Air Canada decided to cut more than 40% of its interline partnerships with other carriers, as the revenue to keep the links active does not offset the related interlining costs.
Air Canada is planning an aggressive expansion of its new pass products in 2006, which CEO Montie Brewer calls a "new frontier in pricing." The carrier has flexible passes for travel within Canada as well as transborder to Florida and throughout North America. Brewer recently told reporters in Montreal that the carrier will soon launch a pass for business travelers and a pass for international travel.
Goodrich expects its 2006 sales figures to reach $5.6 billion-$5.7 billion, while it continues to find ways to shield its profits from pension and exchange rate expenses.
Aloha Airlines jumped what it thought was the last hurdle before exiting bankruptcy protection this week when its pilots ratified their new agreement, but the carrier faced a possible snag courtesy of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
House lawmakers yesterday introduced a bill to launch a pilot project screening international passengers before they board aircraft, a measure that is also part of broader Transportation Security Administration (TSA) overhaul legislation.
World Air Holdings, the parent company of carriers World Airways and North American, this week revealed ambitious plans to lease three Boeing 747-400 freighters.
Star Alliance this week signed two separate contracts with G2 SwitchWorks and ITA Software as the group tries to pressure traditional global distribution systems to lower their costs.
Northwest pilots' Master Executive Council unanimously voted to approve a tentative agreement with management to freeze the defined pension benefit plan, implement new long-term disability (LTD) and family member benefit programs and add an interim 5% defined contribution, effective Feb. 1.
With the amended U.S.-Mexico bilateral formally signed this week, the U.S. Transportation Dept. (DOT) took action on several designation applications, effectively settling some contests but prolonging the wait for some carriers.
Concession negotiations between Comair pilots and management are moving slowly as pilots argue that the $17 million in cuts the company wants is too high. Comair is working to trim $70 million in costs to help Delta emerge from Chapter 11. Before negotiations with the pilots started, Comair President Fred Buttrell told leaders of the pilots union that he would like to reach a tentative deal by mid-December (DAILY, Oct. 19).
American yesterday unveiled the routes it will launch from Dallas Love Field -- mainly matching Southwest's new service to Missouri cities -- but American also revealed a broader array of flight cuts at its Dallas/Fort Worth hub.
Delta wants to put El Al's code on the new nonstop daily flights between Atlanta and Tel Aviv that it will launch March 27. Delta told the U.S. Dept. of Transportation (DOT) that the flights will be the "only nonstop service to Israel from the southeastern U.S. and the first nonstop service from a U.S. gateway other than New York/Newark." The two carriers also code share on El Al's New York-Tel Aviv flights [OST-2005-23312].
Hawaiian Airlines next summer plans to launch daily service from Maui to San Diego. The daily service will start June 9 and will operate with a Boeing 767-300ER.
Finnish regional carrier Blue1 next year plans to add three MD-90s to its fleet as part of an aggressive plan to dramatically boost its European network.
The White House is close to nominating Washington attorney Don Bliss to be the new U.S. ambassador to the ICAO, sources say. The position of U.S. ambassador to ICAO has been vacant since former GAMA President Edward Stimpson resigned at the end of 2004. DAILY affiliate Weekly of Business Aviation reports that Bliss is of counsel to the firm of O'Melveny & Myers.
JetBlue traffic in November jumped 23.5% but fell short of the 26.4% capacity growth, leading to a drop in load factor, which sank 1.9 percentage points to 81.9%. The number of departures grew 28% to 10,305, and the number of revenue passengers increased 23.6% to nearly 1.3 million. JetBlue's completion factor was 99.9%, and its on-time performance was 74.6%, down from the October 75.1% on-time arrival rate. It was also down from November 2004, when on-time performance was 87.5%.
Frontier yesterday hired Chris Collins as its new senior VP-operations. Collins most recently held that position at JetBlue. He has also held positions at Continental and People Express. Collins, who will report directly to CEO Jeff Potter, plans oversee Frontier's flight operations, maintenance and customer service departments.
BAA started the three-month countdown to determine the location of a proposed second runway at London Stansted airport, which drew fire from at least one low-cost carrier. The study marks the first step toward building the new runway since plans were announced in 2003 in a federal white paper detailing the country's air transport future. BAA is considering seven runway options and said that a new runway would increase annual passengers from 22 million to 76 million by 2030.
WestJet last week converted options for more Boeing 737s, bringing the number of new aircraft it plans to add by yearend 2008 to 19. The airline will take 10 737-600s and two -700s next year. In the latest deal, WestJet converted options for four 737s scheduled for delivery in 2007 and three more for a 2008 delivery. An airline spokeswoman said the latest orders would most likely be for the -700 model, but the airline retained the option to switch to -600s or -800s.
