Cathay Pacific Airways yesterday announced two transactions designed to increase its liquidity: The divestment of a stake in Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co. and a sale-and-leaseback deal with BOC Aviation. CX will sell its 20.7 million shares in HAECO, or 12.5% of its holding, for approximately HK$1.9 billion ($245.3 million), or HK$91.83 per share, to Swire Pacific. The deal is subject to approval of CX's independent shareholders and would reduce its stake in the MRO provider to 15%. Swire's would increase to 46%.
Honeywell signed a $65 million contract with China Southern Airlines to provide 131-9A APUs, along with materials, parts and service, for 192 aircraft (36 existing A320s, 71 existing 737s, 20 ordered A320s and 65 ordered 737s).
Southwest Airlines yesterday moved to clarify its international future, stressing that it "does not have any plans to fly distant, long-haul international flights at this time or in the near future."
Brussels Airlines will launch 12-times-weekly Brussels-Milan Linate service Oct. 25 aboard an Avro RJ. Lufthansa will codeshare on the flight. SN and LH also announced an expansion of their codeshare arrangement covering more routes to Africa. LH will place its code on SN flights from Brussels to Abidjan, Banjul, Bujumbura, Nairobi, Monrovia, Douala and Yaounde. SN's code will be on LH services from Frankfurt to Accra, Khartoum, Johannesburg and Cape Town. Aegean Airlines will launch service from Athens to Madrid (daily on Dec. 1) and Vienna (five-times-weekly on Dec.
SAS Group airlines flew 2.24 billion RPKs in August, down 17.1% from the year-ago month. Capacity dropped 20.5% to 2.94 billion ASMs and load factor rose 3.1 points to 76.1%. SAS Scandinavian Airlines flew 2.05 billion RPKs, down 18.1%, against a 21.9% cut in capacity to 2.66 billion ASMs. Load factor rose 3.5 points to 77.1% and yield was down 3.2%. Air Berlin said August unit revenue rose 12% year-over-year to 6.21 euro cents (9.08 cents). It transported 2.7 million passengers, down 3.7%, and load factor rose 1.1 points to 84%.
Lufthansa Technik announced a 10-year extension to its Total Component Support contract with Wizz Air, which will include wheel and brake support. Wizz plans to grow its fleet from the current 26 A320s to 132 in 2017.
Finnair and the Finnish Flight Attendants Assn. reached a labor stabilization agreement valid from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2010, covering the €12.3 million in cost cuts targeted by the airline. Among the terms are a 5% salary cut during the period and cancellation of incentive bonuses. The deal also includes a "pay-back" stipulation depending on Finnair's 2010 and 2011 results. The carrier said the terms "are not easy, but they are necessary. . .We reached an outcome by which redundancies will be avoided."
United Airlines expects third-quarter consolidated passenger RASM to fall 15.8%-16.8% year-over-year to 10.83-10.96 cents, while mainline unit revenue should decline 17.8%-18.8% to 9.91-10.03 cents, a slightly slower rate than the 19.5% plunge reported in the second quarter. Consolidated system capacity is forecast to fall 5.9% to 36.97 billion ASMs, with load factors rising as consolidated RPMs slip just 3%-4% to 31.09-31.41 billion. Mainline system traffic is expected to drop 5.4%-6.4% to 27.3-27.6 billion RPMs against an 8.4% cut in capacity to 32.14 billion ASMs.
Delta Air Lines is planning a private debt offering of $500 million in aggregate principal amount of senior secured notes due 2014, it announced yesterday. It said it would use the proceeds, along with initial borrowings under proposed new senior secured credit facilities, largely to repay all outstanding debt under Northwest Airlines' senior corporate credit facility. The notes will be secured by DL's Pacific route authorities, slots and gate leases, which also wil constitute the collateral for the new credit facilities.
Contact Air F100 that landed wheels-up at Stuttgart Monday had a faulty valve, according to MD Manfred Gaertner. "Part of a valve came loose internally and blocked a hydraulic line. It worked like a stopper," he told Bloomberg News. None of the 73 passengers and five crew was injured ( ATWOnline, Sept. 15).
Embraer announced the delivery of its 600th E-Jet, an E-175, to LOT Polish Airlines. The first E-Jet was delivered in March 2004. LOT's aircraft seats 82 passengers. It currently flies 10 E-170s, six E-175s and six ERJ-145s. It ordered an additional 12 E-175s, plus two options and 10 purchase rights, in January 2008.
AirAsia raised MYR505.4 million ($144 million) through the sale of 380 million new shares representing 16% of its existing share capital, Reuters reported.
