A new report shows that U.S. airlines are stepping up their pursuit of Latino travelers and making huge investments into Hispanic media. Top U.S. airlines spent a little more than $19 million in Spanish-language advertising in the first three quarters of 2007, with $12.5 million of the money going to Spanish-language network television, reports Hispanic Market Weekly. Southwest was the big spender in that period, plunking down some $11.8 million for marketing.
Bank of China’s aircraft lessor, BOC Aviation, will borrow about $1 billion this year to take advantage of an expected surge in sale-and-leaseback business. The Singapore-based company still has a $1 billion line of credit on tap from its parent after buying and leasing back two Air Canada 777-300ERs, says CEO Robert Martin. “We can easily finance another 20 aircraft this year, a mix of narrowbodies and widebodies,” Martin tells The DAILY.
Oman Air’s growth strategy is showing results, with first quarter traffic up around 50%. But the growth ambitions have come at the cost: the Omani national flag carrier suffered a first quarter loss. The negative return was largely owing to the capacity growth, the airline says in reporting first quarter results. Although management did not disclose the size of the loss, it noted that those were expected as Oman Air positions itself to compete with larger regional rivals. Oman Air ended last year with a 4 million rials (US$10 million) profit.
Bombardier Commercial Aircraft does have Sukhoi and its Superjet on its radar, but the airframer for now is focusing more on its own products than assessing whether the Superjet is a threat to the next-generation CRJs. “Every competitor coming onto the scene has to be recognized for bringing something new to the market,” says VP-Sales and Marketing Trung Ngo, “but you have to focus on what you can do. You win by getting better, serving the customer better and incorporating what is needed in the market to stay competitive.”
SkyWest President and Chief Operating Officer Chip Childs defended using 50-seat regional jets in the U.S. market but admitted his carrier is having a tough time making its 30-seat Embraer Brasilias work in the face of rapidly rising fuel costs. Fuel prices being where they are, the Brasilias are not great, Childs acknowledged to reporters at the Regional Airline Association’s Annual Convention.
IATA asked the U.S. Homeland Security Department to extend the comment period on the US-EXIT proposed rulemaking by another 60 days. The original deadline for comments expires June 23, 60 days after DHS published the NPRM in the Federal Register. In comments filed to DHS, IATA said it is “unrealistic” to expect its member carriers to analyze the ramifications of the rule in the 60 days provided.
Peru plans to review and strengthen safety regulations concerning overflights of the Nazca Plain, following one deadly accident and several emergency landings in the past few weeks by light aircraft operated by tourist airlines (DAILY, May 5), said Transport Minister Veronica Zabala. The review will be done on the basis of a special report by ICAO inspectors to be submitted on May 15 at the request of the Peruvian government and covers air operations and traffic control in this area from Lima, Ica and Nazca Airports.
Pilots at Continental Airlines and United Airlines have each been allocated $5 million by the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) to assist in their upcoming contract negotiations. Both authorizations, funded from an $80 million ALPA “war chest,” are for “strategic preparedness, communications, and family awareness efforts,” says ALPA.
American and its pilots union are scheduled to continue their mediated contract talks this week, with the airline reviewing the latest union proposals. The two parties will meet May 13-14 under the oversight of the National Mediation Board, and again on May 27-29. The first round of NMB-controlled talks were held last week. The Allied Pilots Association believes two weeks worth of negotiations will be held in June. The union wants the airline to keep negotiating when the NMB mediators are not available.
Total passenger traffic at the nine southeastern Mexican airports operated by Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASUR) improved 5.3% over April 2007 to 1.57 million passengers, as growth in international traffic outpaced modest growth on the domestic side.
PlaneSmart! Aviation tapped Michael Brosler to replace Jeffrey Cullen as president and CEO. Cullen stepped down to become VP-strategic development and spearhead other industry opportunities with PlaneSmart!’s venture capital partner Neo Ventures, LLC.
US Airways’ effort to mitigate a dip in domestic traffic succeeded in stabilizing its mainline load factor in April, which at 83.2% was 0.5 percentage points higher than the 82.7% load reported for the same period last year. Capacity cuts in its domestic schedule cropped 328 million ASMs from the 5.20 billion ASMs operated by US Airways in April 2007. This decline, combined with a 26.6% growth in transatlantic capacity to 797 million ASMs and a 1% dip in Latin America, resulted in a 2.6%, or 166 million ASM, drop in systemwide capacity to 6.18 billion ASMs.
Northwest said it will begin Seattle-Beijing service March 1, 2009. The new service would be the carrier’s fourth nonstop international destination from Seattle; it already flies to Amsterdam, London Heathrow and Tokyo. China is the state of Washington’s top export market, Gov. Christine Gregoire said.
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The negotiating committees for the Northwest and Delta units of the Air Line Pilots Association are scheduled to meet for two days this week to “start a renewed effort to achieve a joint contract,” according to the Northwest union’s Master Executive Council. The Northwest MEC, however, said the negotiators are not scheduled to talk about seniority list integration.
Pinnacle Airlines Corp. believes the competitiveness of its contracts with its major airline partners have positioned Pinnacle and Colgan to come out on top in industry consolidation.
Cheapflights Ltd. appointed Liane Hornsey, Google’s director of people operations for Europe, Middle East and Africa, to the board as non-executive director.
