The report—which details “red team” undercover investigators’ efforts to bring banned items through passenger checkpoints—is classified, and Johnson is not discussing specific results.
The London Heliport in Battersea currently enjoys an exemption from the EASA rule CAT.POL.H.305, which defines additional monitoring regimes that operators need to adopt when operating helicopters where there is no assured safe forced landing capability.
The Dutch government has no problem with the recent increase of the French state’s shareholding in Air France-KLM from 15.88% to 17.58%. The expansion of French interest does not lead to a “fundamental shift in balance” at the Franco-Dutch group, Minister of Finance Jeroen Dijsselbloem said. According Dijsselbloem, the French government had notified him of the plans in advance of the purchase of the additional shares.
Flights within North America now account for about 45% of Air Canada’s network, a number that has been steady since 2010. But by 2018, those flights will constitute 38% of the network.
Andrew Robb, Australia’s trade minister, had been pushing such a policy, which would permit overseas carriers to fly between domestic points north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Boyd Group is predicting 10-12 U.S airports—including some with fewer than three million annual origin-and-destinations passengers—could win new EU routes in the next five years.
The rating comes at a sensitive time for Etihad, which is fending off allegations made by U.S. and European carriers that it is unfairly subsidized by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government.
Meanwhile, Chinese airlines operated 9% more flights last year than in 2013, foreign carriers’ operations in China grew only 6.6%, the CAAC said in a report.
Austrian will take over 17 E195s previously operated by Lufthansa CityLine, a sister company within the Lufthansa Group. The aircraft were delivered to CityLine in 2009-12.
JetBlue Airways is hitting back hard against the U.S. carriers seeking to limit the Persian Gulf airlines’ access to the U.S., urging the Transportation Department not to bow to pressure to curtail open skies.
BEIJING—Only 68.4% of Chinese scheduled flights were on time last year, marking the third straight year of declining performance and demonstrating that short-term capacity expansion efforts, such as opening temporary airways, are not coping with industry growth. The 2014 on-time performance compares with 72.3% in 2013 and 83.1% in 2007, Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) data show
LONDON—Avio Aero says it is enjoying a closer relationship with some of its third-party clients despite now being owned by GE. GE moved to take over the Italian transmission, gearbox and turbine specialist Avio SpA in late 2012, and the deal was finalized in August of 2013. Since then, the company has attempted to grow not only its participation in a number of GE engine programs, but also grow its third-party work with the likes of Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce.
FRANKFURT—Lufthansa is making sweeping changes to its distribution strategy by introducing surcharges for bookings through global distribution systems (GDS).
Norwegian Air International (NAI) is asking the U.S. Transportation Department (DOT) for expedited processing of its application for a foreign air carrier permit and has offered a condition that goes “beyond any legal obligations” required under the U.S.-EU open skies agreement.
