Air China is expanding its Australian presence with direct flights to Brisbane from December 11.

China’s national carrier will fly from Beijing Capital Airport to the Queensland capital four times weekly using an Airbus A330-200 equipped with 198  economy class and 28 business class seats.

Air China’s general manager in Australia, Rui Jei, said the new flight was in response to increasing demand from the business and leisure market.

The Star Alliance carrier already flies to Sydney and Melbourne in Australia as well as Auckland in New Zealand.

The new service, expected to be worth $A190m to Queensland’s economy, is the second to be negotiated with a Chinese carrier as a result of the Queensland Government-backed “Connecting with Asia’ initiative.

Shanghai-based China Eastern, a Qantas partner, recently announced it was expanding to a daily Brisbane service in November.

The Air China flights will leave Brisbane on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays and give travellers access to Air China’s network across six continents. These include 18 points in Europe, nine points in North America and a long list of destinations in China and Asia.

China’s carriers have been increasing their footprint in Australia as Chinese tourism to the country continues to grow. Chinese visitor numbers as of July, 2017 were almost 25 per cent higher than for the same month in 2016 and they tend to be among the higher spending tourists  in Australia.

Last year, Air China was one of six Chinese carriers to sign a memorandum of understanding aimed at taking a coordinated approach on increasing capacity to Australia as well as with tourism marketing and promotional activities.

The other signatories were China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan Airlines, Sichuan Airlines and Xiamen Air.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said securing new direct flights from one of China’s largest markets would provide a boost to tourism and local jobs.

Britain’s easyJet is tackling one of the big risks of using a budget airlines as part of a travel itinerary: connecting between carriers.

“Worldwide by easyJet” is being advertised as the first global airline connections service by a European low-cost carrier and aims to counter the advantage legacy carriers have with interline and codeshare agreements.

The legacy carrier agreements allow an airline to sell passengers a combined ticket for multiple sectors and offer some protection for customers in terms of guaranteeing to get them to their destination.

That means that If the first plane is late on a codeshare flight, for example, the partner airline will get the passenger on another flight.

However, a passenger who books separate tickets on a full-service airline and a budget carrier can be left in limbo if the first plane is late. This is because the journey usually involves two entirely separate contracts.

EasyJet is hoping to open up a new 70m-passenger market segment and says its new system will replicate codeshare and interline agreements using self-connect and sales partnerships through a virtual hub.

Read our review of easyJet.

This will offer the same sort of connectivity “but more simply and efficiently”, it says.

Launch agreements with Canada’s  WestJet and Norwegian at London Gatwick mean the new system already connects easyJet’s  extensive European network with flights to North and South America as well as Asia.

easyJet says it is in advanced talks with other airlines, including carriers in the Middle east and far east. Plans are also underway to expand the system through other airports such as such as Milan Malpensa, Geneva, Amsterdam, Paris Charles De Gaulle and Barcelona.

The Gatwick arrangement can be used to connect to other easyJet flights and uses the GatwickConnects product to make chores such as transferring  luggage easier.

Importantly, it also insures against missed connections with replacement flights, meals and hotels.

The budget carrier also does not expect any ramifications from the new model for its operating model.

It says Worldwide by easyJet will be subject to a two-hour 30 minute minimum connection time to give customers time to transfer between flights and terminals.

Passengers who miss a connecting flight will be transferred to the next available flight.

“Around 70 million passengers flying through an easyJet airport each year are connecting on to other flights, mainly long haul, and it is this market segment that Worldwide by easyJet will open up for us,’’ easyJet chief executive Carolyn McCall said in the airline’s announcement.

“Because of easyJet’s strong positions at Europe’s leading airports and our customer focus long haul carriers have been asking to work with easyJet for some time and the new technology platform has now allowed us to do so.

“Our own customers and those who fly with other airlines, short and long haul, have also asked us to make it easier to connect with easyJet flights and this simple booking platform makes it easy for them to do so.

“By opening this new market segment this now means that easyJet can access a greater range of passengers flying across Europe.”

Flights to and from Auckland International Airport are facing several days of disruption after the sole pipeline supplying the airport with aviation fuel began leaking.

International flights are being diverted to pick up fuel and some services have been cancelled as a result of the break in the Refining New Zealand pipeline between a refinery and the airport.

“Due to fuel shortage in Auckland, oil companies are limiting the amount of fuel being supplied to airlines at Auckland airport,’’ Auckland airport said in a tweet Sunday.

Air New Zealand said it was working through the implications for its operations in coming days.

Measures put in place include cancelling some domestic and trans-Tasman services to consolidate passenger loads and ensuring planes were flying with the maximum amount of uel out of Wellington and Christchurch.

The airline is also requiring some long-haul services to and from Asia and North America to make refuelling stops at Pacific or Australian airports.

“Unfortunately, this is an industry-wide issue caused by the physical failure of an essential fuel pipeline,’’ AirNZ chief operations & integrity standards officer David Morgan said.

“We are doing all we can to minimise the impact on our operations and on our customers, however, we do ask for patience and understanding at this time.  We thank our customers in advance for their cooperation.”

New Zealand media reported that about 20 flights had been cancelled Sunday and said the pipeline had been out of action since Thursday. One report said the pipeline had been damaged by a digging machine.

New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English told reporters in Auckland he had instructed government ministers to work as closely as possible with oil companies and to offer any assistance they may need.

The New Zealand Herald quoted oil company executives as saying the pipeline was likely to be shut down for several days, with one saying it could be 10 to 14 days.

Low-cost carrier Ryanair could face a compensation bill worth tens of millions of pounds after a decision to cancel up to 50 flights a day to offset staffing problems and improve its on-time performance.

The airline announced the cancellations Friday and said they would extend for six weeks after system-wide punctuality fell below 80 per cent in the first two weeks of September.

The Independent newspaper reported 170 flights were cancelled over the weekend affecting 30,000 customers.

The cancellations will be in effect until the end of October and come as the budget carrier recently introduced new cabin baggage restrictions for many customers in a bid to reduce delays.

Ryanair operates more than 2500 daily flights and says the cancellations account for about 2 per cent of its flying.

It blamed the fall in on-time performance on a combination of air traffic control capacity delays and strikes, weather disruptions and a change in staff holiday allocations.

It said it had increased holiday allocations to pilots and cabin crew in the nine months to December, 2017 as it moves its holiday year to match the calendar year from January 1.

The change in holiday policy created a backlog in crew leave that needed to be taken before December 31 as the airline operated  a record summer schedule that saw combined July-August passenger numbers top 25 million.

But the tighter crewing numbers and the impact of ATC capacity restrictions in the UK, Germany and Spain, as well as French ATC strikes and adverse weather, saw on-time performance decline from 90 per cent to under 80 per cent over the past two weeks.

This punctuality was unacceptable to Ryanair and its customers, the airline said.

“By cancelling less than 2 per cent of our flying program over the next six weeks, until our winter schedule starts in early November, we can improve the operational resilience of our schedules and restore punctuality to our annualised target of 90 per cent,’’ Ryanair’s Robin Kiely said in a statement.

Kiely apologised to affected customers and said the airline would be doing its utmost to arrange alternative flights “and/or full refunds for them”.

But those customers are also entitled to compensation of up to 400 euros ($US478) each under European law.

The Independent estimated the bill could top £100 ($US136m) million if every customer claimed.