Nigeria’s head of civil aviation is accusing Europe of using safety blacklists as a mechanism for unfair competition and he also says many of the air accidents that occur in Africa are due to foreign registered aircraft or aircraft operating there illegally.
Singapore Airlines’ new medium-long-haul, low-cost carrier Scoot is planning initially to focus on flying to Australia and China, the same markets Singapore-based Jetstar Asia serves using Airbus A330s. Scoot says it plans to launch services in mid-2012 with four Boeing 777-200s from Singapore to Australia and China. It will later look to expand by launching services to other East Asian markets, as well as to India, the Middle East and Europe, it adds.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is moving ahead with its assessments of foreign airports’ security capabilities, but shortages of staff and funding pose limits to its operations and the agency could do a better job analyzing its amassed information, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports.
Boeing CFO James Bell, 63, will retire effective April 1, and be succeeded on Feb. 1 by VP-Finance and Corporate Controller Greg Smith, 45. Bell, who also is executive VP and Boeing’s corporate president, has been CFO since 2003, stepping into that rank from corporate controller. He joined Boeing in 1972 as a staff accountant at what was then Rockwell International. In 2005, he was interim CEO for several months while Boeing searched for a permanent CEO, a post taken by James McNerney. He praised Bell for fostering “a culture of continuous improvement.”
Wayne County Airport Authority has fired CEO Turkia Awada Mullin, named to the post in August, after the FBI launched an investigation into a payment she received after leaving her previous post as Wayne County’s economic development director. The federal investigation was noted Monday in a statement from the Michigan attorney general’s office and Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. The firing came “after consultation with airport authority counsel and after considering the information available to the board,” the airport authority said.
Governments considering austerity measures in the face of the current global economic slowdown need to avoid budget cuts of safety regulators, Flight Safety Foundation President William Voss warned Tuesday at the organization's International Air Safety seminar in Singapore. Some safety regulators are already “horrifically under-funded” and have too few inspectors for even the most basic tasks, said Voss, adding that for some, “it is becoming a full-blown crisis.”
The FAA has issued an airworthiness directive (AD) requiring earlier and more frequent fuselage inspections of a specific area on some Boeing 737-300, -400 and -500 series aircraft after a report of two similarly situated cracks that went through the frame and fail-safe chord.
About 18 months after they first began discussing the possibility, Delta Air Lines and Canadian low-cost carrier WestJet have signed an agreement to begin code-sharing. WestJet first publicly disclosed talks with Delta about a potential code-share deal in late March 2010, when then-incoming WestJet CEO Gregg Saretsky talked about it in an interview with the Financial Post.
Fresh labor unrest is brewing at cash-strapped national carrier Air India as more than 100 pilots threatened to resign over alleged discrimination by the company. About 10 international flights were canceled on Oct. 31 as 23 Air India pilots reported sick, an airline official said.
Alaska Airlines’ Hawaiian expansion continues in April with the addition of nonstop service to Honolulu from Oakland and San Jose, Calif. The Boeing 737 operator in recent years has reassigned mainland capacity to serving Hawaii from various West Coast cities. Just two weeks ago, CEO William Ayer attributed six consecutive quarterly profits to the Pacific island services, and vowed to continue adding routes throughout 2012 (Aviation Daily, Oct. 20).
Boeing completed function and reliability testing on the 747-8 Intercontinental passenger jet on a flight back to the factory from Barbados, and will now seek certification from the FAA and European Aviation Safety Agency. Separately, Boeing delivered Cathay Pacific's first 747-8 freighter.
A software glitch associated with the replacement of a Continental Airlines mobile booking application caused the airline’s parent company to breach a ruling barring it from placing Continental’s designator code on 70-seat United Express flights.
Delta Air Lines, trying to encourage replacement service in many of the small communities where it currently remains obligated to provide federally subsidized Essential Air Service (EAS), is cooperating with Great Lakes Airlines to enhance the regional carrier's EAS bids for nine communities. Delta told the U.S. Transportation Department it will assist Great Lakes via an interline and ticketing arrangement, participation in Delta’s frequent flyer program and booking capability on Delta.com.
Air Berlin plans to grow its presence in the Berlin market significantly, once the new airport opens next year. New CEO Hartmut Mehdorn says he expects passenger numbers to increase from the current 8 million per year to about 13 million in 2020 at its home base. The airline will get its own dedicated pier at the new airport and is trying to build up a hub-and-spoke system, including several daily banks of flights. Air Berlin just announced a new long-haul service from Berlin to Los Angeles that is set to be launched next summer.
A unit of the United Nations has launched a law enforcement task force that aims to stop narcotics smuggling at Dakar, Senegal, Airport. The unit comprises 21 police officers, bolstered by the local gendarmerie, who will work round-the-clock on the UN mission. It is able to tap into an intelligence and communications network set up in 2010 that establishes ties to 20 airports in the effort in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe.
An act of high-stakes brinksmanship by Qantas has set the stage for the near-term resolution of a protracted labor conflict that has been clouding the airline’s future. Following two days of emergency meetings, Fair Work Australia (FWA)–the country’s top labor relations body–has disallowed further strikes and set a deadline for talks to end the airline’s contract dispute with three of its major unions.
American Airlines is extending its global reach through new code-shares with Uruguayan Bombardier CRJ900 operator Pluna and Fiji’s Air Pacific. If both deals gain government approvals, the U.S. carrier will add a code-share partner on services between its Miami hub and Montevideo, as well as Los Angeles-Nadi, Honolulu-Nadi and Nadi-Suva. Air Pacific will also place its ‘FJ’ designator code on 20 American routes out of the West Coast hub. Neither Air Pacific nor Pluna is a member of Oneworld, which American co-founded.
Having focused the past 17 months on capacity control and canceled orders for 25 narrowbodies, Kuwaiti low-fare carrier Jazeera now is looking at slowly growing the size of its fleet. As part of the effort, the carrier’s three-year Strategic Master Plan (STAMP), calls for Jazeera to grow its airline fleet by the end of 2014 to seven aircraft from five, and the leased fleet managed by Sahaab to eight aircraft from six. The number of destinations served will remain flat at 18, but the frequency of service will increase, management says.
Winnipeg Airports Authority has completed the first phase of a lengthy construction project with Monday’s opening of a new main terminal for the Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport.
In an about-face, the U.K.’s opposition Labor Party says it will not support a third runway at London Heathrow Airport, shadow Transport Secretary Maria Eagle tells the annual Airport Operators Association conference in London. The Labor Party, under then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, had rubber-stamped BAA’s application for the runway, but the approval was scrapped by the incoming coalition government following the last election.
