addition of a fourth Airbus A320 to its Warsaw base from April 2012.

The extra aircraft will allow the airline to add a new Warsaw to Stavanger service and increase the number of flights it operates to Luton Airport.

From April 2012, the airline will operate 25 flights per week – up from the current 21.

Continental Airlines and LOT Polish Airlines, both Star Alliance members, have announced they have signed a codesharing agreement on flights between select destinations in the United States and Europe.

Flights covered by the codesharing agreement are LOT’s trans-Atlantic flights between Continental’s New York hub, Newark Liberty International Airport, and LOT’s Warsaw hub, as well as on LOT-operated flights linking Warsaw with London Heathrow, Frankfurt and Amsterdam that connect with Continental flights between those airports and New York Newark.

Subject to government approval, Continental will also place its code on LOT-operated flights between Warsaw and Paris Charles de Gaulle that connect with Continental’s New York Newark to Paris flights.

Additionally, LOT is placing its “LO” code on Continental-operated flights between New York/Newark and Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco and Washington Dulles that connect with LOT’s trans-Atlantic flights between Warsaw and New York Newark.

To mark its 75th anniversary, Aer Lingus has unveiled a new retro-painted aircraft in the former 1960s ‘Irish International’ livery.

The airline, a new Airbus A320- EI-DVM, MSN 4634 series, named ‘St Coleman’, marks 75 years of flying by the airline – its first flight took place on 27 May 1936 between Baldonnel and Bristol using a six-seater De Havilland 84 Dragon named Iolar.

Following the acquisition of MGP Worldwide Ltd in July this year, leading Gatwick meet and greet airport car parking provider, Help-Me-Park has reported record breaking Q3 results, along with a record breaking Q4 forecast.

Despite much of the travel market experiencing the toughest of times, as many businesses struggle to keep their heads above water, Help-Me-Park continue to increase business by 50% year-on-year since its launch in 2004. This has been down to clearly identifying their market, understanding customer needs, a skillful business approach, well planned acquisitions and the importance of working the internet effectively; far more than just ‘being online’.

Whilst much of Help-Me-Park’s success is down to good old fashioned hard work and first rate customer service – the Gatwick parking specialists boast 98% customer satisfaction – the company’s new business strategy targets maintaining high ranking search engine optimisation as priority.

A large part of the success for this year comes as a result of their acquisition of highly coveted parking provider, MGP Worldwide Ltd. The Gatwick and Heathrow parking specialist was desirable to Help-Me-Park due to MGP’s targeted web presence, something that mirrors Help-Me-Park’s own high profile online new business strategy.

Having identified that the creation of own sourced bookings is the biggest and most important driver of online bookings for airport parking, Help-Me-Park now own leading valet parking booking websites, ABCGatwick.co.uk and MGPHeathrow.co.uk, both of which rank highly in the sought after Gatwick and Heathrow valet parking business for search terms around help-me-park.

Speaking about the new business strategy, Barry Babister, Help-Me-Park’s Managing Director says “Our strategy is based on creating our own source of bookings, as we know this is the fastest growing sector of the airport parking industry. We simply cannot sell our parking if our parking cannot be found on the web. By purchasing MGP Worldwide Ltd we have effectively doubled our web presence.”

These two sites work in conjunction with Help-Me-Park’s own hugely successful booking engine. By having the three sites now means customers can get even greater value for money airport parking, as monies are freed up from third party commissions on external sites, and instead reinvested into Help-Me-Park to offer high quality, cheaper airport parking via bookings on its own sites, for car parking at its own Park Mark awarded car parking facilities.

Speaking about Help-Me-Park’s new business growth, Operations Director, Sean McCarthy says “We are pleased with the development of the business, which enables us to maintain our own independent revenue streams, whilst continuing to improve our service to our clients, as well as maintaining the excellent repeat business record we boast.”

An Orlando to Manchester Virgin Atlantic flight made an unscheduled stop in Canada after a drunken row erupted by a family travelling onboard.

The family row between a man, his wife and father-in-law caused the pilot of the Boeing 747 to land in Gander, Newfoundland, after his cabin crew reported the disturbance.

451 passengers were delayed by 3 hours as Canadian police arrested the drunken man, a Mr Roy Anthony Heaps, before continuing with its flight to Manchester.

Mr Heaps was made to stand trial in Canada and was charged with uttering threats, assault and interfering with cabin crew.

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Heathrow Express, the fastest way to travel between central London and Heathrow Airport, has awarded the winner of their family photo competition with a luxury weekend away.

Richard Robinson, Heathrow Express Managing Director, said: “Julie’s entry, entitled ‘Super-Skeltons on tour’ encompasses everything we were looking for in a family holiday photograph – a family having fun. We hope that Heathrow Express continues to provide a feeling of ease for the Skelton’s and other families when travelling on holiday.”

Winner Julie Skelton said: “We were visiting the Lake District and had to go and find the village that has our surname. As luck would have it there’s also a handy signpost! It may not be a technically-perfect photo but it always makes me smile.”

Julie and her family have been awarded with a weekend away in the UK to one of a Luxury Family Hotels of their choice.

Newcastle Airport revealed that it seized over 180,000 cigarettes across three different flights last week.

Passenger checks on three separate Newcastle flights, one from Dubai and two from the Canary Islands resulted in the discovery.

The first discovery found over 20,000 cigarettes on a Teesside man in his 20s when arriving at Newcastle Airport from Dubai. Just days later a group of passengers, four men and two women, who were travelling together, were stopped carrying over 110,000 cigarettes. Then a further discovery was made when a man returning on a Canary Island flight was stopped carrying 48,000 cigarettes.

All seized cigarettes will be destroyed.

Passengers at Heathrow will now have the chance to get up close with Britain’s top Olympians as they are immortalised in works of art.

The High Performance Art Exhibition features sport and Olympic-themed art by leading and emerging British artists and will be based in Terminal 5 until the end of January next year.

Heathrow will be the officially designated airport of the 2012 Olympics and is expecting to welcome over 125,000 visitors for the games. The exhibition forms part of Heathrow’s expo programme, which showcases the best of British culture and commerce to provide a unique and unexpected dimension to passengers’ journeys.

The exclusive new exhibition features 50 works of art, which passengers will have the opportunity to buy and have delivered direct to their homes. The prices range from a few hundred to several thousand pounds. All the proceeds will be split between the artist and the British Paralympic Charity.

The High Performance Art Exhibition is a follow up to the highly successful Art of Sport exhibition, which raised approximately £6,000 for SportsAid earlier this year.

The featured works of art consist of a diverse range of styles and are a combination of paintings, photographs and sculptures. Among the current and former Olympians depicted is Paralympic gold medallist Lee Pearson whose torso has been sculptured from bronze by Lorne McKean.

A second expo space will be used to showcase several sculptures and direct passengers to the rest of the exhibition. Around seven million passengers will pass through Terminal 5 while the exhibition is running.

Sarah Lewis, account manager for sponsorship and experience at Heathrow said: “This exciting new exhibition honours the best of Britain’s sportsmen and women as we eagerly countdown to the 2012 London Olympics. We are constantly looking at ways to make every journey better at Heathrow and provide passengers with an immediate taste of British sport and culture, and believe that this art exhibition will be as captivating as it is unexpected.”

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