Lufthansa Technik, which pioneered installation and operation of Connexion by Boeing high-speed broadband Internet access aboard A330s and A340s, overcame an array of technical challenges en route from the prototype installed in a Lufthansa 747-400 for a four-month trial to the ongoing installation on the airline's long-haul fleet. "We've learned a lot since the proof-of-concept aircraft," says Ulf Hallmann, director-LHT engineering services, VIP and government jet maintenance. Involved are complex structural enhancements both inside and outside the aircraft.
Aircraft position information is essential for safe operations, including the parts that happen on the ground. While this ground piece has not been ignored, it is true that until recently it was not afforded attention equal to the flying piece. Consequently, increasingly congested facilities experienced a rapid rise in aircraft and vehicles getting lost on airports or going where they shouldn't go. The rate of runway incursions began to rise, and the rate of increase in the US was well beyond alarming (ATW, 9/03, p. 38).
As turnaround stories go, Air New Zealand's is about as good as it gets. In just over 2-1/2 years under MD and CEO Ralph Norris, the company has come from the nightmare of writing off NZ$1.45 billion-the largest writeoff in New Zealand corporate history-to posting combined annual profits of NZ$331 million over its last two fiscal years.
Editor's Note: This is the first in an occasional series of articles on relationships between IT suppliers and airlines Finnair's seven-year relationship with information technology provider Lufthansa Systems Aeronautics, a member of Lufthansa Group, has yielded millions of dollars in savings and revenue for the Nordic carrier through scheduling, planning, pricing, profit, route planning and management software.
Low-profile but profitable, Turkish Airlines is on a roll with an order for 51 new aircraft and plans to build a new $350 million technical base (see box, p. 42), soaring on the winds of a robust economy and rising demand for leisure and business travel. Earnings are at record highs and passenger traffic was up 26% in the first half of the current year.
George Cooper, head of airline operations and Aircom services for SITA, has a six-word business strategy: Voice and data, long-haul and short-haul, Airbus and Boeing. "It's an approach that takes into account what people say they want," he says. "What do you as an airline manager want to provide?"
The biggest airport in the US is getting bigger. With its 16,000-ft. sixth runway-the longest commercial landing strip in the nation-a year old, Denver International is starting on the first terminal expansion of its nine-year life. It will spend about $100 million to build an extension to Concourse A, chiefly for Frontier Airlines, and another $45-$50 million on better facilities for United Airlines' Regional operations at the end of Concourse B.
The scarcity of new developments announced at this year's Farnborough air show stood in stark contrast to the overall feeling of relief that pervaded the attitude of show exhibitors, relief that the cycle finally has turned the corner and business is in the first stages of recovery. Forecasts started to trend upward and building rates are following slowly.
What a difference two years make. When ATW last reviewed the market potential for passenger-to-freighter conversion programs (9/02, p. 48), airfreight was just beginning to claw back from its most severe contraction since the early 1970s. The winding down of high-priority Y2K-related technology shipments, followed by the bursting of the dot.com and telecom bubbles and then 9/11, resulted in world airfreight traffic (FTKs) falling 6.6% in 2001, according to Arlington, Va.-based MergeGlobal.
They won't have to move a mountain to build the grand new Terminal 5 at Heathrow but they did move two rivers, the Duke of Northumberland and Longford, from under the existing airfield and the middle of the T5 construction site. The diversion of the rivers into two new channels will allow the site to be surveyed by archaeologists as the construction teams move forward.
The US heartland is a popular stumping ground in an election year and Des Moines International is the politicians' portal to get there. Reporters covering such rituals as the Iowa caucuses noticed a difference this year at the Iowa state capital's airport, however. Last October Des Moines went live with its airportwide wireless LAN with coverage in the terminal, ramp areas, concourse, car rental lots, general aviation lobbies and some private hangars.
John Kern is surprisingly calm for a man on a mission to save an economy. Kern, director of FAA's Joint Planning and Development Office, is at the helm of the US's latest and presumably greatest attempt to jolt the curb-to-curb air transportation experience, a do-or-die manifest if the $10 trillion US economy is to remain constraint-free on the global stage.
