TOKYO—Having expanded dramatically at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport this year, All Nippon Airways (ANA) expects to switch its international-growth focus to Narita airport in 2015. New slot awards at Haneda have allowed ANA to build an international-hub operation at the airport, which is closer to downtown Tokyo than Narita, which is the closest to downtown Tokyo. There are no plans for further slot awards at Haneda, however, so further growth there will be limited.
DUBAI—Arab airlines are convinced that carriers must step up and introduce better information-sharing to avoid catastrophes such as the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine. “We must introduce a degree of self-help among the airlines,” Emirates President Tim Clark said at the Arab Air Carriers Organization (AACO) annual general assembly in Dubai. “We have to take action to ensure that the industry is protected.”
Virgin Atlantic is seeking to lease two sets of Heathrow slots freed up by the demise of its U.K. short-haul arm, Little Red, until it has the aircraft it needs to operate them itself.
Panama City-registered Avianca Holdings reported third-quarter net profits of $33.2 million, down 7.6% from $35.9 million posted in the year-ago period.
ZHUHAI, China—Air traffic in China will grow by an average of 7.6% annually until 2033, Avic says. The figure calculated for the next 20 years is somewhat less than the annual average rate of 13.2% in the preceding 20 years, says the state manufacturer, which builds parts for Airbus, Boeing and Comac and makes its own regional turboprop aircraft. Avic is notably more bullish on Chinese commercial aviation than is Boeing, which forecasts 6.9% annual average growth for the 20 years to 2033.
NASSAU, Bahamas —Copa Airlines CEO Pedro Heilbron said Venezuela appears to be slowly moving toward repatriating money owed to airlines. The situation is “not getting worse,” Heilbron said at the Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association (ALTA) Airline Leaders Forum here. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated in July that $4.1 billion was owed to airlines operating to/from Venezuela (Aviation DAILY, July 29).
SEATTLE—Australian carrier Qantas says it is seeing better-than-expected initial results from its recently invoked, company-wide cost-savings plan to stem losses and return the airline to profitability.
he European Commission (EC) has cleared Etihad Airways’ partial takeover of Alitalia after the airlines agreed to surrender slots on the Rome Fiumicino-Belgrade, Serbia route.
Emirates is still waiting to hear back from Airbus to resume talks about a possible new order for the A350, airline CEO Tim Clark said. “I have expressed a wish talk about the A350 again, but there has not been a great take-up yet,” Clark said during a recent visit to Berlin. But Clark added he hopes, “that we will talk with them in the next few months.”
