Lufthansa Italia will launch service from Milan Malpensa to Rome Fiumicino (four-times-daily), Naples (twice-daily) and Bari (daily) on April 1. It began serving Brussels, Budapest, Bucharest and Madrid this week and will add London Heathrow and Lisbon flights at the end of the month ( ATWOnline, Jan. 29). "Advance bookings for the coming months have developed so favorably that we are already in a position to expand our services," Lufthansa Passenger Airlines Executive VP Karl Ulrich Garnadt said.
Afriqiyah Airways will launch long-haul operations from Tripoli with a twice-weekly service to Johannesburg beginning July 15. Twice-weekly flights to Manila via Dubai begin July 17 and thrice-weekly service to both Brazzaville and Kinshasa starts Sept. 7. Thrice-weekly flights to both Beijing and Guangzhou begin Oct. 3.
Gulf Air took delivery of the first of four 777-300ERs Tuesday. The second and third will arrive this month and the fourth in May. Aircraft are on lease from Jet Airways, seat 312 across three classes and will replace GF's A340-300s.
Iberia Group reorganized and renamed its handling unit as Iberia Airport Services, which it believes "better reflects the unit's activities" and will be "accompanied by a more extensive supply of airport services." IAS is active at 41 Spanish airports and handled nearly 80 million passengers and more than 418,000 aircraft operations for IB and 220 other carriers in 2008.
Aegean Airlines joined the bidding for Olympic Airlines, offering a combined €170 million ($214.2 million) for OA's flight operations, MRO division and its successor company Pantheon. "The objective of Aegean and its shareholders is the creation of a more powerful Greek air company" that can compete with larger European airlines, the carrier said. It added that it would be able to take over OA within 60 days of signing a deal and that it was willing to cede some domestic routes in order to facilitate competition.
Continental Airlines said that February consolidated RASM fell an estimated 11.5%-12.5% year-over-year. It flew 5.88 billion consolidated RPMs, down 13.2%, against an 8.9% fall in capacity to 8.11 billion ASMs.
ANA this month will purchase a 33.5% stake in Overseas Courier Service, a Tokyo-based international parcel delivery and forwarding company, the airline said. Financial terms were not disclosed. The companies have been working together since July 2007, and ANA said the new investment will help "underpin" its Asian parcel delivery service out of the Okinawa cargo hub scheduled to open in October ( ATWOnline, Dec. 19, 2007).
Alitalia CEO Rocco Sabelli said the restructured carrier expects to lose €200 million ($251.8 million) this year, Reuters reported. "We had a terrible first three to four weeks" following the January re-launch he said ( ATWOnline, Jan. 13). "After those terrible three weeks we began to do better even if we're not filling the aircraft as much as we would like."
IATA DG and CEO Giovanni Bisignani yesterday warned that air cargo demand "has fallen off a cliff" and projected that revenue generated by airlines from cargo in 2009 is likely to drop 9% year-over-year to $54 billion.
Delta Air Lines, which in January predicted a "solidly profitable" 2009 ( ATWOnline, Jan. 28), now expects a rough start to the year and a "significant loss" in the current quarter, "primarily due to fuel hedge losses coupled with the impact of the global recession," it said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It expects the "majority" of the losses relating to its 2008 fuel hedge contracts to be recognized in the first half of 2009.
Alaska Air Group board yesterday announced plans to give stockholders a nonbinding vote on compensation for the company's five highest-paid executives. It said the vote "will inform the board's future decisions on executive compensation." Stockholders proposed the measure last year.
ACE Aviation Holdings, which was created in 2004 as part of Air Canada's restructuring and still holds a 75% stake in AC, indefinitely postponed an April 7 shareholders meeting at which it was slated to hold a vote on the company's dissolution ( ATWOnline, Dec. 12, 2008). The ACE windup would make AC an independent company, but "current market conditions" made the postponement "appropriate," ACE said.
