Iberia Chief Financial Officer Enrique Dupuy says the airline is interested in exploring "a presence in airport-related businesses."The company is looking to improve its handling, maintenance and cargo operations and maintain its core investment in Amadeus.
British Airways remained optimistic about its recovery, reporting increased premium traffic in March, but overall revenue passengers kilometers dropped 3%, more than the 1.2% fall in system capacity. Overall load factor sank to 71.8%, down 1.3 percentage points compared with last year. Looking at the separate cabins, premium traffic rose by 8.5% in the month, its ninth consecutive month of business- and first-class traffic, but non-premium RPKs dropped 6.1%.
FAA does not plan to release results of its Boeing audit "for a long time" but will work with the manufacturer to ensure shortcomings, if any, are addressed, an agency spokesperson told The DAILY yesterday. The agency is not talking much about its findings, offering only that "no safety issues in production or engineering systems" turned up. The audit began in December after a string of production problems at Boeing plants. The first audit phase is completed, and the two sides are working to verify FAA's findings, the spokesperson said.
San Francisco figured in 13 of the 18 Flights arriving late 80% of the time in February, as reported in DOT's Air Travel Consumer Report. United operated 10 of the San Francisco flights, America West two and Alaska one. United had three other flights arriving more than 15 minutes late 80% of the time or more, with Alaska and America West with one more apiece.
Panama's Copa, which has a strategic alliance with Continental, will spend the next few months negotiating additional alliances with carriers in Peru -- TACA Peru, TANS or LanPeru -- to expand its present route system to Mexico City, Cancun, Miami, Orlando, Guatemala City, Guayaquil, Bogota, Cartagena, Havana, Medellin, Port-au-Prince, Santo Domingo and additional destinations in Central America. Copa operates two daily flights between Panama and Lima with Boeing 737-700s.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall told reporters yesterday in Washington that the board will soon issue new media guidelines for airlines to follow after an accident. Hall said the guidelines are the result of a cooperative effort with airlines and were spurred by remarks made by Bob Baker, vice chairman of American, following an accident at Little Rock, Ark. Baker, as well as Carol Hallett, Air Transport Association president, endorsed the guidelines, with Baker noting that he and Hall "tangled aggressively;" they are "long overdue," he added.
Northwest yesterday launched twice-weekly Boeing 747-400 service from its Detroit hub to Shanghai, the first nonstop service to the city from a U.S. market east of the Mississippi River. "It's still a bit more than a 14-hour flight, but this cuts the flight time by five hours for more than half of the U.S.," said Chief Executive John Dasburg.
LanPeru, owned 51% by Peruvian investors and 49% by LanChile, has been authorized by the Peruvian government to fly from Lima to Santiago, New York and Los Angeles.
ACES, Colombia's No. 2 airline, reported 7.1% growth in the domestic market in 1999 for a record market share of 24.9%, or 2.6 points higher than the previous year, while the industry as a whole grew only 4.2%. Internationally, ACES reached 15.0% accrued growth, carrying 227,073 passengers for a 8.0% market share. Net revenues totaled $155,319,200, or a 15.8% increase from 1998.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) yesterday said she plans to introduce next week a bill on airport security that would require criminal checks for employees with access to secure airport areas, increase fivefold the amount of classroom training required for security screeners and hold security personnel individually responsible for security lapses. Hutchison, who chaired the Senate aviation subcommittee hearing on airport security, was ready to introduce the legislation yesterday but said she would wait until next week to allow comment.
Eight airlines operating into Sydney have filed a claim in the federal courts in Australia seeking unspecified damages from the operator of Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport, where they lease space. The carriers are Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Thai Airways, British Airways, Aerolineas Argentinas, Air Pacific, Ansett Australia and Air New Zealand. Other airlines of the more than 40-member Board of Representatives of Australia (BARA) are contemplating similar action.
