ONCE LITTLE MORE THAN A ground handling company at the country's gateway airport, Oman Air's fortunes are changing dramatically as, for the first time in its history, the feisty domestic and regional airline assumes national carrier status. With that new status comes access to international routes that were beyond its reach as long as Gulf Air was officially the national airline for Oman. Earlier this year, however, the Omani government decided to withdraw from the troubled multistate entity to concentrate its energies and finances on building up the local airline.
IT IS DAZZLING, ALMOST INTIMIDATING, and for Western airport operators who often have to lobby for a decade or more to obtain planning permission for a new terminal, let alone a new runway, probably very frustrating. Yet it is a fact that airports across the Middle East are in the process of adding enough capacity to handle 300 million more passengers by 201550% more travelers than all the region's airports processed last year.
FOR SNECMA/NPO SATURN JOINT venture PowerJet, developing and producing the SaM146 engine for S-ukhoi Civil Aircraft's Superjet 100 is the easy part. With the regional jet's first flight imminent and first delivery to Aeroflot slated for next November, PowerJet officials are beginning to move on to the hard part: Convincing Western aircraft manufacturers and regional airline operators that a propulsion system built in remote Poluevo, Russia, can be superior to more traditional powerplants produced by manufacturers with final assembly lines in more recognizable places.
Tiger Airways is upping the ante down under ahead of the late-November launch of flights from its new Australian base in Melbourne, placing 40,000 tickets on sale from A$9.95 ($9.13) inclusive of taxes and charges and announcing Newcastle, Canberra and Hobart as new destinations. Separately, Tiger launched Singapore-Chennai service over the weekend and today will begin flying to Xiamen, its fifth Chinese destination.
Benefiting from yuan appreciation and fast-growing demand in the domestic market, Chinese carriers reported a collective profit in the third quarter. Hainan Airlines posted net income of CNY228.9 million ($30.6 million) in the period, up 19.1% over CNY191.5 million earned in the year-ago quarter. Operating revenue increased 5.5% to CNY2.26 billion against a 0.6% drop in operating expenses to CNY1.72 billion. Net profit for the first nine months of 2007 was CNY418.62 million.
New Congolese airline established by SN Brussels Airlines and Hewa Bora Airways will carry the name airDC, SN Brussels announced yesterday ( ATWOnline, Sept. 12). AirDC's commercial passenger flights are expected to start in early 2008. It will operate 737s and BAe 146s from its home base at Kinshasa N'Djili on a domestic and continental network. SN African Projects Manager Johan Maertens was appointed CEO. The name airDC is a reference to RDC, the French acronym for Democratic Republic of Congo.
Cathay Pacific Airways CEO Tony Tyler said the airline is not close to making any decision on acquiring A380s, 787s or A350 XWBs, noting that orders placed today likely would mean deliveries not occurring for five years or longer. "I don't think we are comfortable ordering that far ahead on a new aircraft type," he told Reuters. "I don't think we'll be making any decision on any of these aircraft for at least two years. .
Russian authorities suspended Lufthansa Cargo's right to fly over Russia. An LHC spokesperson told ATWOnline that "since Oct. 28 midnight, we have no traffic rights any more to fly via Russian territory." The change affects 49 weekly flights between Frankfurt and Astana, where LHC has established a hub for its network to the Far East. "We have installed an emergency schedule. Each flight to or from Astana has to be diverted around Russia. That takes an additional 90 minutes flying time, up to three hours for a roundtrip,'" the spokesperson said.
Arab Air Carriers Organization criticized unilaterally imposed security measures that "sometimes negate the concept of facilitation" and emphasized the need to coordinate aviation security on a global level and apply internationally accepted standards and procedures. "Security has turned into a heavy burden on air passengers," AACO Secretary General Abdul Wahab Teffaha noted during the association's AGM in Damascus last week.
United Airlines is abandoning testing of dual-end jetbridges following a malfunction in which a double-ended bridge hit and damaged the wing of a 757 at Denver International ( ATWOnline, Sept. 8, 2006). "The technology [tested mainly on Ted flights at DIA] did not meet our needs," a UA spokesperson told The Denver Post.
Malev Hungarian Airlines will suspend its two North Atlantic routes starting in mid-November and lasting through the winter season. Budapest-New York JFK and Budapest-Toronto services should resume in the spring. Malev said that as part of its structural transformation and cost-efficiency program, it will lease out two 767-200ERs while a single 767-300ER will continue flying to Bangkok. That thrice-weekly service will become four-times-weekly from Jan. 8.
