Any flight that travels over the country affected

The man who pays his way

Each week we invite three companies to offer us their best deal for a specific break. Today: Brazil for Rio Carnival. Prices are per person, based on two sharing, and include 10 nights' B&B, flights from Heathrow to Rio in February 2013, transfers and a one-day Sambadrome ticket.

A French investigating judge is examining evidence that the Rio-Paris airbus crash might have been prevented if the pilots had been briefed on a terrifying incident the previous year.

Last week we published a picture that purported to be the former head of Air France-KLM, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, who had been asked by the French government to return a £320,000 pay out he received when he left the company.

A busy city airport had to be closed for nearly an hour today after a problem with a landing British Airways plane.

Stardust touches this year's Fringe as Hollywood actors Julian Sands and John Malkovich collaborate on A Celebration of Harold Pinter at the Pleasance. But even big stars have to slum it sometimes; Air France lost Malkovich's bags, so he was forced to wash the clothes he was wearing when he arrived for rehearsals with Sands, whom he is directing. Their publicist walked into the kitchen of the flat that the duo are sharing to find the 57-year-old American stripped to the waist and elbow-deep in soap suds. "He is," she said through her blushes, "still a fine figure of a man."

Q. I am visiting my daughter in New Zealand for two months during this winter. As a requirement of our household insurance policy with Churchill, we are required to turn off all services – gas, electricity and water. This would disable our burglar alarms and the central heating, risking frozen pipes. MB, by email.

French air crash investigators were accused yesterday of "protecting" Airbus after it emerged that implicit criticism of the plane-maker was sliced from last week's report on the Rio-Paris disaster.

Inadequate pilot training by Air France and mistakes by a young co-pilot contributed to a mid-Atlantic Airbus disaster in June 2009, an official report indicated yesterday.

An error by a junior pilot may have sent an Air France airbus into a three and a half minute spiral into the South Atlantic which killed all 228 aboard in June 2009.

The flight recorders from an Air France plane that crashed nearly two years ago show that the captain only arrived in the cockpit after the plane had begun its fateful 3 1/2-minute descent, officials said today.

Pilot error is emerging as the most likely cause of the crash of the Air France Rio-Paris airbus which plunged into the South Atlantic in June 2009, killing all 228 people on board.