SYDNEY, April 2, 2008 (AFP) - Laser pointers could be declared prohibited weapons in Australia after a series of 'attacks' on pilots of airliners coming in to land at Sydney airport, officials said Wednesday.

BEIJING, April 2, 2008 (AFP) - China's aviation watchdog has vowed to punish pilots engaged in rare industrial action that allegedly included refusing to land planes, state press said Wednesday.

In a meeting on Tuesday, the Civil Aviation Administration of China vowed to strip pilots of their licenses for refusing to land their planes on schedule, the Beijing News reported.

FARNBOROUGH, England, March 31, 2008 (AFP) - The pilot of an executive jet that crashed in southern England, killing all five people on board, was hailed as a hero Monday for preventing more casualties on the ground.

BAGHDAD, March 31, 2008 (AFP) - Iraq said on Monday it has signed a contract worth 5.5 billion dollars with Boeing to buy 40 new aircraft, with an option to purchase 15 more.

Baghdad had also signed a 400-million-dollar contract with Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier to purchase 10 passenger planes, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

KUWAIT CITY, March 31, 2008 (AFP) - Kuwait's private low-cost Jazeera Airways said on Monday it will provide passengers with inflight mobile telephone services from later this year.

The service will also include SMS text messages and Internet, the company said, without giving an exact date for the launch.

BEIJING, March 31, 2008 (AFP) - The maiden flight of China's first passenger airliner has been postponed for at least six months due to delays in the development of key systems, the aircraft maker said Monday.

The first flight of the ARJ-21, initially planned for March, has been put off to September or October, executives of the AVIC I Commercial Aircraft Co. Ltd. told AFP.

SYDNEY, March 31, 2008 (AFP) - Virgin Blue's new carrier V Australia will fly daily between Sydney and Los Angeles when it takes to the skies in December, the airline's founder Richard Branson said Monday.

LONDON, March 30, 2008 (AFP) - A Continental Airlines flight from New York arrived at London's Heathrow airport Sunday morning, marking the beginning of the ground-breaking 'Open Skies' agreement to free up transatlantic air travel.

OSLO, March 30, 2008 (AFP) - Three people were killed and two others injured when a Russian helicopter crashed Sunday on Norway's Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic, Norwegian emergency services said.

'There is a Russian helicopter that crashed during landing ... on the Svalbard,' Sten Nikolaisen, an emergency services spokesman, told AFP.

WARSAW, March 30, 2008 (AFP) - Border checks at airports in nine Schengen area newcomers, mostly from the ex-communist bloc, vanished at midnight Sunday, allowing 400 million people passport-free travel in the 24-country zone.