ArkeFly took delivery of a second new 737-800 fitted with 180 seats across two classes. The Dutch TUI Travel airline will deploy the aircraft on its Mediterranean network. A third -800 will join the fleet in May.
Germanwings will launch thrice-weekly Cologne-Kiev Boryspil flights on May 16 AeroMexico launched daily Mexico City-Toronto service aboard a 737-700 Monday. Flights to Montreal are scheduled to begin April 2.
Air China is pessimistic about its financial prospects and now is not expecting a turnaround this year. It already has said it expects to report a heavy loss for 2008 ( ATWOnline, Jan. 21), and this week Chairman Kong Dong said, "We don't have confidence that the carrier will earn a profit this year," Reuters reported. Kong revealed that CA's cargo volume has hit a new low, dropping 30%-40%.
Qantas was forced to withdraw its three A380s from service Monday because of unrelated fuel system problems that came after what had been described as the best entry into service of any aircraft with Australia's national airline. One A380, QF's first, had technical troubles in Sydney Saturday and was delayed 19 hr. before taking off for London Heathrow. On the return trip, the aircraft suffered a fuel leak and passengers were transferred 12 hr. later to a 747-400. Engineers in London fixed the leak and the A380 was back in service yesterday.
Air France will defer delivery of its sixth and seventh A380s in order to "create some savings on the down payment this year and the year after," Air France KLM CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said Monday at the Reuters Travel and Leisure summit in New York. Last month the group announced it would cut capital expenditure by €1.2 billion ($1.51 billion) to address the economic downturn and would defer delivery of half-a-dozen planes including "777-300ERs, 777Fs and some Airbus aircraft."
TNT reported a €556 million ($700 million) profit in 2008, down 43.6% from the €986 million earned in 2007 as the air cargo market continued to deteriorate and the company took a €70 million one-time charge related to job and fleet cuts in its Express division. It said those reductions will result in €51 million in savings this year, part of a €400 million cost-cutting effort. Group revenue rose 1.2% year-over-year to €11.15 billion and operating income fell 17.6% to €982 million.
Spirit Airlines yesterday began charging passengers booking flights on its website or through its reservation center a fee of $4.90 per segment. The new "passenger usage fee" is the latest in a series of ancillary revenue generators implemented by Spirit ranging from bag check fees to onboard beverage charges. Customers who purchase tickets at airport check-in counters will not be charged the fee. "It's all part of our overall philosophy. We like to break out the base fare from additional fees and taxes," a Spirit spokesperson told ATWOnline.
Vueling Airlines and Clickair have started cross-selling seats online on all domestic and international flights as the first step in a joint marketing initiative launched by the merging Spanish LCCs.
IATA said the global airline industry lost up to $8 billion in 2008, $3 billion higher than its previous estimates, stating that a "larger than expected" $4 billion fourth-quarter loss owing to the recession and fuel hedging losses weighed down full-year results.
Transaero Airlines launched twice-weekly Moscow Domodedovo-Magadan service Sunday aboard a Tu-214. DME-Kazan flights begin March 30. Ryanair yesterday relaunched its daily London Stansted-Newquay Cornwall service. Etihad Airways will operate thrice-weekly Abu Dhabi-Larnaca flights beginning in June aboard an A320. Spirit Airlines launched daily Fort Lauderdale-Medellin flights aboard an A319.
Virgin America is denying adamantly that it is in danger of losing the financial support of its US-based investors and claims that it may be profitable by year end. The airline is majority owned and operated by US investment groups Black Canyon Capital of Los Angeles and Cyrus Capital Partners of New York, which are rumored to be preparing to divest their stakes. Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin brand, maintains a 25% share.
AVIC is expected to launch an aero engine company, airborne systems company and composite material engineering center in conjunction with the Beijing municipal government. According to the strategic cooperation agreement signed yesterday, the three new companies will have total registered capital of CNY11.5 billion ($1.68 billion), with total investment of CNY21 billion.
