The first Air France A380 superjumbo took off from Paris on Friday, bound for New York with 380 passengers who had bid a total euro300,000 in a charity auction organized by the airline. "It's a dream," said Francois Etienne, a 64-year old aviation fan as he queued up to board Flight AF 380, heading to JFK airport.

Astoria Financial Corporation, announced that it will participate in the FBR Capital Markets 2009 Fall Investor Conference on Tuesday, December 1, 2009. A simultaneous webcast of Mr. Redman's presentation, including the slide presentation and any follow-up questions and answers, will be available on the Company's website, www.astoriafederal.com and archived through Friday, December 11, 2009.

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., Nov. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Astoria Financial Corporation, the holding company for Astoria Federal Savings and Loan Association, announced today that their Boards of Directors appointed John R. Chrin to serve as a director of both the Company and Astoria Federal effective December 16, 2009.

Air France-KLM said Wednesday it will cut 1,700 jobs next year after Europe's largest airline posted a bigger than expected net loss for the second quarter. The Paris-based carrier said it would propose a "voluntary redundancy program" at its Air France airline in order to make the cuts, which will be effective in 2010.

A £4bn merger between British Airways and Iberia looked imminent last night, with British investors giving up some of their share of the split to soothe concerns in Madrid about BA's huge pension deficit. The current market value of the airlines indicates there should be a 60/40 division of the enlarged group in BA's favour.

The CEO of American Airlines says Japan Airlines would be taking a risk and suffer financially if it breaks ties with American and joins an alliance with Delta Air Lines. Gerard Arpey said Monday that American and its partner airlines "produce hundreds of millions of dollars of value for JAL" and want to strengthen their ties.

Today's appaling figures from British Airways put the flag carrier on course for its second consecutive year of record losses. The latest deficit comes in the week that Ryanair reported it nearly doubled profits over the same period to €387 million. BA is paying the price for running a "full-service" airline during a recession. But how fatally holed is BA? --Waterloo.

Executives with SkyTeam alliance said Thursday they want Japan Airlines to join their group and suggested that doing so could be a boon for the troubled carrier. "We would be keenly interested to see whether JAL would be interested to join SkyTeam as a potential partner," said Leo van Wijk, chairman of SkyTeam, one of three major alliances of global airlines.