Lucky fliers snag faulty Delta fares

An error on Delta Air Lines’ website produced super low fares Thursday morning before the problem was corrected a couple of hours later.

The fares were as much as 90 percent below regular ticket prices.

Delta passengers who took advantage of the mistake said on social media sites that they had booked such deals as $51 for a one-way ticket from Minneapolis to Baton Rouge, La., and $35 from Raleigh, N.C., to Philadelphia, about one-tenth the normal price.

“The situation has been resolved and the correct prices are being displayed,” said airline spokesman Trebor Banstetter.

Delta is the second airline to feel the sting of a problem with its booking website this year.

In September, United Airlines blamed a computing error that produced one-way fares as low as $2.50.

Delta said it will honor the super-cheap fares, just as United did, but only for travelers who booked their flights before the prices were corrected.

Low-income earners in Spain get tax cut

MADRID – Spain’s finance minister has told a business newspaper that the government plans to cut income taxes for low-income Spanish families in 2014 but that citizens in higher income brackets won’t get the same windfall until the country’s economy emerges from a prolonged crisis.

In an interview published Thursday, Cristobal Montoro did not tell the Expansion newspaper how much taxes will be lowered for low-income earners or specify the income levels they must have to receive the benefit.

Montoro said the administration of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy predicts the Spanish economy will expand by 1 percent in 2014 after a punishing recession lasting years.

Rajoy has pushed through waves of austerity-driven, unpopular tax hikes and government program cutbacks since taking office in 2011, to reduce Spain’s budget deficit.

Cessna parent to buy Beechcraft

WICHITA, Kan. – The parent company of Cessna Aircraft says it has reached an agreement to buy Beechcraft Corp. for approximately $1.4 billion.

The purchase was announced Thursday night by Providence, R.I.-based Textron Inc., and would bring two mainstays of Wichita’s general aviation industry under a single corporate leadership.

Textron chairman and CEO Scott C. Donnelly said in a statement that the Beechcraft acquisition is a “tremendous opportunity” for the diversified corporation to expand its general aviation business.

Beechcraft CEO Bill Boisture had said in recent months he expected the company would sell at least its idled business jet assets by the end of 2013.

Donnelly said Beechcraft’s King Air line of turboprop aircraft complements Cessna’s Caravan and Citation jet lineup.