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Budget Airline Introduces Child-free Zone

Singapore Airlines' budget airline Scoot has introduced a child-free zone on its flights. Children under 12 are banned from the "Scootinsilence" cabin, located behind business class and with more leg room than economy. Passengers can upgrade to the zone for £9.

Rival Asian budget carrier AirAsia X introduced a similar child-free zone on its flights earlier this year.

Accor Introduces Free WiFi

Accor hotels are now offering free Wi-Fi access across their 194 properties in the UK and Ireland, including its Ibis, Mercure, Novotel, Pullman and Mgallery brands. Guests visiting the hotels can make use of the new service in guestrooms, meeting rooms and across all public areas.

The hotels will offer free Wi-Fi to 512K. Premium high speed Wi-Fi is also available to buy in many properties using fibre optic internet.

Heathrow Reveals Plans for Third Runway

Heathrow has unveiled three options for additional runways at the airport, all of which it claims are quicker and cheaper than building a new hub airport for the southeast. Each option would raise the capacity at Heathrow to 740,000 flights a year (from the current limit of 480,000), which would cater for 130 million passengers a year.

The plans, submitted to the Airports Commission which has been set up to examine the need for more airport capacity in the UK, will see a third runway placed to the north, northwest or southwest of the existing airport. Each would deliver extra air capacity by 2025-9 and would cost from £14 billion to £18 billion to build. Of the three, Heathrow favours the two westerly options because they would have less of an impact on the local community from aircraft noise and fewer homes would have to be bought under compulsory purchases.

Germany Gets Green Light to Use Channel Tunnel

Railway giant Deutsche Bahn has been given the go-ahead to run its 200 mph trains through the Channel Tunnel, leading to direct services between London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

The decision by authorities follows three years of negotiation and a trial run of a German bullet train in October 2010, but the service is unlikely to be launched before 2016. The plan is to run three services a day in each direction on a new generation 16 carriage German cross-channel bullet train. The trains will split in Brussels, with eight carriages heading to Rotterdam and then Amsterdam. The other eight carriages will head to Cologne and then Frankfurt.



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