Philadelphia International runs plane crash drill
 November 17, 1997 Web posted at: 12:51 p.m. EST (1751 GMT)
     PHILADELPHIA (CNN) -- What looked chillingly like an airplane
 crash Sunday morning at Philadelphia International Airport was only
 a drill. Airport officials say the two-hour exercise on Runway 17 -
 - complete with smoke, wreckage, and evacuees -- simulated a crash
 between two speeding airplanes. Every three years the airport holds
 the drill to evaluate its emergency response. About 90 volunteers
 participated in the fake crash. Afterward, airport officials graded
 their performance. The last airplane crash to occur at the airport
 was in 1976. Eighty-six people were hurt.
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  British Airways launches cut-price carrier
  New CEO compares airline to IKEA furniture brand:
 'quality at a great price'
     LONDON -- British Airways said Monday it would launch a low-fare
 airline next year to pick up a slice of Europe's growing budget
 travel market.
     BA said it hoped the airline - pitched against established bud-
 get operators Ryanair, easyJet, AirUK and Debonair -- would do for
 air travel what giant Swedish retailer IKEA had done for home
 furnishings.
    "I feel very strongly that Europe is ready for an airline brand
 which is in the same category as IKEA is for furniture. It's modern,
 good quality but it's at a great price and you know what you are
 going to get," Barbara Cassani, chief executive of the as-yet un-
 named budget airline, told Reuters.
                          A pilot flight?
 The new airline will operate from early next year out of Stansted
 airport, north of London, serving cities in Italy, Spain, Scandi-
 navia, France and Germany with eight secondhand leased Boeing 737-
 300 aircraft. More than 150 new jobs will be created in the first
 year.
     Cassani said her new airline, being developed under the project
 name Operation Blue Sky, hoped to use BA's brand name to persuade
 customers of its reliability and quality.  She denied BA's customer
 base would be confused or diluted by the budget airline whose name
 will be announced in the next two months.
     BA was coy about targets or costs but analysts said the plans
 appeared modest and the contribution to the group's bottom line
 would be insignificant initially. Moreover, BA would be in a posi-
 tion to ditch the venture if the market proved hard to tap.
     "I think they are experimenting, testing the water. If you look
 at the size of the operation -- they talk about 150 new jobs -- and
 apply the same sales revenue per head as Ryanair, it implies an
 operating revenue of between 30 million pounds (US$50.7 million) and
 35 million pounds (US$59 million) in the first year of operation,"
 Andrew Light, airline analyst at Salomon Brothers said.
             Out of Stansted, instead of Heathrow
     BA said the new airline would be run as a separate business and
 would not affect its expansion plans at London's two biggest air-
 ports Heathrow and Gatwick.
     Analysts said the choice of Stansted would enable it to sidestep
 friction about slots and access at Heathrow which has dogged BA's
 planned alliance with American Airlines.
     They suggested the threat of effective legal action from smaller
 carriers worried about BA dominating the bargain market had
 diminished. EasyJet earlier this year mulled legal action but was
 unavailable for immediate comment on Monday.
     BA said it would recognize unions and had already agreed for the
 British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) to represent Operation
 Blue Sky's pilots.  BALPA welcomed BA's move towards recognition
 which it said was "in sharp contrast" to other low fare airlines.
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