Ambitious Hainan Airlines owner HNA Group will build up budget subsidiary Lucky Air as a provincial carrier for Yunnan, eyeing the strong tourism of the southwestern Chinese region and threatening already struggling China Eastern. The provincial government will take a minority stake in the new Yunnan Airlines Co. Ltd., which will revive the name of the carrier that the local authorities ran from 1993 until 2002, when they were forced to merge it into China Eastern Airlines.
The continued rise in oil prices is only fueling the need for the Delta/Northwest merger to go forward, an executive for the Atlanta-based carrier said yesterday. “In light of what’s happened with fuel, the debate around the merger has evaporated,” said Scott Yohe, senior VP-government affairs for Delta in an address at the American Association of Airport Executives’ annual meeting in New Orleans. “The merger will be very important to Delta as a response to fuel and offers us self-help in meeting the challenge of a meteoric rise in prices.”
American and four other oneworld members have withdrawn their application for antitrust immunity, but they intend to refile after adding more information. American filed the ATI application almost a year ago for transatlantic service with Iberia, Finnair, Malev and Royal Jordanian. The U.S. Transportation Dept. has not yet approved the application but told the airlines it wanted more information on certain aspects of the filing.
TravelMuse.com has launched a beta test online of its new Web site that matches traveler preferences and needs with modes of travel or accommodations and a destination package. The Los Altos, Calif.-based company built the site to let users match their preferences, such as budget, maximum travel distance desired and preferred vacation activities, with a travel supplier by using its TravelMuse Inspiration Finder tool. A TravelMuse Planner lets customers save their research and share it with family and friends.
Solid traffic gains and controlled capacity helped Air Canada and its regional partner Jazz turn in a record May load factor of 83.2%. Systemwide, the operators posted a 3.8% rise in traffic to roughly 4 billion RPMs on a 3.7% rise in capacity to 4.7 billion ASMs. The capacity increases came as the transborder network to the U.S. was trimmed by 4.5%. This control allowed the carriers to mitigate a traffic dip, which at 3.5% resulted in load gains on flights between Canada and the U.S.
Avianca will launch five weekly nonstop flights between Bogota and Washington on June 13, Avianca President Fabio Villegas recently announced. The flights will be operated with Airbus A319 aircraft. Avianca also increased to twice daily its Bogota-New York Kennedy service, also operated with A319s. Nonstop flights between Bogota and Santo Domingo will start on June 14. Avianca will offer the service four times weekly.
Potential bidders for Eos assets are getting more time. An attorney for Eos said the auction, originally scheduled June 9 in bankruptcy court, has been delayed “to allow interested parties additional time to conduct additional diligence with regard to certain assets.” A sale hearing now is tentatively scheduled June 23.
Delta in a surprise move yesterday notified Pinnacle of its intent to terminate the regional’s Delta Connection contract due to failure to meet arrival-time performance requirements. The contract, signed in April 2007, was to run 10 years from the launch of flying in December 2007. Pinnacle currently receives some $3.5 million a month for the flights.
Airbus is pouring cold water on any suggestion that it might become a partner in China’s project for a large commercial aircraft. “We are interested to learn more [about the project] and we are open to discussions, but of course it is difficult to imagine being both partners and competitors,” Airbus President for China, Laurence Barron, told The DAILY. An apparently mistranslated report by China’s Xinhua news agency wrongly quoted Barron saying that Airbus is negotiating to join the Chinese program.
Silverjet’s administrators have reached a deal with private investors on the “principal terms” for acquiring and reviving the all-business class airline, which has not flown since May 30, and the bidder said the carrier could be back in the air in “a matter of weeks.”
Delta may be closer to new or upgraded terminals at its New York Kennedy Airport hub now that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has announced plans to spend $20 million to study the effort. Terminals 2 and 3 need modernization, and the study is the first step, said spokesman Mark LaVorgna. Delta took over the terminals in December 1991.
Republic Airways Holdings reports that revenue passenger miles for its three subsidiaries — Chautauqua, Republic and Shuttle America — jumped 21.7% year on year in May 2008 to 898 million RPMs. But traffic growth kept pace with seat offer, up 21.6% to 1.17 billion available seat miles, and loads remained flat at 76.8%. The airlines together carried a total 1.72 million passengers in May, up 23.9% from the same month in 2007.
Mesa Air Group President, Chief Operating Officer and Principal Accounting Officer Michael Lotz will add interim CFO to his growing list of job titles. William Hoke, the company’s interim CFO, resigned from the company on June 6, Mesa said. Hoke replaced former Mesa CFO Peter Murnane after Murnane was dismissed from the company for alleged misconduct in the Hawaiian Airlines case.
The Kazakhstan Transport Ministry sees an urgent need to invest in airport infrastructure, replace aging fleets and focus on training as part of a larger aviation vision for the country.
Debt-watcher Moody’s assigned a strong rating and a positive outlook to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, or MWAA, noting that the two-airport system serves an affluent, rapidly growing, travel-dependent market with historically strong growth in traffic from diverse airlines serving the U.S. capital and its suburbs. The rating will cover $250 million in airport revenue bonds for the system, which includes Washington Dulles (IAD) and Washington-Reagan National Airport (DCA), it added.
DayJet, an on-demand very light jet operator, has signed an agreement with FAA to help test new air traffic control concepts in Florida. Under the five-year memorandum of agreement, DayJet will work with FAA, the Florida Transportation Dept. and the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Decrying the “sad state” of U.S. commercial aviation, former American Chairman and CEO Robert Crandall yesterday declared three decades of deregulation a failure and said that treating airlines like a regulated utility must be a part of a broad solution to their current financial crisis.
Traffic at the Mexican airports operated by Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR) grew 13.2% year over year in May, on the back of a 15.6% increase in international traffic that outpaced 10.6% growth in the domestic market.
Marc Ugol will become United’s new senior VP-human resources, filling a position left vacant by the departure of Jane Allen on Feb. 1. Starting June 16, the SVP from U.S. utility Constellation Energy will be responsible for heading the airline’s human resources functions, including “talent strategy, personnel policies and issues, benefits and compensation.” Ugol will report to Executive VP Peter McDonald. On June 4, United announced a plan that will trim domestic capacity and the company’s payroll in the next 18 months.
Good route connections from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and strong local demand led JP Morgan to upgrade its rating recently on Aeroports de Paris (ADP) from underweight to neutral.
Southwest’s deal last week with Orbitz for Business signals a new willingness by the low-cost carrier to make its inventory available online outside of its own Web site, but not on widely available consumer sites, a Southwest spokeswoman said. “It’s not a wholesale moving of our inventory out into the [online] world, but it is us being willing to look at specific opportunities, particularly when they are focused on the business traveler,” she said.
