INTERIM PROFITS at Ryanair, the budget airline, soared to record levels despite a bitter price war in the European market and the recent weakness of sterling against the Irish punt.

Sir: There is far more to complain about in the way our airlines treat their customers than the inexcusable over-booking antics mentioned by Professor Peter Mathieson (letter, 6 November).

THE BANK of England plans to provide emergency help to the banking system in the run-up to 1 January 2000 to cope with an expected surge in demand from the general public for cash.

NO, IT'S not Andy Warhol. He eulogised commercial design; these paintings degrade it. Look closer. Whereas Warhol painted meticulously precise copies of consumer products such as the Campbell's soup can, celebrating them as art, Peter Liversidge copies advertisements for precision products such as Rolex watches in a clumsy way that destroys confidence in them.

The entrepreneur who runs Regus, the company that provides temporary office space to travelling executives, was worth more than pounds 250m yesterday after the company received a $100m (pounds 60m) cash injection.

THE low-price airline war intensified yesterday with rivals to British Airways' newly launched discount flight company, Go, cutting their fares.

Call me stingy (as I'm sure the family will, when we exchange presents), but this column's modest end-of-term prizegiving ceremony is about to begin.

Today, in the little town of Santiago Sacatepequez in Guatemala, the skies will be filled with vibrantly coloured kites. Marianna Minns watches the celebrations there for All Saints' Day.

EasyJet Airline's founder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, has revealed that he plans to take his no-frills carrier public in late 1998 or 1999. Mr Haji-Ioannou, a Greek shipping heir who started easyJet with pounds 5m of family capital in late 1995, said the UK airline turned its first annual profit in the financial year ending September.

The Finnish are at the start when it comes to wining passengers on planes. Their national airline, Finnair has been voted best airline for wine in a survey carried out by Business Traveller magazine.

Two airliners each carrying approximately 350 people flew within 300ft of one another over Los Angeles, California, yesterday after a pilot apparently failed to follow instructions from the control tower at the city's LAX airport.

Hundreds of flights to and from Heathrow airport were delayed yesterday after a plane carrying 45 people crash-landed.

The Department of Transport's Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) has opened an inquiry into a serious near miss incident over Essex last week, in which a passenger jet dropped to within 100 feet of the track of another airliner circling below it. Both were waiting to land at London's Heathrow Airport.

Two airliners came close to a potential mid-air collision as they were on approach to Heathrow Airport, London, a union said last night.