As Virgin Australia has dragged its new acquisition Tigerair Australia to breakeven, the carrier is now looking for ways to address weakness in its international operation.
Most analysts expect WestJet Airlines will initially fly its four Boeing 767-300ERs to Europe, but CEO Gregg Saretsky told the Aviation Daily that executives have considered deploying them elsewhere, perhaps to Asia.
Alaska Airlines has purchased six Boeing 737-900ERs, valued at $594 million, for delivery between 2016 and 2017. “We’re delighted Boeing is able to expedite delivery of four of these new 737-900ERs, increasing the number of planes we’ll receive next year to 19,” said Andrew Harrison, Alaska Airlines executive vice president and chief revenue officer. The aircraft will replace 737-400s and carry 25% more passengers using the same amount of fuel, Boeing notes.
Interest in virtual control towers is shifting from curiosity to serious consideration as a growing number of air navigation service providers (ANSPs) and airports consider cost-benefit analyses for staffing air traffic control towers at low-volume airports, or when contemplating new tower construction at higher-activity airports. “What we’re seeing is fully formed requirements coming out of a number of different ANSPs,” says Alex Sauriol, executive vice president for airport and ATM solutions for Searidge Technolofies.
According to company sources, the airline will phase out most of the 34 Embraer 190s and 195s currently operated by its regional subsidiary, Lufthansa CityLine.
The airline will provide ACMI services to partner carriers within the Etihad Airways partner group. In Europe, Etihad’s equity alliance encompasses Air Berlin, Alitalia and Air Serbia.
The carrier intends to boost its Tokyo Narita-Hong Kong flights from daily to twice-daily frequency beginning Feb. 21, but this may be its last expansion for some time.
Although the content of those meetings has not been made public, the BTC-led group believes the airline CEOs are looking to review open skies policy, arguing that growing competition from the three major Gulf carriers—Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways—is unfair.
“2014 is the first year in which international passenger revenues have exceeded domestic passenger revenues,” the company said, “contributing to an overall natural hedge between foreign currency-denominated revenues and costs.”
The American Association of Airport Executives has added former Transportation Security Administration Chief Technology Officer John Sanders as a principal advisor of its recently created Airport Innovation Accelerator (AIA). The AIA will serve as a de facto incubator that helps companies bring potentially beneficial technology and services to airports. It plans to tap the expertise of airport executives to help identify and shape the most promising offerings. The AIA expects to begin operations by midyear.
Air France-KLM is moving ahead with the watered-down expansion plans for its low-cost carrier (LCC) subsidiary Transavia, adding up to 27 Boeing 737-800s in the next few years, including seven in 2015 to supplement the carrier’s French division. The seven 737s will bring Transavia France’s fleet size to 21 this summer, up from 14 last summer.
The transaction, details of which will be released later this week, marks the onset of consolidation of the air travel market between mainland France and the French West Indies as well as intensified competition for Air France.
DivX has been a small player in inflight entertainment (IFE) in the past, having helped develop the handheld “digEplayer” used by Alaska Airlines slightly more than a decade ago—an early move away from embedded systems.
The country’s new left-wing government has pledged to scrutinize privatization projects across all industries as it tries to break up earlier agreements between Greece and other European governments that, it claims, are unbearable financially and socially.
Although rapid growth has been one of the hallmarks of AirAsia, some of the carriers within the group have been scaling back growth or downsizing, in order to strengthen their bottom lines.
More than six years in the making, the FAA’s proposed rules for small unmanned aircraft cannot be finalized fast enough for those on either side of the argument over UAS in civil airspace.
Anyone wanting to fly a small unmanned aircraft commercially in U.S. airspace will have to obtain an special operator certificate and pass a test on the “rules of the air”, but the aircraft themselves will not require airworthiness approval.
