National Airlines began new service between Miami and Las Vegas yesterday, offering two daily nonstop roundtrips with Boeing 757s. Miami is the eighth city served by National since the carrier's inception on May 27, 1999.
Eagle USA Airfreight reported that first quarter revenues increased 29% to $187.4 million and net income rose 29% to $10 million. Operating income as a percentage of net revenues was 20%. It was the company's fifth consecutive quarter of net income growth of 29% or more, said James Crane, chairman. "We experienced solid gains in our core domestic, international and pickup and delivery businesses," he said.
AirTran Holdings posted fourth quarter net earnings of $10.6 million versus a fourth quarter 1998 net loss of $3 million, the company's fourth consecutive profitable quarter before special items. AirTran ended the year with $29.8 million in net earnings, compared with an annual net loss of $13.2 million in 1998, and $76.2 million in cash, a $51.8 million increase from a year ago.
Atlas Air yesterday reported record net income of $23.7 million for the fourth quarter, up 31% from $18.1 million in the same 1998 period. Revenues rose 37% to $198.8 million, while operating income grew to $61.5 million from $47.1 million. Net income for 1999 swelled to $61.3 million from $46.2 million in 1998. Revenues rose to a record $637.1 million from $442.2 million.
U.S. National Carriers Productivity, In RPMs And ASMs Per Employee Third Quarter 1999 Revenue Available Passenger Seat Miles Miles Total (000) (000) Employees AirTran Airlines 868,674 1,449,846 2,974 Aloha 198,437 288,281 2,406 American Trans Air 3,045,379 3,998,517 5,396
Atlantic Coast Jet, which will begin operating flights in May as part of the Delta Connection system, named Michelle Bauman director-customer service. She will be responsible for all areas of customer service, including training and coordination with station operations personnel.
Delta and AeroMexico want authority to code share in the Mexico City-Chicago and Guaymas, Mexico-Los Angeles markets. The carriers applied for requisite exemptions to serve the routes, and AeroMexico asked for authority to display Delta's designator code on flights in each market. They plan to begin Mexico City-Chicago service March 3, when AeroMexico would operate twice-weekly nonstops using Boeing 757-200 aircraft.
Southwest said yesterday it will raise fares $2-$4 each way depending on mileage to cover the cost of rising fuel prices. The increase still is less than the $10 one-way and $20 roundtrip surcharge other major carriers have announced. A Southwest spokeswoman confirmed that the airline's jet fuel costs per gallon averaged 67 cents in the fourth quarter 1999 versus 43 cents for the same 1998 period, an increase of 54.5%. This week, jet fuel costs average about 82 cents per gallon.
LastMinuteTravel.com is the only travel-related Internet site advertising on Sunday's Super Bowl broadcast. Up from just two last year, roughly 15 Internet-related businesses will advertise during this year's championship game, or during the pre- or postgame shows. Atlanta-based LastMinuteTravel.com will air a 30-second commercial during the last minute of the game, immediately before the postgame show on ABC. The boost in demand for Super Bowl time slots has caused the price of a 30-second spot to reach a record $3 million.
Airbus needs a minimum of 40 orders and a similar number of options for a launch of the proposed Airbus A3XX, according to estimates by consultant Lehman Brothers. The firm's December 1999 study suggests that Airbus could expect a strong return on investment if it sold 665 aircraft of the type in 20 years. Airbus would not be threatened financially if airlines ordered only 528 jets within the same time frame. A third scenario with 364 A3XXs sold "would be a financial disaster," Lehman Brothers says.
The $10-per-segment fuel charge announced by airlines last week could cost businesses from $400,000 to $3 million per company and is an "outright abuse of market power," Business Travel Coalition Chairman Kevin Mitchell said in a recent letter to DOT Secretary Rodney Slater. Mitchell said the surcharge is one more example of why DOT needs to adopt its competition guidelines. Most airline corporate contracts do not contain provisions for adjusting price increases because of rising fuel costs, he said.
Spanair filed at DOT for authority to display United's designator code on flights between Madrid and Lisbon. The carriers plan to begin the service Feb. 5. Spanair displays United's code on flights between Washington and Madrid and beyond Madrid to Barcelona, Malaga and Palma de Mallorca and code shares with United to several U.S. points. United reported to FAA the results of a safety audit conducted of Spanair before DOT approval of the code-share operations, Spanair noted. The U.S.
Ansett Holdings employees presented a A$500 million (US$330 million) offer Monday to buy the 50% stake of the carrier owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. According to Dow Jones Newswires, the Ansett Employee Buyout Steering Committee, backed by nine unions across Australia, is expected to meet with News Corp. next week to discuss the offer. The committee said in a statement it plans to fund the buyout with a mixture of debt and equity, with shares being vested in employees over time through a structure linked to productivity gains.
