U.K. low-cost carrier EasyJet today will eliminate unassigned seating and adopt a system that charges passengers for preferred seats. Starting Nov. 27, all EasyJet passengers will be allocated a seat, but if they want a specific seat in the single-class cabin, one near the front or the emergency rows (which have extra legroom) the airline will charge £3-12 (about $5-20) depending on the choice.
Just six weeks after winning long-sought approval from Brazilian regulators for its takeover of Webjet Linhas Aereas Economicas to create Brazil’s largest carrier, GOL Linhas Aereas Inteligentes says it will shut Webjet down. The company already has begun winding down Webjet’s flight operations and is discontinuing the brand, it said in a statement. The move will result in 850 layoffs, including flight and cabin crew and maintenance workers. GOL will honor all outstanding Webjet tickets, the company says.
Ancillary revenue remains elusive for most Latin American carriers, as customers prefer full-service flights even when given the choice of lower fares, say airline executives from across the region.
Precision Castparts is acquiring Synchronous Aerospace Group in an all-cash deal that is expected to close by the end of the year. Financial details are not being disclosed, but Precision Castparts predicts the merger will be immediately accretive to earnings and will be listed, after regulatory approval, as part of its Airframes Products segment. Synchronous builds mechanical airframe assemblies, including secondary flight controls and structural components. The company has facilities in California, Washington, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Sukhoi Civil Aircraft (SCAC) says it has received formal notification that Indonesia’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has validated the Russian type certificate for the Sukhoi Superjet 100, paving the way for the aircraft to be delivered to Indonesian airline customers. “This validation confirms compliance of the SSJ100 to the certification requirements of the Indonesian aviation authority, allowing its export to Indonesia and operation by Indonesian airlines without restrictions,” SCAC says in a statement.
ATR’s new training center in Singapore will be home to one of only two simulators created for the manufacturer's latest products, the ATR 42-600 and ATR 72-600. The Asia-Pacific region is a major market for ATR, accounting for around 45% of its backlog; Southeast Asia accounts for 25 percentage points of that share. Lion Air’s subsidiary Wings Air also has ATR 72-600s on order, and Garuda Indonesia, which by year-end could place an order for either ATR 72-600s or Bombardier Q400s, has made pilot training a key consideration.
Costs or uncertainty about costs might be keeping other airlines from signing up for Bombardier’s program to extend the economic life of its Dash 8-100 aircraft. Norway’s Wideroe, the only carrier so far to sign up for the Extended Service Program (ESP), is completing the work on the second of its 20 Dash 8-100s, and Bombardier says it is hoping to sign up more customers. But neither Bombardier nor Wideroe has disclosed the cost per aircraft for the program.
The FAA’s sweeping effort to align its draft repair station regulation with industry reality should go back to the drawing board for a second draft that incorporates feedback generated by the initial proposal, the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) tells the FAA.
Contract talks between Boeing Commercial Airplanes and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (Speea) took a hostile turn earlier this week when the union sought National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) intervention after the airframer made what it calls “significant improvements over our initial offer.”
Aviation Daily will not publish Monday, Nov. 26. Aviation Week Intelligence Network subscribers may visit www.aviationweek.com/awin at any time for news updates.
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The U.S. Supreme Court should agree to hear a challenge to some of the U.S. Transportation Department’s (DOT’s) new passenger rights rules “to vindicate the First Amendment and Congress’s manifest intent to deregulate—not re-regulate—the airline industry,” three low-cost airlines argue in a joint petition to the court.
Jeffery L. Turner, the CEO who transformed Wichita-based Spirit AeroSystems from a former Boeing subsidiary into the industry’s largest independent airframe maker, will step down early in 2013. Turner, who is 60, was a VP and general manager for Boeing when the company sold his division in 2005 to Onex Corp., cutting lose its biggest division for manufacturing structural assemblies, including the entire 737 fuselage and the nose of the 787, that aircraft’s most complex composite section.
Malaysia Airlines (MAS) is making use of a state-backed bond facility to raise billions of ringgit to pay for eight Airbus aircraft, including its A380s. The Malaysian finance ministry’s wholly owned company, Turus Pesawat, is assisting with the issuance of the state-backed Islamic bonds, which can raise up to 5.3 billion ringgit ($1.73 billion) for MAS, the airline says. This money will pay for MAS’s six new A380s and two of its new Airbus A330s, it says. The airline is due to receive its fourth A380 by month-end.
Xiamen Airlines has formally joined the SkyTeam alliance, and with it brings three hubs into the global group: Xiamen, Fuzhou and Hangzhou. With this new addition, SkyTeam now counts three Chinese airlines in its roster, one more than Star Alliance, and leaves just Hainan Airlines as the only one of the Big Six Chinese carriers to remain unaligned.
Emirates Airline President Tim Clark says the carrier’s current order for the Airbus A350-1000 is “in limbo at the moment,” but he is not ready to step back from it. The aircraft is “overweight and late,” Clark told Aviation Week after the recent Business Leadership Meeting in Berlin. “Let’s just see what she is like when she flies,” he adds. “At the moment there are issues.”
U.S. low-cost carrier Allegiant Air expects to start international service in late 2013 or early 2014, either with services between small cities in Mexico and McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and Orlando Sanford International Airport in Florida, or to Mexican resort destinations from various U.S., bases.
Electric drive system developer WheelTug has bolstered plans to provide nose gear taxiing systems to Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 operators by teaming with Parker Aerospace as the exclusive wheel supplier. The WheelTug system uses electric motors, installed in the nose gear wheels, to move aircraft while on the ground. Powered by the auxiliary power unit, the nose gear motors replace ground tugs and the aircraft’s own jet engines for pushback and taxi.
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Philippine Airlines’ (PAL) owner San Miguel Corp. is considering the purchase of a 50% stake in Cayman Airways to help the company extend its reach into the U.S. San Miguel, in a statement to the Philippine stock exchange, says it has expressed an interest in acquiring preferred stock in the smaller airline, while Cayman Airways separately issued a statement saying it is exploring the idea of selling such shares to investors.