Declaring that the situation facing the world's airlines "has never been more difficult," IATA DG and CEO Giovanni Bisignani said yesterday in Washington that the airline industry now is expected to lose $11 billion this year, a deterioration from the association's forecast of a $9 billion loss issued at its AGM in early June.
Oman Air took delivery of the first of seven A330-200s ordered in 2007. Aircraft is powered by Trent 700s and is configured with 20 seats in business class and 196 in economy. It was acquired under a lease agreement with Dublin-based AWAS and will be deployed on long-haul routes from Muscat to London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt as well as destinations in Asia. Five of the seven aircraft were ordered directly from Airbus.
BAE Systems has teamed up with Quest International UK to offer AirManager, "a radical new active air management system" for aircraft. BAE said it has engineered and certificated the installation of AirManager on its own BAe 146/Avro RJ and has designed and certificated an STC for installation on the 757, "with a trial unit being evaluated." Under the agreement with Quest, it will act as an authorized distributor for sales to airlines of the system for an initial five-year period.
Niki plans on ramping up its expansion plans following the bankruptcy of SkyEurope Airlines and Austrian Airlines' network reduction, with President Niki Lauda telling ATWOnline, "We will increase our fleet from the current 12 to 16 aircraft next year." The LCC will add a third daily Vienna-Frankfurt frequency in November and a third daily frequency to Paris Charles de Gaulle by summer 2010. New daily flights from VIE to Bucharest Otopeni, Sofia and Belgrade will start next February and capacity on existing routes will be increased by adding larger aircraft.
ARINC said Air China, Air Macau, Asiana Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, China Southern Airlines, Dragonair and Korean Air signed up to use its AviNet Airport wide-area network service, which is available to carriers using its Muse common-use passenger systems.
Amerijet International and pilots represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced a four-year contract yesterday, ending five years of negotiations and a strike that began Aug. 27 ( ATWOnline, Sept. 3). The union said "a revised sick-leave policy and the addition of onboard toilet facilities" were part of the deal, along with improved wages and benefits. Amerijet operates 727 and 767 freighters out of Miami.
SESAR Joint Undertaking signed contracts with several airlines and airline associations to engage their technical experts in developing Europe's new and long-overdue Air Traffic Management system. "It is essential or even vital for the success of SESAR that the expertise of the airlines is integrated as from day one of the development phase," Executive Director Patrick Ky said.
American Airlines yesterday rolled out the US Transportation Security Administration's Secure Flight program, which requires passengers to provide their full legal name, birth date and gender when purchasing tickets. TSA said it "determined that mandating the provision of the additional data elements. . .would greatly reduce the number of passengers misidentified as a match to the watch list." Other airlines will be required to phase in the program over time.
Japan Airlines said it plans to cut 14% of its workforce, or nearly 7,000 jobs, over the next three years, part of an ongoing restructuring that it indicated will include a tie-up with a foreign investor it hopes to identify next month.
Turkish Airlines will launch daily flights from Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen to Moscow Domodedovo, London Stansted, Amsterdam, Cologne, Stuttgart and Adana on Nov. 9. Four-times-weekly service to Berlin Schoenefeld and thrice-weekly flights to Hannover will start the same day, in addition to third daily flights to Ankara and Izmir and a second daily frequency to Antalya. Aeroflot Airlines increased its twice-daily Moscow Sheremetyevo-Kaliningrad service to five-times-daily.
Cathay Pacific Airways and Dragonair flew 7.89 billion RPKs in August, a 1.9% rise from the year-ago month. Capacity fell 5% to 9.39 billion ASKs, lifting load factor 5.7 points to 84.1%. Iberia flew 4.56 billion RPKs in August, down 6.5% year-over-year, against a 4.4% cut in capacity to 5.53 billion ASKs. Load factor fell 1.8 points to 82.4%. LAN Airlines flew 2.51 billion RPKs in August, a 4.4% increase year-over-year. Capacity rose 7.4% to 3.28 billion ASKs and load factor slipped 2.2 points to 76.5%.
Bombardier Aerospace yesterday broke ground on the first CSeries building at Mirabel, the Complete Integrated Aircraft Systems Test Area that will house a virtual test aircraft. The CIASTA will test systems for reliability and functionality one year before the prototype's first flight, the company said. The entire CSeries complex eventually will span 860,000 sq. ft.
Southwest Airlines sees a future for the long-haul, low-cost model and can envision someday operating intercontinental routes, Director-Network Strategic Planning Lee Lipton told ATWOnline at the World Route Development Forum in Beijing, while emphasizing that there is "no timetable" for such a move.
