The world´s largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, has safely landed, having completed its maiden flight. However, more than a year of flight-testing and certification-program work will now follow before the enormous aircraft starts commercial services. Pilots will then have to push the plane, designed to carry as many as 840 passengers, far harder then they have on Wednesday, testing for extremes of speed, altitude and temperature, experts said.

The Spanish government has just given the green light to an air transportation agreement with Cuba in order to increase exchange in that field in the near future and to override a previous bilateral accord that dated back to 1951. The agreement seeks to favor the advance and safety of air transportation between the two nations and beef up international cooperation in this matter in line with the 1944 International Civil Aviation Pact.

Air Canada has been up, up and away so far this year, putting new record highs on the board in terms of seat occupancy (79.8 percent), and climbing notch after notch in seat availability (up 1.7 percent) and passenger-mile ratio (6.4 percent). As far as domestic flights are concerned, Air Canada shot up 3.5 percent. Load factor in the case of the Buenos Aires-Toronto route, for instance, overshot the 82-percent benchmark.

US air company Frontier Airlines is seeking federal approval to expand its service to Mexico with a new flight to Cozumel and two additional flights to Puerto Vallarta. If the Transportation Department approves, service will begin in November, Frontier said in a statement. The low-cost carrier´s plan calls for a nonstop flight between Denver and Cozumel, between Kansas City and Puerta Vallarta, and between Salt Lake City and Puerto Vallarta. The service would be three times a week in each case.

The return of Air Jamaica to Grenada was hailed by Tourism Minister Brenda Hood, who said the island´s tourism sector might have been crippled without a direct service out of the United States. She told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that Air Jamaica was currently the only carrier operating a direct service out of the United States and the carrier had become extremely popular among Grenadians.

Mexican airline Mexicana informed at the Tianguis Turistico trade show, recently held in Acapulco, that it would launch Click Mexicana, the country´s first low-cost carrier with the first flights taking off next June or July. Click Mexicana, a part of Grupo Mexicana, will operate 10 100-seat Fokker-100 airplanes formerly flown by regional carrier AeroCaribe, serving nine cities from its Mexico City hub.