EasyJet is adding six new routes to its network, increasing the total to 216 and the number of key airports served to 64. London Gatwick-Murcia service will commence Sept. 23, Gatwick-Grenoble Dec. 16, Dortmund to both Barcelona and Milan Malpensa and Geneva-Lisbon Oct. 30 and Geneva-Malaga Nov. 1. The new daily services will connect currently served destinations with the exception of Lisbon, which is a new city to be added to the airline's network.
Air Jamaica canceled its full flight schedule for July 16 as a result of Hurricane Emily, which is working its way slowly through the Caribbean. This is the second time this month that the airline has been forced to cancel flights owing to a hurricane ( ATWOnline, July 8).
FedEx Express announced that Senior VP-Air Operations Donald Barber will retire at the end of July. He will be succeeded by FedEx Express VP James Parker.
SITA SC signed a deal with Finnair to migrate the airline's existing network infrastructure over to a SITA IP-based wide area network solution. The solution is being implemented in more than 80 locations across three continents.
The National Mediation Board Thursday offered binding arbitration to Northwest Airlines and the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Assn. The step came after both the airline and the union, which represents Northwest's mechanics, asked to be released from mediation. In a statement, Northwest said it "wants to work with AMFA to reach a consensual agreement that provides wage and benefit levels that are fair to employees and that will allow Northwest to stem its unsustainable operating losses."
Aerosim said AeroMexico will take a 737-700/777-200ER Virtual Procedure Trainer as part of a complete training solution being provided by Alteon Training.
Boeing listed an order for five 777s on its website from an unannounced customer. Embraer reported a total of 60 deliveries for the first half, including 53 commercial aircraft. This is somewhat less than half of the 145 deliveries company officials expect to report for all of 2005. Firm orders in the first six months included six ERJ-145s and 72 170s/190s. In the second quarter alone, 58 firm orders for the 170/190 family were tallied. The firm order backlog, which includes business, commercial and military aircraft, is valued at $10.9 billion.
Shares of Delta Air Lines climbed nearly 18% last Thursday after the carrier announced it would raise its fare caps for domestic one-way walkup fares from $499 to $599 ( ATWOnline, July 15), but JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker threw cold water on the higher expectations, stating that the fare increase is a positive step but does not improve Delta's chances of avoiding Chapter 11.
Gulf Air will launch a thrice-weekly service from Bahrain to Dublin beginning Dec. 2 using A330s in three-class configuration. The flight will be Dublin's first-ever scheduled service into the Middle East. "There is a huge amount of traffic from Dublin to the Gulf and beyond that now has to travel over London or Amsterdam. There is a huge leisure market, a large VFR market as well as a strong high-yield business market," Gulf Air President and CEO James Hogan told ATWOnline in Dublin.
Austrian Airlines Group, which holds 62% of tiny Slovak Airlines, is interested in acquiring the remaining shares if the state permits it, a spokesperson told this website. Meanwhile, AAG, which comprises Austrian, Austrian arrows, Lauda Air and Slovak, flew 2.1 billion RPKs in June, up 8.8% over the year-ago period. ASKs rose 8.7% to 2.8 billion and load factor grew a fraction to 73.1%. The group transported 994,000 passengers, up 12.1%. For the first half, AAG flew 10 billion RPKs, up 1.8%, on a 4.2% gain in ASKs to 14.2 billion. Load factor dropped 1.7 points to 70.2%.
ATA Airlines, which has been operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since October 2004, Friday announced plans to expand the outsourcing of its heavy maintenance program and to begin outsourcing its customer reservations call center in moves that will result in the loss of 450 jobs. Since filing for Chapter 11, ATA has continued to shrink. Over the last two years its total workforce has dropped from 7,800 to 4,687, and since last year its fleet has been reduced from 67 to 45 aircraft.
Qantas, following in the footsteps of Air New Zealand, Friday announced a "new streamlined fare structure" for transpacific travel starting Aug. 1. The new structure consists of three fare families and permits passengers to combine different fare categories for outbound and return legs. However, the carrier has not adopted true one-way pricing as some fares may be purchased only on a roundtrip basis and there are some restrictions and surcharges for one-way fares.
