Primarily owing to an extraordinary loss on the sale of group-owned real property, ANA Group reported a 10.9% drop in net income to ¥2.16 billion ($19.3 million) for the fiscal first quarter ended June 30 from net income of ¥2.43 billion in the year-ago period.
Embraer delivered the third of 15 Embraer 175s to Air Canada, launch customer for the model. The first two were received earlier this month and the remainder are slated for delivery by year end.
KLM last week signed a five-year, €540 million ($658.9 million) credit facility that is supported by an international group of 11 relationship banks. Citibank, ING Bank, Rabobank and Societe Generale acted as mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners, while Calyon and Natexis-Banques Populaires were co-mandated lead arrangers. BNP Paribas, Credit Mutuel-CIC, Deutsche Bank, Fortis and WestLB were arrangers.
First of two newly acquired Evergreen International Airlines 747-200Fs made its inaugural flight last week. The carrier plans to place the other aircraft into service soon, bringing its total 747 fleet to 12.
LOT Polish Airlines minority shareholders agreed to an IPO of the state-controlled carrier, which should lead to a market debut by the second quarter of 2006. The airline announced last week that it wants a listing in the middle of next year. CEO Marek Grabarek confirmed that the shares owned by an investor syndicate will be sold along with newly issued shares. "The Polish government will retain control of the company with 51%," he told this website earlier.
Rockwell Collins said it received the first US FAA TSO-C166 approval for ADS-B functionality on Mode-S transponders. The approval enables enhanced traffic situational awareness on the airport surface and during flight; visual acquisition for see and avoid, sequencing and merging, crossing and passing operations, and oceanic in-trail procedures.
Lufthansa's Terminal 2 in Munich will handle more than 20 million passengers this year, a record. Karl-Ulrich Garnadt, head of Hub Management Munich for LH, told ATWOnline that the carrier and its partner airlines are growing at the hub at a faster rate than had been expected; "In June we saw a passenger increase of 13%.
EVA Air took delivery of the first of 15 777-300ERs on order. The remaining aircraft will be delivered through 2009. Virgin Blue took delivery of its 50th 737NG, which is painted in a special "true blue" livery.
Former International Aero Engines head Barry Eccleston was appointed president and CEO of Airbus North America Holdings succeeding Henri Courpron, who earlier this month was named executive VP-procurement in Toulouse ( ATWOnline, July 20). Eccleston, 58, comes to Airbus from Honeywell, where he spent nearly two years as VP and GM of the Propulsion Systems Enterprise. Prior to that he served as Honeywell's VP-commercial aerospace for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Boeing and Chorus Motors said that based on "successful tests" conducted with an Air Canada 767, electric motors "may be a viable way of powering airplanes" for ground movement in and around gate areas. This technology largely would eliminate "the use of airport tow tugs and jet engines, as well as reducing emissions," Boeing said. Next steps involve working to resolve successfully the technical issues that surfaced during the tests in order to define a path for commercial system installation.
United Airlines will launch new service to Mexico and the Caribbean and expand its service on existing routes to destinations in both areas from Dec. 15. From Washington Dulles it will launch four new weekly flights to Nassau, five weekly flights to Montego Bay, four weekly flights to Punta Cana and two weekly flights to St. Maarten. It will boost service from Dulles to Aruba and St. Thomas. From Chicago it will begin four new weekly flights to Cabo San Lucas and increase frequencies to Montego Bay and St. Thomas.
Lockheed Martin and Covenant Aviation Security each was awarded a Basic Ordering Agreement and now are eligible to receive task orders from airports that are approved to participate in the US Transportation Security Administration's Screening Partnership Program. Under the program, airport operators may submit an application to have security screening carried out by a qualified private company.
American Airlines Cargo added a new feature to its website that allows customers with blocked-space allocations or pre-booked arrangements to load up to 60 days of advance airbills in a simple online operation.
Although it has shed billions in costs during its second restructuring, US Airways Group posted a $62 million net loss for the second quarter ended June 30, which included $26 million in one-time charges consisting of $19 million in professional fees, $6 million in damage and deficiency claims on rejected aircraft and $4 million of severance that was offset slightly by $3 million in interest on accumulated cash. This compares to a net income of $34 million in the year-ago period. Excluding one-time items, net loss for the 2005 second quarter totaled $36 million.
World scheduled passenger airline traffic is expected to reach 3.71 trillion RPKs this year, up 7.6% compared to 3.44 trillion RPKs in 2004, followed by 6.5% growth in 2006 and 6.2% in 2007, according to ICAO's latest medium-term forecast. The strongest growth is expected from Middle East airlines, with an average annual growth rate of 10.9% over the three-year forecast period.
Frontier Airlines posted a $2.7 million net loss in the fiscal first quarter ended June 30, improved from a $6.6 million net loss in the year-ago period. The 2005 first quarter included several one-time items such as a $3.3 million charge related to three leased 737-300s the carrier stopped using during the quarter and an unrealized loss on fuel hedges of $1 million.
Although parts manufacturing authority parts are a miniscule portion of today's total spares buy, many airlines are pursuing this avenue aggressively as an alternative to acquiring parts sourced directly from original equipment manufacturers or their licensed suppliers.
There is no shortage of warnings about the perils of the airline industry and the folly of not learning from its turbulent history. But the harsh lessons of the past are being ignored by many new low-cost carriers, say some analysts, who predict that the boom soon will turn into a bust.
Sabre Holdings Corp. said US Airways signed a renewal of its Direct Connect Availability Three-Year Option agreement, extending the pact one year beyond October. US Airways was the first carrier to sign a DCA-3 agreement and to join Galileo Internationals version of the program, Preferred Fares. In Sabres second-quarter earnings briefing with investment analysts, chairman Sam Gilliland said the extension of the agreement incorporates roughly similar terms and conditions as the original.
There's more truth than hyperbole in this observation, as can be demonstrated by comparing the profit margins of a random selection of suppliers to a like number of airlines over, say, a five-year period. Unless a Ryanair, Singapore Airlines or Southwest Airlines ends up in the airline draw, it probably won't even be close.
Airbus welcomed Gustav Humbert as its new president & CEO and announced several appointments. Executive VP-Operations Gerard Blanc is leaving the company and is succeeded by Karl-Heinz Hartmann, Charles Champion becomes COO and deputy to the CEO and remains head of the A380 program, John Leahy becomes COO-customers, Tom Williams is executive VP-programs, Alain Flourens succeeds Hartmann as executive VP & head-center of excellence, Henri Courpon becomes head of procurement and Olivier Andres becomes executive VP-strategy & cooperation.
The return of air traffic to the near-saturation levels that existed prior to 9/11-with virtually no corresponding increase in airport capacity-means that congestion and delays are on the rise again. Thus it is no surprise that airlines are looking for information technology solutions to manage aircraft better in the airport environment. A number of IT providers are offering integrated packages to do just that. Sensis Corp. and Preston Aviation Solutions, a Boeing subsidiary, are two major players.
North American Airlines bills itself as "America's Greatest Little Airline." Little it certainly is and greatness, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. But the New York JFK-based carrier, which was acquired by World Air Holdings in late April for $35 million, has been a consistent moneymaker since its first plane took to the skies in 1990.
When this magazine reviewed the status of elite and unconventional air travel two years ago (ATW, 6/03, p. 42), we talked quite a lot about a startup called Indigo, which planned to connect Chicago Midway with Teterboro using 16-passenger Embraer Legacy jets. Indigo, like so many all-premium airlines, is no longer with us, but that has not squelched enthusiasm for a different kind of air service aimed, as the Concorde was, at a premium market.