Royal Jordanian signed a lease agreement, initially for six months, with Jordan's Transworld for a 737 freighter. RJ will begin flying the aircraft to Baghdad and Damascus. It already operates A310-300 freighters.
EgyptAir and Lufthansa launched their first codeshare flights, introduced on EgyptAir's daily services from Cairo to Frankfurt and Munich and LH's from Frankfurt to Cairo (twice-daily) and Alexandria (thrice-weekly). Commercial cooperation between the carriers is planned to cover additional domestic and international destinations.
Singapore Airlines reported net income of S$507.8 million ($349.8 million) for its fiscal second quarter ended Sept. 30, up 73.2% over a S$293.2 million net profit in the year-ago quarter, on a 9.9% boost in revenue to S$3.97 billion.
Hawaiian Airlines received a double dose of good news late Tuesday after a bankruptcy court judge awarded it $80 million in damages in its lawsuit against Mesa Airlines. The verdict came hours after Hawaiian reported that net income for the third quarter ended Sept. 30 more than doubled to $19.6 million from $7.7 million in the year-ago period.
Sale of its hotel assets propelled ANA Group to a record consolidated net profit of ¥105.5 billion ($920.1 million) on record revenue of ¥763.2 billion, up 1.4% year-over-year, for the fiscal semester ended Sept. 30.
South African Airways named former Telkom CFO Kaushik Patel to the same position at the airline. He replaces Acting CFO Clive Else, who will become CEO of SAA Technical effective Dec. 1. Jan Blake will leave the latter position to become GM-mergers, acquisitions and disposals. Fortune Ntlhoro was named chief procurement officer. Boeing Commercial Airplanes named VP-Sales & Marketing Operations Martin Bentrott as VP-Middle East and Africa sales.
Airbus CEO Tom Enders and CCO John Leahy told reporters yesterday at a press conference in New Delhi that the manufacturer is in talks with Air India regarding a potential A380 order. "We are in discussions with Air India now and we think they would need about 10-12 A380 aircraft as soon as we can deliver them," Leahy said, according to multiple media reports. He said delivery could take place by 2011 if an order is placed soon. Enders added that it was "not an accident" that he traveled to India with Leahy. "India is one of the most important growing markets for us," he said.
Air France KLM Group estimated the net impact on operating income associated with the recently concluded five-day strike by AF cabin crew at some €60 million ($86.5 million). The figure reflects an €80 million loss in revenue offset by a €20 million reduction in costs linked mainly to fuel. The estimate will be refined at a later stage, the carrier said in a statement. AF cabin staff were on strike Oct. 25-29 over pay and working conditions. The airline's flight schedule returned to normal yesterday.
Lufthansa Technik and Bulgarian Aviation Group will open a hangar facility at Sofia for 737 and A320 heavy maintenance including D checks. The 6,000-sq.-m. facility, Lufthansa Technik Sofia, is expected to be operational in October 2008. It will be capable of handling two narrowbodies at once. Forthcoming renovation and training investments are put at €20 million ($28 million), to be shared by BAG and LHT. The facility will employ up to 380.
Ryanair took delivery of five new 737-800s, including its 150th of the type. The LCC, which phased out its last 737 Classic in January 2006, operates the second-largest 737 fleet in the world behind Southwest Airlines. It has an additional 121 737s on order.
EasyJet is basing a sixth aircraft at Belfast International and yesterday launched service to Gdansk. It will begin flying from BFS to Prague and Venice Nov. 1 and to Barcelona Nov. 3, bringing to 23 the number of routes it operates from the airport. Also this week, the LCC launched service from Bristol to Funchal, Gdansk and Lisbon as well as Bournemouth-Krakow, Edinburgh-Gdansk, Edinburgh-Krakow, Glasgow International-Paris Charles de Gaulle, London Gatwick-Bucharest, London Stansted-Funchal and London Luton-Vienna flights. Liverpool-Lisbon will start Nov. 2, LTN-Hamburg begins Nov.
Air China reported third-quarter net income of CNY2.19 billion ($292 million), down 26.5% from a CNY2.98 billion net profit in the year-ago quarter that was boosted significantly by a one-time gain from the sale of its equity interest in Dragonair. Excluding the gain, CA said its net profit for the reporting period ended Sept. 30 grew 92.8%. Third-quarter revenue was CNY14.47 billion and operating profit was CNY2.83 billion, according to a company statement.
The Arab Air Carriers Organization expressed its disapproval of the EU's intent to include aviation in its Emissions Trading Scheme and called upon the Arab states to support "the stance against any individual measures in order to avoid economical imbalance that the global air transport industry ensures without leading to any additional environmental benefit."
