Mesa Air Group placed a firm order for 10 CRJ700 NextGen aircraft valued at approximately $334 million at list prices, Bombardier announced yesterday. Two are conversions from previously placed CRJ900 orders. They will be operated for United Airlines. Mesa also placed a conditional order for an 11th CRJ700 NG, which was unveiled last month, along with the CRJ900 and 1000 variants, by the Canadian manufacturer ( ATWOnline, June 4). Mesa currently operates 58 CRJ100s/200s, 20 CRJ700s and 38 CRJ900s.
Qantas will establish an independent flight training business by year end with the aim of training 3,000 new pilots over the next 10 years. "We are in discussion with leading simulator manufacturers, aviation training organizations and financial partners," CEO Geoff Dixon said. The training company initially will operate from existing QF training facilities in Sydney and Melbourne.
Delta Air Lines will launch new flights from New York JFK to the following destinations: Panama City (Dec. 13); Guatemala City (Dec. 14); Port of Spain (Dec. 20); San Jose, Costa Rica (Feb. 15); Liberia, Costa Rica (Feb. 16). Frequencies were not announced. AirTran Airways announced an upgrade to its Portland, Maine, service. Seasonal weekly flights to Orlando International will become a year-round daily service beginning Nov. 7. Twice-daily flights to Baltimore, originally scheduled to end Nov. 6, will continue until Jan. 7 and be resumed at a later date.
Six weeks after trading in its stock was suspended, China Eastern Airlines appears to be moving forward with its 25% stake sale to Singapore Airlines with the submission of plans to relevant government entities.
South African Airways' restructuring program, which is aiming for revenue improvement/cost reduction of ZAR2.7 billion ($378 million) by the end of 2008, is moving ahead rapidly, CEO Khaya Ngqula told Business in Africa. He said losses in the second half of its fiscal year ended March 31 were about ZAR200 million, not as steep as some had projected and reduced from a loss of ZAR652 million in the first fiscal semester.
London Heathrow's Terminal 4, which is used by British Airways, Qantas, KLM, Kenya Airways, Iberia and TAM, was partially evacuated yesterday following discovery of a suspicious package. "As an extra precaution, it was decided to perform secondary searches on all departing passengers at the aircraft gate," airports operator BAA said.
Southwest Airlines flew 6.83 billion RPMs in June, up 11% on the year-ago month. Capacity rose 8.7% to 8.32 billion ASMs and load factor was up 1.7 points to 82.1%. Gol flew 1.61 billion RPKs in June, up 30.6% from the year-ago month. Capacity climbed 47.3% to 2.35 billion ASKs, dropping load factor 8.7 points to 68.6%.
Spring Airlines plans a stock listing to finance the acquisition of six A320s in 2009 ( ATWOnline, June 29), President Wang Zenghua announced. The LCC also plans to reach a deal with an international investment bank as a strategic investor next year, preferring an institution over another airline as it holds fast to its "go it alone" strategy. Wang said Citibank is Spring's first choice and the parties already are in discussions. He said the carrier's biggest headache at present is a shortage of pilots.
S7 Airlines said it recorded net profit of RUB61 million ($2.4 million) for 2006, down 44.5% from a net profit of RUB1.1 billion in the prior year, on a 27% increase in revenue to RUB24.97 billion. Passengers carried rose 16.4% to 4.9 million.
Boeing delivered a second 737-800 to Babcock & Brown for lease to transavia.com's new Paris Orly-based sister carrier, bringing the number of -800s in its fleet to four. The French low-fare carrier ( ATWOnline, June 1), owned jointly by Transavia (40%) and Air France (60%), launched operations in May and plans to add three more -800s next year and two in 2009. The aircraft are configured in a 186-seat all-economy layout.
Eurocontrol inaugurated its new Central Flow Management Unit operations room, which it said is the "cornerstone of a Single Sky in Europe." The facility consolidates and synergizes the three essential functions of the CFMU, which first became operational in 1995. Those are complete and real-time information on airspace and infrastructure across the continent; the Integrated Flight Plan System, which centralizes all European flight plans, and flow and capacity management.
Frontier Airlines said that Wichita, Rapid City and Sioux City will be among the first cities served by its Lynx Aviation subsidiary, which will begin operating this fall with 74-seat Q400s. Thrice-daily Denver-Wichita flights will begin Oct. 1, while service to Rapid City (twice-daily) and Sioux City (twice-daily) will start Oct. 5. Frontier placed an order for 10 Q400s last fall and said Lynx eventually may serve up to 18 destinations ( ATWOnline, Sept. 7, 2006).
Skyways Aviation announced the arrangement of an ATR 72 lease to Jat Airways. Aircraft will be leased for four years from ATR Leasing. It is Jat's fifth ATR 72.
Indonesia and ICAO yesterday signed a "groundbreaking declaration" in Bali under which Indonesia committed to wide-ranging initiatives to improve the safety of its civil aviation system. The deal comes after the EU banned all Indonesian airlines from flying into its airspace ( ATWOnline, July 2).
LAN Cargo will introduce two new 777Fs into its fleet during the first quarter of 2009. It also is negotiating for two additional freighters that would be added by 2011. The four will join the airline's nine 767-300Fs
Finnair announced that it has entered into a "final and binding sale and purchase agreement" covering the sale of FlyNordic to Norwegian Air Shuttle. The parties announced an MOU in April ( ATWOnline, April 25). The Norwegian Competition Authority still must approve the transaction, Finnair said.
Delta Air Lines will launch weekly seasonal Atlanta-Curacao service on Dec. 22. JetBlue Airways will start daily flights from Fort Lauderdale to Buffalo and Syracuse Nov. 1 aboard E-190s. Its weekly Boston-Aruba service, launched last weekend, will increase to thrice-weekly from Nov. 5 aboard A320s. Estonian Air plans to reduce its weekly Tallinn-Paris Charles de Gaulle flights from four to three from Aug. 31 and its weekly Tallinn-Barcelona service from three to two from Sept. 26. It will suspend Tallinn-Barcelona flights Oct. 28-Feb. 16.
Lufthansa said it will shift its daily 44-seat all-business-class flights to Frankfurt-Newark from the current Munich-EWR route beginning Oct. 28. It will operate a three-class A330-300 on MUC-EWR "to accommodate increased demand in all categories on the route." The FRA-EWR flights will be aboard a wet-leased PrivatAir BBJ. The 44 lie-flat seats "provide a near-horizontal sleeping surface measuring 6-ft. 6-in. long," LH said.
Denim Air of the Netherlands signed a five-year contract with Fokker Services for an integrated services package for the support of five F50s. The package includes the Abacus Component Availability Program as well as an expendables availability program and propeller and landing gear MRO.
GE Aviation last week signed a 10-year OnPoint Solutions services agreement with easyJet covering the CFM56-5B and CFM56-7B engines powering its fleet of 192 A319s and 32 737-700s respectively. The accord, which could cover as many as 340 shop visits, potentially is valued at $1 billion.