In March 2002, British Airways took a decisive step in combining four of its Regional operators under a single entity, BA CitiExpress, as part of a grand scheme of improving efficiency, reducing costs and bolstering the operating margin (ATW, 6/02, p. 29). "I think the story of the last two years has been one of consolidation," CitiExpress MD David Evans tells ATW. "There were significant challenges to bring four airlines into one."
Evolving business models and driving down costs will be key topics at the European Regions Airline Assn. General Assembly beginning Sept. 29 in Vienna. The annual meeting of Europe's Regional airline industry attracts a diverse crowd of independent and fully aligned carriers as well as a smattering of others sharing common interests and has become a much-anticipated forum at which to discuss issues impacting the sector. ERA members include some 70 airlines along with some 230 representatives from Europe's airports, manufacturers and suppliers.
There's hope for O'Hare. The world's busiest airport can be fixed. It won't be easy, it won't be quick and it certainly won't be cheap, but it can be done.
The nine largest US passenger airlines in aggregate reported a net loss of $2.26 billion for the spring quarter ended June 30 compared to a net profit of $171.9 million in the year-ago period (the 10th, ATA Airlines, did not release results in time to be included in this report). Extraordinary writeoffs at Delta Air Lines totaling $1.65 billion and soaring fuel prices masked significant improvement at most carriers, however.
Five years ago, only a relative handful of Italian and international business travelers were aware of the existence of Milan's Orio al Serio airport, or as it is more commonly known, Milan Bergamo. Today, you'll see more denim and backpacks than Armani inside the terminal. Lots more.
Charles Darwin wrote, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." British Airways CEO Rod Eddington warns that achieving that responsiveness is extremely difficult-"Changing airline culture is like trying to perform an engine change inflight," he maintains. While not all legacy airline CEOs have to face as daunting a task as that, the magnitude of reform required to meet the actual or threatened competition from low-cost carriers is enormous, and for many airlines seemingly impossible to achieve.
Last winter was not good for Vienna International Airport. It's not that the airport suffered a major slump in traffic--quite the contrary. Passenger throughput increased by 15% in the cold weather months Jan. 1-March 31 on the year-ago period, while aircraft movements rose by 11% year-on-year.
Fifteen months after American Airlines' unionized employees agreed to some $1.7 billion in pay and benefit reductions and productivity improvements in order to keep the airline aloft, management and workers are striving to create a new corporate culture reminiscent of the remarkable transformation achieved at Continental Airlines a decade ago. The drive to change the way the carrier does business reflects AMR Corp.
When the first A320 was delivered to launch customer Air France in October 1987, it represented a revolution in commercial aircraft flight control technology and also featured the most extensive use of automation and computerization on any civil transport flightdeck. Today, with Boeing having embraced fly-by-wire in its two most recent new aircraft programs, and when even regional jets such as the Embraer 170 offer it, it may be difficult to recall the controversy generated by the aircraft.
France is Europe's largest tourist destination, with 75.5 million visitors annually including some 15.5 million Germans, 12.7 million Britons and 12 million Dutch flocking to the country. Per capita GDP is above the European average, and with 61 million inhabitants it has the largest population in Western Europe after Germany. Yet air travelers in France have fewer opportunities to take advantage of low-cost airlines than those in almost any other country in Europe.
People may not be out in the streets demonstrating for change, but they are at their home PCs and Internet cafes making bookings for seats on a revolution sweeping across Asia. The era of the low-cost carrier has arrived and perhaps sooner than most would have expected in a region still making the transition from tightly drawn bilateral agreements to freewheeling open skies arrangements.
In 1964, the US airlines were looking forward to a record year, especially for travel to Europe. With 88.52 million passenger enplanements, up from 77.4 million the previous year, they were not disappointed. They might have been, though, had their vision stretched to the end of the century: Their numbers were a drop in the bucket compared with the 666.15 million enplanements of 2000.
The transformation of commuter/regional airlines over the last 40 years has been nothing short of dramatic. Deregulation, cabin-class airliners, codesharing and top-shelf management have helped change commuter carriers from marginal players with shaky finances into billion-dollar Regionals that have become part of the industry's core.
