TAM yesterday confirmed its A350-900 order announced at the Paris Air Show ( ATWOnline, June 17), increasing the number of firm orders to 10 from eight and decreasing the number of options to five from seven. Deliveries of the three-class aircraft will begin near the end of 2012. "The A350 is the ideal solution for our long-haul network development," TAM President Marco Bologna said. The airline will be the A350's launch customer in Latin America. It already is the region's largest Airbus operator.
Cyprus Airways employees have been granted 48 hr. by the airline to accept a restructuring designed to produce an immediate CYP21.8 million ($45.3 million) in annual savings. The plan would require about 500 of CY's 1,830 employees to accept voluntary layoffs, Reuters reported. Talks between the carrier and its unions dissolved last month when workers refused to endorse a plan calling for approximately 360 layoffs and pay cuts for remaining workers ( ATWOnline, Dec. 5). CY is seeking a CYP58 million government-guaranteed loan.
Xiamen Airlines confirmed an order for 10 737-800s, Boeing announced, and will begin taking delivery of the aircraft in mid-2006. The carrier operates a fleet of 25 737s and nine 757-200s from hubs in Xiamen, Jinjiang, Wuyishan, Hangzhou and Nanchang. The airframer said the order, part of a 70-aircraft commitment made by the Chinese government last month ( ATWOnline, Nov.
Ryanair announced a major expansion at Dublin with the unveiling of 18 new routes and additional frequencies on eight existing routes. It will base five new 737-800s at DUB beginning in April and will launch service to Marseille, Nantes, La Rochelle, Baden, Hamburg, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw, Milan, Venice, Gothenburg, Malmo, Valencia, Porto, Salzburg, Bratislava, Kaunas and Humberside. The carrier said its traffic at Dublin will increase from 5.5 to 7 million passengers annually and that it will create 250 jobs.
FedEx Corp. reported a net income of $471 million for the fiscal second quarter ended Nov. 30, a 33% rise from the $354 million earned in the year-ago quarter that Chairman, President and CEO Frederick Smith attributed to "customer demand. . .a disciplined pricing approach [and] solid economic growth year-over-year in the US and Asian economies."
China Southern Airlines announced a $134 million upgrade to its operations at Beijing Capital International Airport, including a new international terminal equipped to handle the five A380s and 10 787s it has ordered. Those aircraft will begin arriving in 2007. It already owns and operates a domestic terminal at PEK from which it flies 43 routes and 9 million passengers annually.
Japan Airlines revealed yesterday that it had been flying a 747 with the left and right outboard engines reversed for seven months, Japanese media reported. The engines were misplaced during maintenance work at ST Aviation Services in Singapore last spring.
Air Nauru, the only airline providing service to the Pacific island nations of Nauru and Kiribati, was grounded last weekend when its only aircraft, a 737-400, was impounded in Melbourne by the US Export-Import Bank. The carrier also flew to destinations in Fiji, the Marshall Islands and the Solomon Islands.
Lufthansa wants to reduce pilot costs further to help boost profitability and meet increasing competition in the global airline market, Chief Executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber said. In an interview with Reuters, Mayrhuber questioned how long LH can continue to pay its pilots "significantly above the market rate" and said market conditions should apply to new pilots joining the company. "We have to convince the unions that lower pay is advantageous for them, as only profitable jobs are secure jobs," he said. "We have to negotiate with the unions. It is not easy.
KLM Engineering & Maintenance will perform a D check on an Aegean Airlines 737-400. SAS Component said Royal Jordanian signed a Free2Fly material supply contract covering its two Q400s. SAS Group is selling a 67% stake in its component overhaul and support business to Singapore Technologies Engineering for €80.4 million ($96 million) ( ATWOnline, Dec. 16).
Bellview Airlines, which operated the 737-200 that crashed two months ago near Lagos killing 117 ( ATWOnline, Oct. 25), was grounded yesterday by the Nigerian government pending an audit of its operations, according to media reports. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered the grounding of Chanchangi Airlines and Sosoliso Airlines earlier this month as part of an emergency initiative to overhaul the country's troubled aviation industry ( ATWOnline, Dec. 14). A Bellview 737 made an emergency landing Monday in Accra with hydraulic failure.
Northwest Airlines is proposing to cut medical benefits for retirees as part of its restructuring. The move will save $18 million per year, according to media reports. The new plan would ask retirees under 65 to pay 50% of the monthly premium. Current employees would pay 25%.
