Shanghai SR Aircraft Technics Shanghai won new business from Air New Zealand through a deal to supply line maintenance and technical support on the carrier's Boeing 777s as they stop at Shanghai International Airport. SR Technics and its joint venture partner Shanghai Foreign Aviation Service Corporate won their Chinese license in June. The company hopes to expand services beyond Shanghai Airport to others in the region.
The Transportation Security Administration announced yesterday it would start testing air cargo screening technologies later this fall at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, as part of its $30 million Air Cargo Explosives Detection Pilot Program (ACEDPP).
Voters in San Diego County resoundingly voted down Proposition A, a measure that would have tapped Miramar Marine Corps Air Station as the venue to build a new airport to replace Lindbergh Field. The San Diego County's Regional Airport Authority (SDCRAA) voted in June to spend $7.3 billion to build a new airport on 3,000 acres at the air station. This despite the fact that the Navy and Marine Corps have said the station is still in use and wouldn't have the land available to build the airport (DAILY, June 7).
Uninformed passengers, rather than a lack of screeners, are expected to cause longer-than-usual lines at security checkpoints across the country during the Thanksgiving holidays, say airports surveyed by The DAILY. The Air Transport Association last week forecast that 25 million passengers will travel globally on U.S. airlines between Nov. 17 and Nov. 28.
Air Canada and WestJet this week both reported higher October load factors as traffic gains outpaced capacity increases. Air Canada reported a system load factor of 79% as traffic grew 1.8% and capacity was about flat, rising only 0.3%. Jazz, ACE's regional subsidiary, flew 39.1% more revenue passenger miles as capacity increased by 37.2%, resulting in a 72.5% load factor. "Air Canada mainline achieved a record-breaking load factor of 79%, its highest ever for the month of October," said CEO Montie Brewer.
The lawmakers who are expected to take over House transportation leadership roles could make it much tougher for the Bush Administration to push through aviation initiatives, such as FAA funding reform and liberalizing foreign ownership rules.
Iberia's low-cost affiliate Clickair will take over the mainline carrier's Seville-London and Seville-Bilbao routes in 2007, a move that alarmed local authorities. This would be the second instance where Clickair assumed operations on Iberia's routes out of Seville: Clickair previously launched services from Seville to Barcelona and Paris after Iberia halted them.
South African Airways this week named former US Airways executive Todd Neuman VP-North American sales. Based in Fort Lauderdale, Neuman will report to Marc Cavaliere, executive VP-North America. Neuman will oversee a sales team in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. He joins SAA from his most recent position as director-product development for National Leisure Group. Prior to joining NLG, Neuman served over 22 years with US Airways.
Polar Air Cargo plans to launch scheduled service to Beijing, starting Nov. 11 with two weekly flights. Polar already serves Hong Kong and Shanghai. "Now that we are well-established in these zones, we considered it imperative to expand our mainland presence by focusing our operations on the Beijing-Tianjin Bohai Bay region," said Ronald Lane, chief marketing officer of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings. "We believe that this region will soon be a dominant commercial hub for transpacific air cargo."
By Steve Lott, Aviation Daily Flattening the operational peaks and valleys of a large U.S. hub is crucial to improving productivity and cutting costs. A new analysis by The DAILY and partner Eclat Consulting shows that American is still leading the way in this work since it first "depeaked" its Dallas Fort/Worth hub two years ago. Other carriers are lagging, however, and may be paying a hefty price as a result.
Newly renamed Brussels Airlines hopes to make its European operations profitable within the next few years. The company -- founded through the merger of SN Brussels Airlines and Virgin Express -- aims at a 5% operating margin in 2008, said Chairman Etienne Davignon. The merger deal was announced early last year, but the two airlines continued to operate as separate brands.
Weekend delays at Brazil's airports due to a work slowdown by air traffic controllers protesting poor working conditions were tapering off, and operations were expected to return to normal this week. The ministry of defense, responsible for ATC, responded by pressing into service newly trained and certified controllers to beef up operations at most understaffed airports. Sixty more controllers are being trained and the problem could be solved before February 2007.
Pinnacle's CEO believes the carrier will be competitive for 36 Bombardier CRJ-900s Northwest plans to award to a regional partner, and also hopes any potential deal it reaches with Northwest will include 15 planes that Northwest removed from Pinnacle's fleet.
Airbus yesterday lost its U.S. launch customer for the A380 after FedEx canceled a much-heralded freighter order placed in 2002 because the most recent production snafus are pushing initial deliveries too far into the future to accommodate the airline's expansion plan.
Governments need to work together internationally to harmonize restrictions on liquids in hand baggage following the introduction of new measures by the European Union Nov. 6, say airport executives attending the annual Airports Council International world assembly in Cape Town, South Africa. While ACI believes the European Commission has taken a positive step in adopting a uniform approach for Europe, there are still major issues to be resolved internationally, said ACI Director General Robert Aaronson in remarks before the assembly.
The Spanish government intends to invest some EUR16 billion (US$20 billion) to upgrade and raise the annual capacity of its airport infrastructure to a total of 311 million passengers by 2020, up from 165 million today, Spanish Economic Development Minister Magdalena Alvarez said at the World Travel Market fair in London.
Six years after a failed attempt, TAP Air Portugal yesterday finalized an agreement to acquire PGA Portugalia, creating a single major carrier in Portugal and promising to change the global alliance landscape.
Lan Argentina this month will inaugurate new domestic long-haul routes from Buenos Aires to El Calafate and Ushuaia in the nation's deep southern Patagonian cone, as well as two daily frequencies to Sao Paulo in Brazil. CEO Damian Scokin told a business forum in Mar del Plata that the "airline offer could grow enormously in Argentina, but official government regulation of airfares works against incentives to open new routes." -LZ
Venezuela's state-owned Conviasa last week took delivery of an additional 46-passenger ATR 42 for its growing fleet of Dash 7s, Boeing 737s, Caravan Cessna 208s and ATR 42s that operate in domestic routes from Caracas as well as regional routes to Grenada and Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.
