The owner and operator of McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas is asking for FAA approval to offer landing fee discounts to any carrier that increases the monthly combined weight of its aircraft landing at the airport year-over-year. The carriers could increase that weight by offering more flights or using bigger aircraft. The Clark County Department of Aviation says it wants to offer the incentive starting June 1 and at least for a year because of a precipitous decline in service it believes will be a “short-term anomaly.”
Airports could receive up to $3.5 billion this year for improvements in the spending bill passed last week by the House and Senate to fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2011. That amount sits smack in the middle of what the House and Senate authorizing committees have approved for the Airport Improvement Program (AIP), leaving airport executives to push for at least that amount in the FAA reauthorization bill.
Turkish Airlines and the Turkish Culture and Tourism Office are partnering with a brand of GTA (formerly known as Gullivers Travel Associates)—Travel Bound—which sells exclusively to travel agents in North America. Since 2006, Turkey has seen a 30% increase in visitors from the U.S., and the airline last December launched the first Washington-Istanbul nonstops.
Leaders at the Air Canada Pilots Association have canceled a ratification vote on their latest labor agreement, citing concern among members for “controversial” parts of the contract. The vote was scheduled to begin April 15, the day the cancellation was announced. No details are being disclosed apart from ACPA’s confirmation that its members voice disapproval with “some parts” of the accord. The union says this led the Master Executive Council, which earlier this month decided to pass the deal onto a ratification vote, to reconsider the ballot.
Component costs account for about 3% of an airline’s total operating costs, but are responsible for 80-90% of dispatch reliability problems when weather is taken out of the equation, says Matthew Bromberg, a VP and general manager at Hamilton Sundstrand. Reliability data exists, but are not centralized, and as components mature, OEMs often don’t get the right reliability data back so they can improve component design. This is part of the reason Hamilton Sundstrand recently opened a customer response center in Connecticut—to better aggregate and mine data.
The five-year limit to many of the conditions which the U.S. Justice Department is imposing on Google to allow it to acquire ITA Software is a major flaw, the American Antitrust Institute says.
Boeing says the alternate 787 final assembly line it expects to open at mid-year in North Charleston, S.C., is its first major commercial airplane production facility to require no waste material to be carted to landfills. The designation means all waste material and by-products generated at the site are either recycled, reused or "otherwise repurposed," the company says. Boeing has three other non-production sites that are termed "zero waste."
Copa Holdings will use U.S. Export-Import Bank-guaranteed financing from JP Morgan to fund the five Boeing 737-800s scheduled for delivery directly from the manufacturer this year. The $178.5 million loan includes 12-year financing terms “at very competitive rates,” says the Panama-based company. JP Morgan is sole arranger and facility agent for loan. These five aircraft account for half of Copa’s fleet growth in 2011; another five 737s will be leased. According to Boeing’s web site, the average list price of a single 737-800 is $80.8 million.
Aeromexico has raised almost MXN3.9 billion ($332 million) from an initial public offering on the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores stock exchange as part of its $1.3 billion investment program announced earlier this month (Aviation Daily, April 7). The issue was considered weak by market analysts, who pointed to the issue’s apparent low pricing.
U.S. airlines would have to report their quarterly ancillary revenue collection by category to the Transportation Department under a proposal the DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for regulatory review. The next step would be to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking. Most carriers aside from the smaller regional players already report detailed quarterly financial data to the BTS, but baggage and change fees are the only two ancillary fees paid by passengers that they report as separate items.
The U.S. Transportation Department is on track to publish a final rule this month on a second round of airline passenger “protections,” with the Office of Management and Budget having completed its regulatory review of the rule on April 14.
In its drive to identify technologies that could be pursued to make future aircraft cleaner and quieter, NASA has extended the horizon of its search to 2040-45. Europe has already extended its vision for aviation to 2050 to help guide long-term research goals.
Several airline maintenance and engineering organizations are shopping for new information technology (IT) systems, they said at Aviation Week's MRO Americas conference this week in Miami.
India’s leading private airline Jet Airways said it will purchase aircraft from Boeing and Airbus as part of its fleet expansion program. Yohan Paul, a senior official at Jet Airways, told Aviation Week the company has approved acquiring two additional Boeing 777–300ER aircraft. The delivery would take place between February and April 2013. “We are also planning to induct four A330-family aircraft over the next two years,” Paul said.
Hank Krakowski, chief operating officer of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, has resigned following a series of embarrassing incidents involving controllers either asleep or unresponsive during late night shifts. FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, who announced the resignation April 14, has appointed the administration’s Chief Counsel David Grizzle as ATO’s acting COO while a permanent replacement is found.
The Obama administration is pledging to press its business case for air traffic modernization even harder in the wake of a budget deal in Congress reached during the weekend which slashed the FAA accounts that pay for NextGen programs. Although the cuts didn’t target NextGen specifically, they crimp the agency’s flexibility at a time when NextGen spending is expected to ramp up, and will likely force other Facilities & Equipment (F&E) efforts to be trimmed to keep higher-priority programs intact.
The Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB) is about to issue the tender for refurbishment and expansion of Brunei International Airport’s passenger terminal. The tender will go out next week, says Sheikh Rashid Salam, BEDB head of local business development, adding that 14 construction companies will compete. “We’re looking to make a decision in the fourth quarter and have construction start in the first quarter of 2012.”
Hundreds of commercial aircraft will be disassembled and parted out this year to feed airline demand for lower-cost parts and components. But unlike 10-15 years ago, when most were torn down because they had reached the end of their useful lives, these are much younger aircraft.
February traffic of the Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association’s (ALTA’s) members grew 1.2% year-on-year to 15.7 billion revenue passenger kilometers, and passenger numbers were up 0.1% to 10.3 million, but a 1.5% rise in capacity to 21.1 billion available seat kilometers depressed their combined load factor 0.2 percentage points to 74.3%.