Saraide, a provider of Internet-based services to wireless devices, signed a deal this week with Sabre's Travelocity.com to deliver real-time flight information to users of any wireless device, such as pagers, mobile phones and palm-held devices. Wireless carriers offering the new service will enable users to receive customized travel itinerary updates only when tickets are purchased through Travelocity.com. United last week introduced its own flight paging service that will inform customers of delays, cancellations and gate information via e-mail.
FAA's modernization program will come under scrutiny in a joint Senate hearing next week chaired by two senators strongly opposed to House Transportation Chairman Bud Shuster's (R-Pa.) plan to take aviation trust funds off budget or shield funding from the appropriations process. The Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Appropriations transportation subcommittee will hold the joint hearing on Feb. 3. FAA Administrator Jane Garvey and DOT Inspector General Kenneth Mead will testify. Budget is chaired by Sen.
The Thai government has approved a new freight airline initially to operate within the Asian region. Set for launch in September, Thai Air Cargo (TAC) would at the start have service to four Asian countries -- Bangladesh, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China -- using an Airbus A300B4. According to TAC Director Lennart Holmgren a second aircraft would be acquired from the open market in 2002, with the expansion of its network to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. Owned by the Freight Forwarders Commercial Transport International Co.
Indonesia's state-owned national carrier Garuda is questioning its government's plans to get Singapore Airlines involved in the management of the carrier, or any involvement by Merpati Nusantara. Garuda President Abdulgani Saidin asked, "Why get another foreign airline involved because the carrier is comfortable with Lufthansa Consulting (LC)," LC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lufthansa, has a two-year contract to restructure Garuda and put it back on a profitable track. LC's contract ends in December.
The carriers in the Austrian Airlines Group exceeded 8 million passengers for the first time in its history but fell short of its target of 8.2 million for the year. The Austrian Group, including Austrian Airlines, Lauda Air and Tyrolean Airways, posted a 5% increase in passengers carried, reaching 8.04 million for the full year 1999. The airlines' traffic was up 10.4% but fell short of the 12.2% capacity increase, lowering the load factor 1.4 percentage points to 69.3%.
Iberia this month will replace DC-9s with MD-87s on daily flights to Cancun, San Pedro Sula, Managua, San Salvador and San Jose, Costa Rica, and to Panama and Guatemala operated from its Miami hub with connections to its two daily Madrid-Miami flights. Iberia code shares with American on an additional transatlantic flight.
Priceline.com Founder Jay Walker is not concerned about Delta's recent sell-off of Priceline stock.In fact, he expected it. "Delta needs to be using its money for aircraft and running the airline, and we want our shares in the hands of institutional investors anyway," he told The DAILY.
American and Cathay Pacific yesterday finalized a code-share agreement that they want to implement in two phases starting this summer, pending governmental approval of the partnership. The agreement involves American placing its "AA" designator code on Cathay Pacific's flights between the U.S. and Hong Kong, as well as on Cathay's intra-Asian services to and from Hong Kong. Cathay would place its "CX" code on American and American Eagle's U.S. domestic services beyond Cathay's U.S. gateway cities, as well as flights between the U.S.
American Eagle will launch nonstop jet service March 2 from Fort Wayne, Ind., to its Dallas/Fort Worth hub, offering two daily roundtrip jet flights with new 50-seat Embraer ERJ-145 regional jets.
Malaysia Airlines' wholly owned subsidiary MAS Catering (MASC) may be up for sale to local businessman. Speculation about a sale arose following the resignation of MASC President Hafiz Mohd two months ago, with no replacement named. Operated as a separate entity since 1995, MASC provides inflight catering for 36 foreign carriers serving Kuala Lumpur Airport. If the sale goes through, it would add more than US$100 million to the airline's depleted cash flow. This would help the airline following the recent regional economic crisis.
Fairchild Aerospace booked orders for 178 aircraft in 1999, comprising "one-third of all regional jets and under-100-seat airliners ordered by operators worldwide," the company said. Fairchild said it received orders for 78 328JETS, 49 428JETS and 60 728JETS. Some of the larger orders came from Lufthansa for 60 728JETS, Atlantic Coast Airlines for 80 328/428JETs and Hainan Airlines of China for 19 328JETS. Fairchild cited public sources for sales of 543 jets in the under-100-seat category last year. Embraer booked the most with 186 orders.
Avensa/Servivensa, Venezuela's major airline, will restrict its scheduled flights from Caracas to Europe during the next two months to perform heavy maintenance on two of its DC-10s. The carrier temporarily will suspend flights from Caracas to Santiago de Compostela, Rome, Lisbon, Oporto and Milan, and operate only three to four weekly frequencies to Madrid.
