Strong order intake has led EADS to partly improve its guidance for full-year business performance, with a promise that earnings will improve materially next year. The updated outlook is largely driven by strong Airbus order bookings— mainly linked to the A320NEO (new engine option), which now has corporate parent EADS project a gross order intake of more than 1,000 aircraft for the year. It had booked 777 gross orders at mid-year and is already above 800 units year-to-date.
You can now register online for Aviation Week events. Go to www.aviationweek.com/conferences or contact: Lydia Janow, 212-904-3225 or 800-240-7645 ext. 5 (U.S. and Canada only) Sept. 12—A&D Finance Europe, London Sept. 14-15—Airlines, MRO, Aircraft & Engine Lessors: “The Tricky Triangle,” Dublin Sept. 26—Aircraft Composite Repair Management Forum, Zurich Sept. 27-29—MRO Europe 2011, Madrid Sept. 28—MRO Military Europe, Madrid Oct. 20-21—MRO IT, Chicago
Rolls-Royce, which is establishing an aircraft engine assembly plant in Singapore, has received a lot of assistance from the Singapore government, either directly or via government-linked companies and organizations.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Ingrid Lee at [email protected] (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) Aug. 1-5—Military Aviation Museum’s Warbirds and Wings Aviation Summer Camp, Virginia Beach, Va., 757-721-7767, www.militaryaviationmuseum.org Aug. 11-13—Eighth Annual Latin American Business Aviation Conference & Exhibition, Congonhas Airport, Sao Paulo, www.abag.org.br/labace2011/
Mexicana de Aviacion’s demise continues to boost rival Grupo Aeromexico’s operations, which in the second quarter recorded the best revenue, operating profit and net income in 15 years. The absence of any major Mexican competitor has turned a struggling operation into a relatively healthy one. For instance, the MXP51 million (US$4.3 million) net loss posted in the June quarter of 2010–a period when Mexicana still operated–this year turned into a MXP534 million net profit.
American Airlines has reached tentative agreements with its 80 simulator technicians and 160 ground school and simulator pilot instructors, both represented by the Transport Workers Union, although similar talks with the larger TWU unit that bargains for the airline’s fleet services workers appear to have stalled.
Fare competition and the excess capacity within Brazil have pressured Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes to adapt a strategy focused on profitability over market share, although the carrier is offering few details about its intentions. Instead the airline says it is concentrating on keeping the spread between unit costs and revenues “under control” until the “results of the action plan become fully apparent.”
LAN Airlines in October will introduce Airbus A320s into the fleet at recently acquired Colombian division Aires. The new fleet plan also expedites the replacement for three of the nine leased Boeing 737-700s currently operated by Aires. Initial plans, which were reiterated as recently as May, retained all nine 737s until 2014, when seven would be taken off lease and replaced with Airbus A320s from LAN’s fleet. Now, with the Colombian operation’s financial performance better than expected, LAN will replace three 737s with Airbus narrowbodies in 2012.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood led off a White House press briefing July 28, urging lawmakers to end the partial shutdown of the FAA by passing a clean extension of the FAA reauthorization bill that will let 4,000 furloughed employees come back to work and enable the resumption of important and job-creating airport construction projects.
An Asiana Airlines Boeing 747-400 freighter has crashed into the sea off South Korea’s large southern island of Jeju. Two people on board, the captain and the co-pilot, remain missing, but South Korea’s coast guard has discovered wreckage and an oil slick at sea, which is understood to be from the aircraft, says Asiana.
The Internal Revenue Service wants airlines to refund passengers for taxes paid on tickets purchased before the FAA shut down, and the Air Transport Association is pushing back. Travelers who bought tickets before the government stopped collecting taxes but are traveling after the FAA partially shut down, are entitled to a refund on excise taxes, according to a July 26 letter sent by IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to Nick Calio, president and CEO of the Air Transport Association.
Lufthansa is significantly curtailing planned capacity growth for this winter after reporting second-quarter results below market expectations and wider losses at many of its airline subsidiaries. CFO Stephan Gemkow said that capacity will grow only 6% compared with the planned 12%. The airline will push network expansion further out, reduce aircraft size in weaker markets and temporarily cut some destinations. The move mirrors similar steps taken by its rival Air France-KLM.
Virgin Australia has confirmed that its new ATR 72 turboprops will be assigned to the Sydney-Canberra route, and also disclosed that the ATRs will be used for smaller regional routes. “From October 2011, the airline will [use the ATRs to] commence new services from Brisbane to Gladstone, Brisbane to Port Macquarie, and add extra services between Canberra and Sydney,” says Virgin Australia, which is wet-leasing the aircraft from Western Australia carrier Skywest Airlines.
GPS interference caused by a planned broadband wireless network could cost at least $70 billion and an additional 30 million tons of CO2 over the next 10 years through the loss of efficiency and safety benefits, estimates the FAA. But LightSquared, which plans to deploy the nationwide network of terrestrial transmitters, says the FAA’s assessment is based on plans that are no longer on the table and does not reflect the latest proposal to use a frequency spectrum that is farthest from GPS.
Rolls-Royce has not exited the narrowbody market and would remain interested when new programs emerge, new CEO John Rishton says. Rolls-Royce is finding itself on the outside, with Airbus offering the A320NEO (new engine option) with CFM International and Pratt & Whitney powerplants, and Boeing having decided to re-engine the 737 with CFM International’s Leap-X. He says that the decision not to buy the A320NEO “was a sensible decision” and that on the Boeing front, the exclusive supplier arrangement with CFM kicked in.
Premium Aerotec of Germany named Kai Horten as its new CEO. Horten, 46, will take over the new position in October. The new CEO replaces Joachim Naegele, who has been serving as managing director for the past several months. Naegele stepped in as an interim replacement for former CEO Hans Lonsinger, who has been ill. Horten joins Premium Aerotec from Atlas Elektronik, where he was managing director. Naegele keeps his previous post as head of programs and sales.
High fuel costs and a barrage of one-time expenses may have dented LAN Airlines’ second-quarter profitability, but they had no effect on management’s optimism for the operator’s future growth. Operating expenses for the June quarter rose 38.5%, or $354.7 million, year-on-year to almost $1.3 billion, with a $153.5 million or 55.4% growth in fuel to $430.9 million the largest single contributor to this expansion.
United Continental Holdings should address poor staffing practices before blaming pilots for cancellations at its Newark Liberty International Airport hub, says the head of Continental’s Air Line Pilots Association chapter in a response to a cease-and-desist order. According to documents obtained by Aviation Week, the carrier is attributing 24 cancellations on July 27 and about six on July 28 to an organized sick-out by Boeing 737 pilots, and is threatening an injunction against Continental’s ALPA unit.
