Boeing says a six- to seven-month delay of its first 787 delivery will mean 30-35 aircraft deliveries will be moved from 2008 to 2009, although the airframer says it will come close to catching up with its original schedule by the end of 2009.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport has become the 100th facility to join Airports Council International's (ACI) Airport Service Quality (ASQ) customer satisfaction benchmarking program.
Delta in 2008 will commit seven widebody aircraft -- a mix of Boeing 767s and 777s -- to nonstop routes between the U.S. and points in Africa, said Andreas Renner, director-network development. The carrier says 3,500 passengers fly each way between the U.S. and Africa each day, and the current nonstop market serves just 1,500 of those seats. Delta recently announced routes between Atlanta and Lagos and Dakar, and will shortly begin serving the JFK-Lagos and JFK-Dakar routes.
Air New Zealand as part of a settlement with the U.S. Transportation Dept. will pay at least half of a $20,000 penalty for failing to file its 2005 disability related complaint report on time. ANZ filed the report some six months after its due date and only after DOT inquired about it. ANZ said the person in charge of preparing and submitting the report was either laid off or reassigned [DOT-OST-2007-26781].
Delta is looking to add 14 U.S.-Colombia frequencies to its pot of international authority, rights it will use to launch new service to Bogota, Medellin and Cali. If awarded the frequencies the airline would launch daily nonstop New York Kennedy-Bogota service on Dec. 1, along with four weekly Atlanta-Medellin flights and three weekly Atlanta-Cali flights that would begin on April 1. The airline would use 150-seat Boeing 737-800s seating 16 in business class and 134 in coach on the routes [DOT-OST-2007-29367].
Maxjet yesterday revealed plans to boost its three strongest transatlantic routes -- including its new Los Angeles flights -- while ending its Washington Dulles service. The carrier will increase New York Kennedy-London Stansted flights from seven per week to 10 times a week by March 1, 2008. A fifth Los Angeles-London flight will be added Dec. 5, and Las Vegas flights will increase from four to six, beginning Feb. 15. The Washington flights will be discontinued at the start of the winter season, on Oct. 29.
Unit revenue for Finnair's scheduled traffic declined between July and September, as the airline expanded its routes in long-haul and long-range European operations. The carrier reports a 6.5% drop-off in revenue; however, Finnair notes it has been able to keep unit cost reductions ahead of the unit revenue decline. Capacity increases on the intra-European operations were largely on routes to southern destinations.
Regional airline veteran and former Delta executive John Selvaggio has been named president of Comair; he takes over for Don Bornhost, who was promoted to senior VP-Delta Connection. Selvaggio originally came to Delta in 1998, where he oversaw the carrier's acquisitions of both Atlantic Southeast Airlines and Comair. He became senior VP of Delta's airport customer service division and was president and founder of Delta's now-defunct low-cost unit, Song. He retired from Delta in October 2004.
Big Sky on Nov. 18 will begin operating daily Delta Connection service between Cincinnati and Cape Girardeau, Mo., Jackson, Tenn., and Owensboro, Ky., Essential Air Service routes that the regional carrier won earlier this year (DAILY, March 13). The communities were previously served by RegionsAir before its grounding in March. They have been without air service ever since. Big Sky will operate the service with its 19-seat Beech 1900Ds.
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) has already spent $3 billion under the Dulles Development (D2) airport improvement program to accommodate future growth. The investment will allow Washington Dulles International Airport to go from handling 25 million passengers a year now to 35 million by 2016, said MWAA CEO James Bennett at the airport's annual media day yesterday. "Dulles opened back in 1962. We're basically building a new airport," he added.
Hawaiian this week reported an impressive 21.7% traffic increase for September, and translated that into a healthy load factor gain. With capacity rising 15.1%, loads rose by 4.8 points to 87.9% for the month. Charter operations saw drops in traffic, capacity and load factor, so scheduled operations produced slightly higher gains than the consolidated numbers.
Star Alliance partners, ANA and Asiana will start a cabin crew exchange from Oct. 28 on the Tokyo Haneda-Seoul Kimpo route as part of their strategic alliance to strengthen ties. Under the arrangement, one ANA cabin attendant will be assigned to a daily Asiana-operated Tokyo-Seoul roundtrip flight, and vice versa to accommodate customers from Japan and Korea in their own languages. An ANA statement says the two carriers will also study each other's inflight service training methods.
ST Aerospace and joint-venture partner China Eastern Airlines plan to expand the MRO facility at Shanghai Technologies Aerospace Company Limited after breaking ground on a new hangar complex. Pudong's airport in Shanghai is the new home for the hangar, which will accommodate three narrowbody and two widebody planes. The new hangar, which should open in mid-2009, is slated to increase ST Aerospace's total hangar capacity to 45 narrow-body slots and 27 widebody slots. [email protected]
German technology group Voith AG yesterday pulled out of the race for three Airbus and EADS sites in Germany. Voith CEO Hermut Kormann said at a news conference that following detailed negotiations his company was unable to make the business plan work. Voith had been looking at expanding its business into aerospace.
Federal courts might now be free to consider whether airlines' tight seat-pitch configurations pose risks to passengers for deep vein thrombosis, without regard to inadvertently regulating airline pricing, following a California appeals court ruling last week. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, considered one of the more liberal circuits in the federal system, joined the Third Circuit in dismissing passengers' claims based on the idea that carriers violated state health standards.
Sterling Airlines has named Malmo its seventh base. The Danish low-fare carrier will base two Boeing 737s in the Swedish city, serving London, Barcelona, Alicante, Florence and Nice.
Mesa Air Group saw traffic and capacity drop by about 3% in September, although the company has kept its load factor headed in the right direction. Traffic declined 2.9%, but the capacity cut was slightly greater at 3.4%, causing loads to rise by 0.4 points to 72.2%. Group CEO Jonathan Ornstein noted the reduction in traffic and capacity was mainly due to the cessation of Dash 8 flying for Delta Connection and "a number of schedule adjustments" at United. Despite these drops, Ornstein said operating performance "remained strong" in September.
Qantas and Sydney Airport Corp. Ltd. (SACL) have reached a final five-year agreement on fees for all services at Sydney Airport. The agreement, whose terms were not disclosed, covers the commercial services on which Qantas and QantasLink will use items, including terminals, runways and taxiways. The accord covers domestic and international flights.
A draft environmental impact report (EIR) for Phase 1 of San Diego Airport's master plan has been released for comment by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. The draft EIR covers near-term improvements at the airport that will allow the facility to meet current passenger demand, including a 10-gate build-out of Terminal 2 West, a dual-level roadway in front of T2 and a number of parking, roadway and airfield improvements.
Worker-shareholders at Lloyd Aereo Boliviano are quietly working to keep the carrier afloat, meeting regularly to make decisions that will help them curry favor with the Bolivian government.