American and American Eagle named Dell Computer as its exclusive provider for personal computers as the carrier unveiled plans to offer subsidized home computers and Internet access to its 100,000 employees. The airline plans to spend at least $15 million a year during the next three years to subsidize the cost of the computers, printers and Internet/IntrAAnet access to employees. The first computers are expected to be delivered at employees' homes this summer, and an Internet service provider will be named later.
KLM postponed the deadline last week for partner Alitalia to define how Milan Malpensa Airport will be used in the carriers' alliance. KLM previously established April 1 as Alitalia's deadline to resolve the Malpensa hub questions and develop an operations strategy, but KLM mailed the airline a letter last week "only as a formality" notifying it that the deadline is April 20. "We could hear before that date, but we expect some clarity on the Malpensa situation before the new deadline," KLM spokesman Youssef Eddini told The DAILY.
FAA will buy up to 105 Mark 20A Category I Instrument Landing Systems from Airsys ATM Inc. in a deal that could be worth $22 million, the agency said yesterday. The first five airports to get the systems will be Stennis International in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi; Burlington Alamance in North Carolina; Zanesville, Ohio; and McCarren and North Las Vegas in Nevada. Of the five, only McCarren already has ILS.
John Prescott, U.K. transport secretary, has given British Airways one of Virgin Atlantic's two weekly frequencies to Cape Town, South Africa. BA can now offer a daily roundtrip. The move comes only a few months after the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) gave Virgin one additional frequency to Cape Town. The U.K. government said it made the decision because BA was able to provide additional capacity on a route that suffered from severe capacity constraints in the peak season.
The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) has given several reasons for Asia's inability to emulate the European Commission and represent several countries as a single bloc to secure multilateral air services agreements when negotiating with the U.S. As a single bloc, the party is vested with the authority to negotiate and bargain for rights. First, the countries in Asia are not represented by a single bloc like the EC, and it is uncertain what additional benefits would be given to the U.S.
Lloyd Aereo Boliviano, a member of the Vasp Group, now offers service from La Paz to Madrid and Barcelona once a week. LAB uses its own aircraft to Sao Paulo, where passengers transfer to Vasp. LAB is looking at other European destinations via Brazil and also wants to serve Bolivia-Quito without current connections in Lima or Bogota.
Ghana Airways wants authority for Accra, Ghana-Washington service, available now under broad rights provided in the recently concluded U.S.-Ghana phased open-skies pact. The carrier plans twice-weekly flights to Baltimore/Washington International Airport, beginning July 4, and would co-terminalize the service with its operations to New York without local New York-Washington traffic. It would fly the route with DC-10 aircraft configured for 238 economy- and 34 business-class seats, providing the first same-plane service from West Africa to Washington.
Boeing said yesterday it delivered 74 jet transports, plus a 747 for the Air Force, in the first quarter, down 40% from its plan to deliver 125 aircraft. "This reflects delivery delays as the company recovers from a 40-day strike by engineers and technical workers that ended March 20," Boeing said. Boeing delivered 15 airplanes in March. The company still expects to recover from the strike delays and deliver about 490 jet transports as planned by yearend.
The growth of online bookings has hurt the revenue performance of some U.S. major airlines, according to Salomon Smith Barney analyst Brian Harris, but he is now seeing a shift in the trend when the Internet will soon become a "net positive" for the airlines' bottom lines.
JetBlue this summer will increase flights between New York Kennedy to Buffalo and Fort Lauderdale. It will add a fourth daily roundtrip to Buffalo on June 25 and a fifth on July 6, and a fourth daily roundtrip to Fort Lauderdale July 6. One-way fares to Buffalo range from $49 to $69 with a 14-day advance purchase, and one-way fares to Ft. Lauderdale range from $79 to $99 for a 14 day advance purchase or a walkup fare of $159. JetBlue expects to serve 10 cities by the end of the year with 10 new Airbus A320 aircraft.
U.S.-China incumbents and hopefuls filed rebuttal exhibits blasting each other's proposals and outlining vast numbers of supporters for their competing proposals for the one U.S.-China designation and 10 frequencies available in 2001 for U.S. carriers. Communities, businesses and employee groups have jammed the docket with thousands of letters of support.
