For the first time since the demise of low-cost carrier Western Pacific Airlines, Sea-Tac will have a non-stop connection to Colorado Springs beginning this spring.

Frontier Airlines announced this week it will begin four-times weekly service to the southern Colorado city on May 18. The flight will connect the two cities on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Sept. 16. On the days, Frontier isn’t flying the Sea-Tac-to-Colorado Springs route, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the airline will provide non-stop service from Colorado Springs to Portland.

The airline will serve the route with an Airbus A319 aircraft with 138 seats. …

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The upcoming version of Boeing’s best-selling 737, the 737 Max, will have range as good or better than its rival plane from Airbus, the A320neo, a Boeing vice-president claimed today.

Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s commercial airplanes marketing vice president, told FlightGlobal that the Max will have a non-stop reach that make it more than competitive with Airbus’s new version of its A320 family of single-aisle jets.

In recent weeks, Airbus executives have disparaged the 737 Max, claiming the plane won’t roll out on time and won’t meet Boeing’s claims for fuel mileage or weight.

The 737 Max is now scheduled to …

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India’s financially-ailing flag carrier, Air India, is asking Boeing for up to $1 billion to compensate it for delays in delivering 787 Dreamliners to the airline, sources in India said today.

Reuters India reported the airline is in negotiations with Boeing over the compensation issue.

Air India is already some $4 billion in debt and has asked the Indian government for help to remain afloat. The airline isn’t the only Indian carrier suffering in the current economy. The company’s three other major airlines, Kingfisher, SpiceJet and Jet Airways, saw their stock decline steeply last year as they battled for market …

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Continuing with its year-long publicity and familiarization tour, Boeing’s sixth test 787 Dreamliner today landed in Bangkok after a 7,679-mile non-stop flight from Seattle.

Bangkok is the latest stop on a tour that has already has taken the plane to China, the Mideast, Africa, Ireland and several destinations in the U.S.

The composite-bodied aircraft is some 20 percent more fuel efficient than its metal-bodied predecessors in the twin-engine, mid-sized airline fleet allowing it to fly non-stop between more distant cities.

The aircraft Saturday is scheduled to fly from Bangkok to Singapore for that city’s annual air show where …

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The hotel occupancy rate in the Tacoma area was down 1.6 percent in December, while the rate was down 6.4 percent for the year.

In December, 46.6 percent of rooms were taken in Pierce County, compared to 47.4 percent in December, 2010. Statewide, the occupancy rate of 52.6 percent for December was up 4.7 percent from the same month the year before. For the year, 69.9 percent of rooms were taken, up 3.1 percent from 2010, said Bellevue hospitality consultant Wolfgang Rood in his monthly report.

Most other regions of the state saw increases in December – with downtown Seattle …

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The national airline of Kazahkhstan, Air Astana, this week announced orders for seven Boeing jetliners worth $1.3 billion at list prices.

The airline, which serves the central Asian country, will received four Boeng 767-300ERs in 2013 and 2014 and three new 787 Dreamliners in 2017 and 2019. Boeing has not confirmed the order yet.

The 767 orders will help extend the life of the 767 assembly line until Boeing begins producing 767-based aerial tankers for the U.S. Air Force. The 767 is a mid-sized wide-bodied aircraft first introduced in the early ’80s. It is being replaced in Boeing’s order offerings …

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Boeing acknowledged this week it has found one more glitch in some of its new 787 Dreamliners.

Inspection of aircraft already assembled has identified at least three of the aircraft where structural stiffeners in the aircraft’s aft sections have delaminated the fuselage skin.

Those three aircraft, one for All Nippon Airways and two built for Qatar Airways, are being repaired. The three aircraft had not yet been delivered.

The company said the repairs were relatively easy to accomplish and didn’t pose a short-term safety risk.

The stiffeners are horizontal to the ground in the rear section of the aircraft. The …

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Sea-Tac’s Alaska Airlines is adding two cities and subtracting one from its repertoire of East Coast cities it serves from the Puget Sound area.

The airline announced this morning it will begin serving Philadelphia June 11 and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. on July 16. The airline will end service to Miami at the same time. Alaska has served Miami since 2002.

Before 2001, the nation’s seventh largest airline had confined its route structure to the West Coast, Alaska and Mexico. Since then, Alaska has reached out to serve Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Orlando and now Philadelphia and Fort Lauderdale …

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