US passenger airlines employed 442,016 people in October, a 5.5% decline from the same month in 2004, US DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics said yesterday. It marked the 10th consecutive month of year-over-year decreases. The seven "network carriers," comprising the six legacy airlines plus Alaska Airlines, employed 293,767 full- or part-time workers in October, a drop of 8.6%. Low-cost carriers reported a decrease of just 0.5% to 74,425 employees while Regional airlines posted a 2.3% gain over the year-ago month with 60,274 on the payrolls.
AirAsia confirmed to ATWOnline that it has submitted a proposal to the Malaysian government to operate all but three of Malaysia Airlines' domestic routes. The plan is part of the government's review of a domestic airline system that has been a continual loss-maker for MAS. Earlier this month, AirAsia took delivery of the first of 100 A320s and announced an additional eight destinations in Indonesia from Kuala Lumpur.
Jetstar Asia will launch service to Bangalore from Singapore on Jan. 23. Its merger partner, Valuair, will start flights from Singapore to Bali on Jan. 27. Wizz Air will operate a weekly Budapest-Corfu service between June 17 and Sept. 22. Kaliningradavia will start twice-weekly Kaliningrad-Berlin Tegel service Dec. 28.
United Airlines Chairman and CEO Glenn Tilton said the carrier "disappointed" its customers Saturday "by not being prepared, as we should have been, for the extraordinary volume of passengers." The admission, contained in a taped message to employees, referred to a situation that developed at Chicago O'Hare on Dec. 17 when thousands of United customers were inconvenienced by long check-in lines and waits of up to 4 hr. or more. The terminal became so crowded that some passengers were forced to stand in lines that snaked outside, where they were exposed to subfreezing temperatures.
Ryanair pared its schedule for the first quarter of 2006 because of a one-month delay in the delivery of four 737-800s. The aircraft, delayed owing to last fall's strike by assembly line workers at Boeing ( ATWOnline, Sept. 5), will arrive in April to replace dash 200s scheduled to be removed from service this month. The older aircraft already have been sold, the carrier said. The schedule cuts will reduce monthly traffic by 200 departures and an estimated 100,000 passengers during January, February and March.
Last week, CR Airways was a little-known Hong Kong-based Regional airline flying a trio of CRJs to destinations in China and the Philippines, but it is on the map now thanks to a multibillion-dollar MOU with Boeing covering orders for 10 787s ( ATWOnline, Dec. 20) and 30 737-800s.
Delta Air Lines laid off 68 customer service employees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The layoffs will take effect during the first two weeks of February, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported. Air Transat reached a tentative agreement with its pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots Assn., that replaces a deal that expired last month and will "improve working conditions and pay the pilots a competitive salary," according to ALPA.
LOT Polish Airlines' supervisory board dismissed Marek Grabarek, president of the carrier's management board, as well as board members Piotr Dubno and Wladyslaw Metelski. The sackings took place at a supervisory board meeting Monday. No reason was given for the action. LOT also announced that supervisory board President Piotr Czyzewski and member SBawomir Lachowski resigned. Supervisory board member Tomasz Kopoczynski will replace Grabarek on an interim basis pending a formal selection process that will commence following a Dec. 29 supervisory board meeting.
United Airlines and its United Services maintenance division signed a three-year, $180 million deal with Pratt & Whitney for MRO on more than 200 F117 engines powering US Air Force C-17s. Work will take place at United's facilities in San Francisco and Charleston.
Members of AITAL, the Latin American airline association, unanimously agreed at their AGM in Miami to raise airline safety standards in the region by requiring all 25 member carriers to commit to an IATA Operational Safety Audit by the end of 2006 and to complete the audit successfully by the end of 2007.
US FAA needs to increase its oversight of noncertificated aviation repair stations and should consider limiting the scope of work such facilities can perform on behalf of airlines, according to a report released last week by the US Dept. of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General.
FAA announced that it commissioned a Required Navigation Performance approach to Reagan Washington National Airport's Runway 19 following the Potomac River to the airport. The GPS-based approach, which allows planes to land with considerably lower ceilings and visibility than are required for traditional precision approach methods, is being used first by Alaska Airlines, which pioneered the use of RNP procedures to improve its completion rate at difficult airports in Alaska.
