Starting Jan. 23, citizens of the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Bermuda will be required to present a passport when arriving by air in the U.S. from any part of the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. State and Homeland Security departments announced last week.
Mesaba Airlines' pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics yesterday all ratified their respective tentative agreements that reduce labor costs by about 15%. The new agreements will take effect Dec. 1.
Mexican regional Aeromar will go international early in 2007 with flights in two new leased aircraft from Southern Mexico to Guatemala, said Aeromar VP Ami Lindenberg.
SR Technics won new business from Virgin Atlantic after the carrier tapped the MRO to complete reconfigurations of five Boeing 747-400s. The one-time award includes extending the Upper Class cabin and installing new premium economy seats and new storage areas. SR Technics plans to start the design phase for the planes soon at its Dublin site, with the first installation happening in September 2007 and continuing through November. The new configurations will need European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certification.
The European Union and Russia came to a formal agreement on the elimination of Siberian overflight payments after a 20-year conflict over which the Europeans threatened to block Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization.
The Thanksgiving long weekend was once again bookended by reasonably heavy delay days, with bad weather the culprit on Wednesday and volume the problem on Sunday. Wednesday saw 2,243 delays and another 243 cancellations, and there were 2,140 delays on Sunday. This was slightly worse than last year, when there were 1,824 delays on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and 2,039 on the following Sunday.
KLM named Peter Hartman as the carrier's next CEO and will take the reins of the carrier when Leo van Wijk officially steps down in July 2007. Van Wijk will continue to be involved in the management of the Air France-KLM Group as vice chairman. Even before the handover of control, Hartman will be acting CEO as of April 1.
Thai Airways International posted a profit of THB8.99 billion (US$247 million) for the year ended Sept. 30, a jump of 32.7% from the previous year, despite escalating oil prices.
Canada will "proactively pursue" reciprocal open-skies agreements with other nations, according to the government's new Blue Sky aviation policy document. However, these deals will not include cabotage rights. Scaled-down agreements will be considered, but in such cases the government says it will always try to "secure as much flexibility for all-cargo services as possible."
Air France yesterday unveiled plans to aggressively target the leisure market next summer with a new low-cost carrier that will operate Boeing 737s to destinations in the Mediterranean and North Africa.
The U.S. Transportation Dept. Office of Inspector General said last week that airlines have made progress in customer service since 2001 but still need to improve in the provision of timely flight information to passengers and the handling of bumped passengers.
Correction: About 3% of American's passenger flow from Washington National to Miami goes to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and 2% to San Jose, Costa Rica. The Puerto Rican city was misidentified in a recent DataWatch chart (DAILY, Nov. 22).
Emirates SkyCargo will add Boeing 747-400ERFs to its fleet next year, Emirates Divisional Senior VP-Cargo Ram Menem told The DAILY at the airline's Dubai headquarters. The aircraft would be operated on an ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance, insurance) basis, Menem said without specifying how many units exactly the carrier will add to its fleet. Atlas Air currently operates six 747s on behalf of Emirates SkyCargo. The Dubai-based carrier has 10 747-8 freighters and eight 777Fs on firm order with options for 10 more 747-8Fs. -JF
Linear Air is expanding its major charter air taxi operations in Boston and New York City to the Caribbean through new bases in Puerto Rico at San Juan Airport and Isla Grande private airport. Linear Air, from Nov. 16 to March 31, will operate charters from San Juan to Vieques, Culebra, Dominican Republic, St. Thomas. St. Croix, St Maarten, St. Barts and Tortola. "This seasonal product is the centerpiece of our growth and expansion strategies," said President and CEO William Herp. Most of Linear's fleet is made up of eight-seat Cessna Grand Caravans.
Local analysts attribute TAM and GOL's market share gains for the first 10 months of 2006 to the decline of legacy carrier Varig. The "new" incarnation of the carrier -- its operations slimmed down drastically from Varig's previous network -- grabbed only 5.08% of domestic market share, compared with TAM's 47.4% and GOL's. Internationally, TAM continued to lead in market share at 58.16%, followed by GOL with 12.75% and BRA at 9.95%.
Royal Jordanian last week took the sixth and last Airbus A320 family delivery as part of its fleet modernization plan, and now turns its attention to the first Embraer 195, expected to arrive next week. The carrier in the last 10 months has taken a mix of six A320s and A321s to replace A310s and older A320s. The most recent delivery was an A320, which was painted with the airline's new livery. The A320 has a two-class configuration and 136 seats, and the A321 has 167 seats.
A two-month, Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID pilot at Madrid-Barajas Airport's Terminal 4 was able to track 99.7% of bags, according to France's IER, which ran the program. On a stretch of conveyors in T4's Siemens baggage-handling system, IER was able to implement a system that can simultaneously print and encode bag tags and read the labels as they passed through three separate areas equipped with RFID readers and encoders, said Paul Reen, the marketing manager who oversaw the project.
Priceline.com last week chose Sausalito, Calif.-based Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners (BSSP) as its advertising agency of record. BSSP will handle all "advertising creative services" for Priceline.com and will help the company develop an upcoming new advertising campaign for the travel service. Terms of the contract were not disclosed and the company did not say when a new advertising campaign would launch. BSSP replaces New York-based Gotham as Priceline's advertising agency.
Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary sold 2.5 million of his shares in the airline for EUR9.70 (US$12.54) per share, according to a regulatory filing. He still owns 32.5 million shares, roughly equivalent to a 4.5% stake.
Qantas says it will not outsource its Boeing 737 heavy maintenance operation at Melbourne, although it will conduct a review of the entire engineering operation in the next 12 months. The airline previously said that the future of its MRO operations will depend on whether they can be made more competitive with foreign companies.
Mesa CEO Jonathan Ornstein says the company is in serious discussions with two Chinese carriers and could have something finalized early next year for the launch of operations in the second half of 2007. Ornstein notes the country's population is close to a billion-and-a-half but has fewer regional jets than currently operate at Mesa's hub. "Clearly, there could be some interesting opportunities for us going forward."
