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.
Ryanair will open bases at Bari and Brindisi early next year, its 35th and 36th, with a combined three aircraft and an investment of $210 million. The LCC will base two aircraft at Bari in January and launch flights on Jan. 14 to Brussels South Charleroi, Paris Beauvais (each four-times-weekly) Treviso (six-times-weekly), Genoa (thrice-weekly) and Karlsruhe/Baden (twice-weekly). In February it will begin serving Trapani (four-times-weekly), Dusseldorf Weeze, Valencia (each thrice-weekly) and Cagliari (twice-weekly). It will operate 16 routes in total from the airport.
Copenhagen Airport announced an agreement with airlines to freeze charges from Oct. 1 through March 2011 and to invest more than DKK2.6 billion ($509 million) in infrastructure expansion and improvements during the period. For the ensuing four years, charges will be subject to annual increases equivalent to the consumer price index plus 1%. CPH is cutting the takeoff charge by 25% but increasing the passenger fee by 18.6%. It also will impose a NOx-based emissions charge that has not been finalized.
US Senate staff said last week that determining how to pay for transitioning to the satellite-based NextGen ATC system is proving difficult, with Congress reluctant to set precedent by footing the bill for early ADS-B equipage on commercial aircraft.
Jet Airways' pilots ended a five-day sickout over the weekend after the airline agreed to reinstate pilots it had fired. About half of the carrier's 760 pilots called in sick Sept. 8-12, forcing the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights ( ATWOnline, Sept. 11). The airline said in a statement that an agreement reached with the National Aviators Guild union after two days of talks was "amicable."
Delta Air Lines now expects a 3%-4% operating margin in the third quarter, up from the 1%-3% forecast in July, and a breakeven margin for the full year, it said in a US Securities and Exchange filing released yesterday.
Japan Airlines will cease its Osaka Kansai-Incheon service on Oct. 25 and increase Osaka-Seoul Gimpo 737-800 flights to 14-times-weekly from seven. It also will cancel thrice-weekly freighter service linking Tokyo Narita to London Heathrow and Amsterdam and its thrice-weekly Narita-Frankfurt cargo flights, replacing them with a thrice-weekly NRT-AMS-FRA-NRT routing on Oct. 25. Tarom launched four-times-weekly Bucharest Otopeni-Lyon service aboard a 737-700.
Iberia Maintenance reached agreement with SAS Scandinavian Airlines to provide C and D checks on its MD-80s, A330s and A340s. Lufthansa Technik will provide C checks on 14 A320s, three A321s and two 737-400s for Aegean Airlines from December 2009 to February 2011 at LHT Malta and Shannon Aerospace.
Air China and China Eastern Airlines are sticking to their fuel hedges despite the government's concern over heavy losses suffered last year and recent indications that Beijing intends to impose tighter control on the practice.
William DeCota, aviation director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, died suddenly on Sept. 11. He was 51. DeCota joined the PA in 1982 as a financial analyst. He was named head of the aviation division in January 2000. In that role, he was responsible for running the world's largest airport system, comprising New York JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, Stewart and Teterboro Airports. Earlier this year, DeCota and Air Transport Assn.