American Airlines and Philippine Airlines launched interline e-ticketing, bringing the number of domestic and international carriers providing IET in cooperation with American to 28.
Volga-Dnepr Group announced that Commercial Manager Dennis Gliznoutsa was promoted to group commercial director succeeding Tony Bauckham, who took over as MD of Volga-Dnepr UK earlier in the year. Gliznoutsa will be based at London Stansted and is responsible for all sales and marketing of Volga-Dnepr's An-124-100s and IL-76s.
Discover the World Marketing finalized an agreement with Alitalia to expand its sales and marketing coverage to South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia. It already represents Alitalia in 13 other countries.
As a result of skyrocketing fuel prices, Delta Air Lines yesterday raised its top-level one-way caps in its SimpliFares program by $100 to $599 for economy class and $699 for first class, effective immediately. According to media reports, United Airlines and Continental Airlines quickly matched the move, while Northwest Airlines and American Airlines were studying it.
KLM Customer Ground Handling concluded an open-ended contract with Icelandair to perform full flight handling for its 757 operations at Amsterdam Schiphol. Icelandair currently operates eight weekly flights to Amsterdam.
TAP Portugal and Air One signed a marketing agreement covering codeshare operations on TAP-operated routes from Lisbon to Rome, Milan Linate and Venice. The agreement will go into effect July 20. In addition, both companies are to market jointly a wide range of domestic destinations operated in codeshare in Italy and Portugal. TAP will apply its code to Air One routes between Rome Fiumicino and Turin, Palermo, Catania, Genoa, Lamezia Terme, Trieste, Alghero and Venice and the Air One code will be applied to TAP flights between Lisbon and Oporto, Funchal and Faro.
InteliSys Aviation Systems released two new interfaces to its successful airline reservation system. The interfaces, marketed under the trade names WebAgent and WebEdit, are modular components of the company's proprietary amelia RES.
Virgin Atlantic will commence its earlier announced London Heathrow-Dubai service March 27 using an A340 fitted with the Upper Class Suite. The flights initially will operate four days a week, increasing to five on May 1 and daily on June 1.
Lufthansa Systems CEO Wolfgang Gohde believes that his company's new FACE (Future Airline Core Environment) modular passenger solution will enable it to steal a march on what he clearly sees as LHS's primary competitors: Sabre Group, parent of the GDS, Travelocity, and Sabre Airline Solutions, and Amadeus, which is moving aggressively into traditional airline IT from its core GDS activity and has had some key wins with its new Altea suite, including Qantas, British Airways and KLM.
Lufthansa will launch six weekly flights to Donestsk from Munich on Sept. 9 and follow that up with six-times-weekly service to Dnipropetrovsk from Frankfurt on Oct. 30. Also, as of Aug. 29 Lufthansa will offer six flights a week to Kiev from Munich and Frankfurt, including a connecting service from Dusseldorf.
Bmi regional will expand operations at Aberdeen. From Sept. 5, it will increase frequencies to Manchester to four direct flights each weekday and add a third daily Norwich service on weekday afternoons. Recently, the regional operator of the bmi group added a 14th Embraer jet to its fleet.
International Finance Corp., the private-sector arm of the World Bank, said the government of Samoa signed an agreement with Virgin Blue to set up a new joint venture airline, Polynesian Blue. Virgin Blue was chosen as the preferred partner in the project in January ( ATWOnline, Jan. 4). According to IFC, which acted as the lead adviser to the Samoan government on the transaction, the new airline will operate the long-haul services of Polynesian Airlines beginning in late October.
US Dept. of Homeland Security announced yesterday that it is ending the so-called "30 minute rule" for flights operating into and out of Reagan Washington National Airport. Under the rule, which was imposed when DCA reopened after 9/11, all passengers and cabin staff were required to remain seated for the first 30 min. of any flight out of DCA and the last 30 min. of any flight into the airport.
