The Association of Corporate Travel Executives created board positions for representatives from Latin America and the Middle East & Africa. The group's six regions now are: Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Middle East & Africa, and the U.S.

Carlson Wagonlit Travel launched a Web-based "central gateway" for accessing travel program information. The CWT Program Management Center includes a customizable "multilingual, multicurrency reporting center dashboard" for monitoring such metrics as online booking adoption, average ticket price and market share. When the portal is fully deployed by early 2008, it will offer detailed traveler tracking, carbon emissions reporting and integrated data reporting from "credit card, pre-ticket and profile data."

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has collected "500 to 600" redress requests per week from travelers who claim they had been mismatched with names on various government watch lists. DHS Office of Screening Coordination director Kathy Kraninger said the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program--which launched in February--is further along for international travelers, but would not be fully implemented for domestic travel until the DHS Secure Flight pre-screening program is up and running.

Indian carrier Jet Airways plans to develop a hub in Brussels providing "enhanced connectivity between India and Europe, Africa and North America." The airline on 5 Aug. will begin service from Mumbai to Newark via Brussels, followed by service between Delhi and Toronto via Brussels. Jet Airways plans to offer as many as 10 such routes between India and North America, and to implement an alliance with Brussels Airlines covering codeshare flights, frequent flyer program links and through check-in facilities.

FCm Travel Solutions parent company Flight Centre Limited of Australia reached a tentative agreement with Pacific Equity Partners on "a proposed leveraged joint venture." PEP would purchase a 30 percent stake in the venture for A$1.1 billion (US$916 million) and would increase its minority holding to one third "if the business achieves certain targets." Flight Centre said "the leveraged joint venture will not affect the travel agency business's day-to-day operations."

Latin American airlines TAM and LAN formalized an alliance to include cross-marketing of flights, single-ticket itineraries, reciprocal frequent flyer programs and other cooperative efforts.