Britain’s BMI is looking to its medium-haul network for profit growth following a year when the company’s pre-tax income fell almost 50%. This sector, buoyed by BMI’s February 2007 purchase of BMED from British Airways, helped the airline post a 12.9% rise in its 2008 revenue to GBP1.02 billion ($2.02 billion) on a 17.9% increase in capacity to 16.1 billion ASKs, the carrier said on May 23.
Ron DiLeo has been named Senior VP of Marketing and Sales for British Airways’ OpenSkies transatlantic operation. DiLeo joins the airline from American Express, where he served as SVP of the company’s Business Travel Europe division. OpenSkies also has appointed United Airlines veteran Joe Laughlin VP, North America; Chris Vukelich VP, distribution and e-commerce; and former JetBlue Airways Director of Advertising and Promotions Tracy Sandford as VP of marketing.
The EUR300 million (US$465 million) emergency loan granted to Alitalia last month should be “transferred into equity” to beef up capital and avert bankruptcy, the Italian government told the nation’s parliament. The European Commission has already expressed doubts about whether the loan conforms with European Union competition laws; the EU watchdog set Friday as a deadline to answer its questions about the deal.
Garuda Indonesia hopes to regain permission to fly in European Union airspace now that it has passed an operational safety audit by the International Air Transport Association. Indonesian aircraft were banned from EU skies last year.
Dear Aviation Daily Subscriber, The last thing we want to do is limit the usefulness of Aviation Daily for you and your organization. So, if the single copy of the product youre getting is not enough, please take advantage of one of the options below.
The financial outlook for airlines is expected to be “grim,” an IATA spokesman says in advance of today’s release of a new global forecast at the group’s annual meeting in Istanbul. The spike in fuel prices combined with softening traffic are contributing to the revised outlook.
Two U.K. policy groups are calling on the government to create a special commission to study the benefits and impact of aviation on the country. Disputed data underpinning the government’s air transport policy is making it impossible to weigh the true benefits and impacts of aviation, said a report by the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). After 12 months of talks, the report noted the widespread controversy over key data on air travel in the U.K.
Startup Aero Regional Paraguay (ARP), the first national flag carrier to operate in Paraguay in several years, will first concentrate on domestic trunk routes and regional services to neighboring Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina.
The U.S. Transportation Dept. finalized its tentative order granting Continental, Delta, JetBlue and Spirit authority to operate in the U.S.-Colombia market (DAILY, March 6).
Travelers flying out of New Zealand’s Auckland International Airport after July 1 will no longer pay an NZ$25 (US$19) international departure fee. The airport is replacing it with an NZ$13 Passenger Services Charge (PSC) for arriving and departing flyers, which it will collect directly from the airlines. The change helps simplify the departure process for travelers, said the airport’s CEO Don Huse.
Chances are good the European Parliament and European Council representing ministers from member states will find a compromise by the end of the month on including aviation in an emissions trading scheme (ETS), one top EC official close to the talks believes.
Frontier racked up $16.5 million in losses in the last 20 days of April, the airline reported in a bankruptcy court filing May 28. The carrier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection April 10, so the monthly operating report it just submitted to the court tabulates its financial results from April 11 to April 30. The loss included $2.5 million in reorganization expenses.
Australia has installed a new, A$2.5 million (US$2.4 million) border security portal that will give inspectors more time to review passenger data before their flight arrives in the country.
One reason for urgency in moving the ETS issue forward: the Slovenian EU presidency so far has little to show for itself and ETS is a last chance before France starts its six-month stint in July. Differences are steep, though, ranging from when ETS would start to how auctions would work and how the money raised would be spent.
AirTran Airways will curtail its capacity growth until 2012 under an initiative the carrier had previously said would limit ASMs at least until the end of 2009. Under the plan, the Atlanta-based carrier will now defer 18 Boeing 737-700 deliveries scheduled for 2009-2011, taking the planes instead in 2013 and 2014.
French police last week detained former EADS co-CEO and Airbus boss Noel Forgeard over insider-trading allegations. A criminal probe is underway to assess if several current and former executives sold shares while they knew about the A380’s assembly problems, which eventually delayed the program and caused the company share price to plummet. The French stock market regulator, the AMF, is conducting a parallel investigation
Boeing named Elizabeth Lund VP-product development for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Lund succeeds Todd Zarfos, who was recently named VP-747/767/777 engineering.
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. 23 — Green Aviation, Madrid, Spain SEPT. 24-25 — MRO Europe, Madrid Spain OCT. 15-16 — MRO Asia, Singapore NOV. 18-19 — Aerospace & Defense Finance, New York, N.Y.
The Europarliament’s decision to include a multiplier for oxides of nitrogen, or NOx, is one of the most controversial in the current dispute over including aviation in the ETS, partly because the underlying science remains uncertain. Under the rules, airlines would have to buy extra carbon credits to cover their in-flight NOx output. But one lawmaker concedes that the rule probably won’t make the final cut.
London-Luton based all-business class airline Silverjet ceased operations Friday, after an expected loan failed to materialize. The carrier expected its last two flights from Dubai and Newark/New Jersey back in London in the afternoon on May 30, and said that it will stop flying immediately thereafter.
Dubai-based Emirates is taking a serious look at Santiago, Chile, as its second major destination in South America after São Paulo. Due to its historic commitment to international trade, Chile offers major opportunities for developing vast export-import opportunities with booming Persian Gulf and Mideast countries. El Mercurio reports that while Emirates still has to release official plans, its strategy would be to concentrate at first on logistics and air cargo, and then add passenger services as it acquires more long-range aircraft.
