Porter Airlines will retain the 16 slots awarded earlier this year after a judge dismissed Air Canada’s claims that Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport erred in granting the slots to the Bombardier Q400 operator. Porter holds a commanding position at the city airport, challenged only by Air Canada’s 30 slots, allocated last year. However, a federal court decided that 16 slots allocated to Continental Airlines in 2010 and returned in April can go to Porter, as planned by the Toronto Port Authority (TPA).
Southwest Airlines ranks behind most of its U.S. competitors on fuel cost per available seat mile for domestic narrowbody aircraft, which may help explain its record-setting deal for modernizing its fleet.
LightSquared is calling for an investigation of the source of possibly leaked data from the recently completed GPS interference tests conducted by the U.S. government that evidently contradict more favorable test results recently promoted by the company.
A European project focusing on the development of controller support tools has succeeded in raising their rate of introduction, although now the challenge is improving cross-border cooperation in this area. The six-year First ATC Support Tools Implementation (FASTI) program is drawing to a close, but Eurocontrol is confident that enough momentum has been created through this effort to spur further deployment in the near future. Through the program’s duration, 36 air navigation service providers (ANSPs) and equipment suppliers participated.
The lack of available runway capacity in the U.K. will limit airlines’ abilities to explore new markets and will drive up ticket costs, the country’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) warns.
With roughly two weeks to go before the European Union’s emissions trading system (ETS) is extended to aviation, Joao Vale de Almeida, the EU’s ambassador to the U.S., blasted U.S. opposition to the system. “We could not wait any longer,” de Almeida told the International Aviation Club yesterday in Washington.
Rolls-Royce is counting on large productivity gains to ensure it gets a sizable return from its multi-billion-dollar investment in Singapore. The U.K. engine maker has built an engine assembly plant and wide-chord, hollow-titanium fan blade factory, as well as a training center and research laboratory at Singapore’s Seletar Aerospace Park. It is the company’s first such fan blade factory outside Britain and its first engine assembly plant outside Europe.
Production of CFM56 engines is likely to reach around 1,600 turbofans a year in 2014, bolstered by near-record order intake so far this year. During a CFM International http://www.safran-group.com/IMG/pdf/2-CFM_CMD11-3.pdfpresentation at Safran’s Capital Markets Day, the company reported that the backlog for CFM56 and Leap engines had reached 8,415 turbofans through October. The joint venture between Safran’s Snecma and General Electric expects record order bookings this year.
AirAsia group has disclosed that its affiliate carriers in Indonesia and Thailand have each decided to delay their initial public offerings (IPOs), due to poor market conditions.
U.S. aerospace and defense sales continued to grow in 2011 and will see only a modest decline next year, according to a forecast unveiled Wednesday by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).
AMR Corp.’s American Eagle Airlines division has halted all pilot hiring and canceled a training program that started Dec. 5, citing its parent company’s Chapter 11 reorganization. Twenty pilots are affected by the cancellation, but as employees they are being added to the carrier’s furlough list. Their union, the Air Line Pilot Association (ALPA), says it is trying to gain the same preferential placement for these pilots that it has secured for ALPA pilots at other carriers since 2010.
Star Alliance has appointed former United Airlines Senior VP-Alliances Mark Schwab as its new CEO. Schwab will replace Jaan Albrecht, who is moving on to become CEO of Austrian Airlines on Jan. 1, 2012. Schwab was one of three candidates on the shortlist for the position, according to industry sources. One of the other two is believed to have been Alex de Gunten, the secretary general of the Latin American and Carribean Airline Association (ALTA). Schwab, who recently retired from United, also was a member of the Star Alliance management board.
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Delta Air Lines, anticipating a recession in Europe and trying to restore profitability to its operations to the continent, says it is planning a 7-8% reduction in its transatlantic capacity next year.
Virgin Australia and Singapore Airlines (SIA) plan to launch flights to Darwin and coordinate the new services, which is the first step in the two airlines’ efforts to link their networks following government approval of their alliance.
The downturn in the credit outlook for France and Ireland is also hitting the countries’ main airport operators. Credit rating company Standard & Poor’s (which, like Aviation Week, is a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies) has placed both DAA, the Dublin Airport Authority, and Aeroport de Paris on CreditWatch negative.
Funding, not leadership changes at FAA, is the biggest threat to the on-schedule implementation of the NextGen air traffic modernization program, says Marion Blakey, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).
Delta Air Lines and US Airways closed on their agreement to transfer many of their respective takeoff and landing rights at New York LaGuardia Airport and Reagan Washington National Airport. Next up: announcing exactly what they are going to do with their new slots in terms of frequencies and routes. Delta already has said it will use its newly acquired slots to establish a domestic hub at LaGuardia to complement its international hub at New York John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Lufthansa could make a decision on the sale of BMI British Midland “in the coming weeks,” possibly before the end of this year, CEO Christoph Franz told reporters on the sidelines of the Star Alliance Chief Executive Board (CEB) meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He made the comments after it emerged earlier this week that Virgin Atlantic also had made a bid for the airline. International Airlines Group (IAG) and Lufthansa said in early November that they had reached an agreement in principle over the sale of BMI to IAG.
