Continental named Senior VP-Network Strategy Zane Rowe to succeed Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Misner upon Misner’s Aug. 31 retirement.
Armed with a novel legal idea -- that FAA owns slots -- the U.S. Transportation Dept. said Friday it wants to attack congestion in the New York air space with a package of flight caps and slot auctions, instantly drawing the ire of the airline industry and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
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.
Lufthansa CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber has poured cold water on speculation that the German carrier will be one of the first customers for Bombardier’s CSeries family of small 100-130-seat airliners. The CEO tells The DAILY that although “there is some charm” to the CSeries concept “it is too early to say” if the promised performance standards can be met.
Swooning passenger traffic -- up 22% during the past five years -- is spurring a plan by San Francisco International Airport’s commission to spend $383 million to renovate its old international terminal, despite the current woes of the airline industry.
Delta has come under attack by two labor groups claiming the airline is not being entirely forthcoming in assessing the effect on employees of a merger with Northwest.
TAP Portugal has expanded a CFM56 MRO contract with Snecma Services and in return has agreed to provide the French company extra maintenance capacity. Under a two-year deal, Snecma will add the repair of CFM56 high- and low-pressure nozzle guide vanes to an existing MRO contract with TAP that includes maintaining CFM56-3HP turbine blades. The vanes will be repaired at Snecma’s facility in Chatellerault, France.
Most grant recipients under the Small Community Air Service Development Program (SCASD) between 2002 and 2006 failed to help small-hub and non-hub communities achieve sustainable air service, according to an audit by the U.S. Transportation Dept.’s Office of Inspector General (DOT IG). DOT IG auditors studying SCASD’s effectiveness reviewed all 40 grants issued during the five-year period that had been closed for 12 months or more as of March 31, 2007, accounting for some $90 million.
Yet another Indonesian airline is starting service, with plans to launch its first operational flight on June 6. Lorena Air has obtained an air operator’s certificate and now only needs to take delivery of a pair of Boeing 737-300s, which President-Director Eka Sari Lorena Surbakti says are currently undergoing maintenance by Malaysia Air System.
Nov. 19-20, 2008 New York, NY Listen in as A&Ds top CEOs pitch their 2009 and beyond business plans to Wall Street. The only investor event of its kind open to industry! Learn more at www.aviationweek.com/conferences or call +1.212.904.4483
Etihad Airways is sorting out when it will launch service to Calcutta and Jaipur, the next two Indian cities it will add to its network, and its pushing to be allowed to offer service to Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The carrier just set August 1 as the start date for operations between its Abu Dhabi hub and Kozhikode and Chennai, using Airbus A320s in a two-class, 140-seat set-up.
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Singapore Airlines would be pleased to consider reasonable offers for the 49% stake in “underperforming” Virgin Atlantic that it bought in 1999, says Chief Executive Chew Choon Seng. Analysts say the Southeast Asian carrier has never been able to exercise as much control over Virgin Atlantic as it would have liked.
U.K. enginemaker Rolls-Royce’s latest Trent 900 win -- Thai Airways’ decision to use the engine for its six Airbus A380s (DAILY, May 16) -- extends Rolls A380 engine market unit share to about 58%, including options, but contests for another 80 engines remain unsettled.
Most of the oil the U.S. government socks away in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is payment from oil companies in crude for the right to pump petroleum out of federal land. Congress last week voted overwhelmingly to halt filling of the SPR, arguing that the 70,000 barrels of oil put in the SPR every day will help drive oil prices down if pumped back into the market. But the International Energy Agency says U.S. demand is 21 million barrels a day, so 70,000 extra barrels a day on the market would likely make little difference.
As it opens talks with machinists on a three-year contract, Boeing is proposing that those at its Wichita Integrated Defense Systems unit be paid on a different scale than workers in Portland, Ore., and Washington’s Puget Sound area.
Lufthansa’s April load factor dipped 1.2 percentage points to 77.7% despite an 8.5% rise in enplanements in April. Traffic for the month grew 4.6% compared to the same period last year to 10.5 billion revenue passenger kilometers (RPKs) on a 6.3% increase in capacity to 13.52 billion available seat kilometers (ASKs). Decreases in European and North American loads contributed to this shortfall, although this was mitigated in part by load improvements on the German carrier’s Asia/Pacific and Middle East and Africa services.
Thai Airways International cited rising fuel costs and foreign currency fluctuations for a near 50% slip in its first quarter net profit. The drop in net income to Thai Baht 2.2 billion (US$68.7 million) came despite a 10.6% year-on-year rise in revenue to THB 54.8 billion.
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Ingrid Lee at [email protected] (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) MAY 19–20 — Airport Board Members and Commissioners Annual Conference, Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort & Spa, Gainey Ranch, Scottsdale, Ariz., 480-444-1234, http://www.aci-na.org MAY 20-22 — European Business Aviation Association Convention and Exposition EBACE2008, Geneva, Switzerland, 202-783-9000.
Reeling from ballooning fuel costs, U.S. airlines are increasingly running longer flights with bigger airplanes and cutting short hauls, traffic data from the U.S. Transportation Dept. suggest.
Sister carriers Pinnacle and Colgan both reported improved traffic for April, but the same cannot be said of load factors, performance data from both carriers show. Pinnacle loads were relatively flat, slipping 0.6 percentage points from April 2007 to 77.4%. Load factor at Colgan was up 5.4 percentage points year on year to 53.7%. Pinnacle generated 412.91 million revenue passenger miles and 533.42 million available seat miles in April, up 6.4% and 7.4%, respectively, over April 2007.
Aloha Airlines completed the sale of its cargo division to Seattle-based Saltchuk Resources for $10.5 million May 14. The companies were able to complete the deal thanks to a bankruptcy court judge’s approval of the sale on Monday and Transportation Department approval on Tuesday of the transfer of the air cargo unit’s DOT certificate to Saltchuk subsidiary Aeko Kula. Service resumed under the new name Aloha Air Cargo May 14 after a chaplain delivered a traditional Hawaiian blessing at Aloha Air Cargo’s Honolulu headquarters.
Democrats on the House Transportation Committee remain skeptical that the planned merger of Delta and Northwest won’t result in significant layoffs or hub closings for the two airlines. At the start of the fourth congressional hearing on the planned merger of the U.S.’s third (Delta) and sixth-largest (Northwest) carriers since it was announced April 15, Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) voiced “some grave concerns” about airline mergers in general.
