Vienna International Airport continues to face challenges as construction costs for its new Terminal SkyLink have skyrocketed at the same time that passenger traffic is falling. Airport officials are going back to the drawing board to review existing contracts in an effort to cut costs on the 450-m.-long facility. Construction work was halted on June 30.
Still years away from completion, the Chicago O'Hare Modernization Program already is reducing delays at the world's second-busiest airport. New Runway 9L-27R and the 3,000-ft. extension to runway 10L-27R, as well as the new north ATC tower, all opened last year, improved the airport's ontime arrival rate by 22%, according to the Chicago Dept. of Aviation.
Considering the precipitous drop in revenue and yields and the fact that general anxiety about the weak economy was exacerbated by the swine flu scare, US passenger airlines' second-quarter financial results could have been far worse than they were. Even with key indicators decidedly not in their favor, six of the nine largest airlines earned a net profit during the three-month period and seven of nine were profitable on an operating basis.
Iberia, its associated carriers Iberia Regional Air Nostrum and Vueling as well as oneworld partners American Airlines, British Airways, Finnair and Royal Jordanian, will move to Barcelona El Prat's new Terminal 1 on Sept. 9. The Puente Aereo (Air Bridge), Iberia's 60-flights-per-day walk-on shuttle service between Madrid and Barcelona, will have its own mini-terminal in the T1 building.
A UK government-commissioned report questions the green credentials of high-speed rail by claiming that the proposed new 300-kph (185 mph) London-Manchester train could be less environmentally friendly than the same air route. According to the Daily Telegraph, the study by consultants Booz Allen Hamilton argues that building and operating the rail network will generate more CO2 than taking the same route by air over a 60-year period.
Rentech announced that it has signed a multiyear agreement to supply eight airlines with up to 1.5 million gal. per year of renewable biodiesel--RenDiesel--for ground service equipment operations at Los Angeles International beginning in late 2012 when the plant that will produce the fuel is scheduled to go into service.
American Airlines emitted 29.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2008, down 5% compared to the previous year. Fleet downsizing and schedule reductions played a large role, but the carrier also is encouraging workers to find ways to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Its Fuel Smart fuel conservation program saved 111 million gal. of fuel and 2.3 billion lb. of carbon dioxide last year. Since 2002 AA has reduced its CO2 footprint by 20% and has set an objective of a further 30% reduction by 2025 from 2002.
Biofuels have gotten a major boost from the US Navy's announcement that it will test them in high-performance fighter aircraft. It has asked for 40,000 gal. of JP-5 jet fuel derived from bio-based feedstocks as long as they are not derived from crops used for human consumption.
"Despite the progress made on modelling aviation's impacts on tropospheric chemistry, there remains a significant spread in model results, and while much progress has been made in the last ten years on characterizing emissions, major uncertainties remain over the nature of particles." This is the key finding of a new report, "Transport impacts on atmosphere and climate: Aviation," published in Atmospheric Environment.
ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME to an end and airport passenger growth is no exception. After five years of robust expansion (2003-07), airports experienced an anemic 0.9% increase in passenger throughput last year compared to 2007 and the outlook for the current year clearly is dismal. Vienna Airport, for example, reported a 12.7% drop in passenger traffic for the first half of 2009 while Brussels Zaventem plunged 11.7%.
WHILE THE AVIATION WORLD AWAITS with great anticipation the fuel saving promises of the Single European Sky and the related ATC modernization, air navigation services providers and airports around Europe already are achieving greater environmental efficiency in today's skies.
Showing an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, US airlines finally may have made inevitable the enactment of an airline passenger bill of rights requiring them to permit passengers to disembark from aircraft stuck in extended tarmac delays or to compensate customers for their lost time when such events occur.
In late July and early August, the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission held three days of hearings on whether federal position limits should be set by the CFTC for "commodities of finite supply" such as the energy markets.
American Airlines' decision to work with HP to build a new passenger services system dubbed a "bold move" by Monte Ford, the carrier's chief information officer took many observers by surprise.
GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO wait. Bombardier Aerospace is betting on the truth of that adage as its CSeries development program kicks into high gear after what only can be described as a challenging beginning since the company first proposed the aircraft in early 2004.
Confusion reigned as the Aug. 31 deadline for aircraft operators to submit their tonne-km. plans for the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme came and went amid growing concerns that operators could lose their free allowance allocations.
German court approved a €4 billion expansion of Frankfurt International, which will include a fourth runway and third terminal and a cargo maintenance center. The new runway could be opened for operation by 2011.
For the last few years, airlines and other travel companies have tried to figure out what to do about social media. Since the advent of TripAdvisor in 2000, suppliers at one industry conference after another were warned that they should not ignore the phenomenon. "It's out there," speakers would say. "You can't ignore it." But suggestions about the appropriate response were uniformly vague.
FOR AIRCRAFT SPOTTERS, WHO REVEL IN variety, Kuala Lumpur International is becoming positively boring, with 44% of the flights being AirAsia A320s as the airline becomes the largest user of the airport. That statistic is more extraordinary given that just 7.5 years ago it had two aircraft and six routes and founder and CEO Tony Fernandes rarely if ever received an audience with regulators and politicians, let alone a cup of coffee from a banker. Now the red carpet is unrolled wherever he goes as airports build new terminals to accommodate AirAsia's expansion.
Airports are not the major cause of the economic woes of the airline industry, Airports Council International World Director Angela Gittens told ATW's Airports Today. In recent months, IATA and the Assn. of European Airlines, as well as individual carriers like Ryanair, have complained about airport fees and charges in vocal and sometimes harsh terms. IATA even erected a metaphorical "Wall of Shame" with the names of airports it believes are guilty of overcharging airlines.
JetBlue Airways and Lufthansa, which owns 15.6% of the New York JFK-based LCC, yesterday announced a codeshare agreement. Subject to US Dept. of Transportation approval, LH initially will place its code on connecting flights from JFK and/or Boston to Austin, Buffalo, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham, Rochester, San Juan, Syracuse, Tampa and West Palm Beach.
SkyEurope Airlines suspended operations yesterday, hours after airport operators in Prague and Bratislava said they would stop handling the LCC's flights beginning today because it is behind on payments. Vienna halted the LCC's flights in mid-August and SkyEurope had been shuttling VIE passengers to/from Bratislava ( ATWOnline, Aug. 24).
French BEA Director Paul-Louis Arslanian said investigators have not determined the cause of the May 31 Air France A330-200 crash in the Atlantic Ocean and reiterated that there still is no evidence that speed sensors caused the accident. "At the moment, we can't explain the accident," Arslanian told journalists yesterday in Paris. "We are making progress and will make progress and I'm optimistic, but this will take time. It takes a year-and-a-half, being responsible and reasonable, in order to make progress and ensure that we've run through all of the questions."
Jazeera Airways lost KWD1.3 million ($4.4 million) in the second quarter, widened 39.8% from the KWD897,900 net loss reported in the year-ago period. Revenue dropped 11.5% to KWD10.1 million against a 5.6% lift in expenses to KWD11.5 million. Operating loss of KWD1.4 million compared to a KWD516,100 profit in the 2008 second quarter. Six-month net loss of KWD2.2 million deepened from KWD152,100 in the year-ago semester.
