Delta is offering double bonus frequent flyer miles on nonstop and direct flights between Orlando or Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood and Providence/Newport, R.I., Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton, Pa., Raleigh/Durham, N.C., Washington Dulles or Hartford, Conn. The offer is good through Dec. 15. SkyMiles members can purchase tickets at www.delta-air.com or by calling the number on the back of their SkyMiles membership card.
American and its pilots union, the Allied Pilots Association, will resume mediated talks today on American's Reno Air acquisition today. The two sides met in mediated talks Monday-Thursday last week. APA spokesman Gregg Overman declined to describe the tenor of the meetings but noted they are "going forward." APA has not announced when it will file an appeal on a
Dean Borgman last week succeeded the retiring Eugene Buckley as president and chief executive of Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of United Technologies.
SAS has delayed a decision to purchase a new fleet of long-haul aircraft worth up to 15 billion kronor (US$1.8 billion) and instead will focus on cutting costs. The carrier said it wants to press ahead with a savings plan, introduced in March, before it orders the new airplanes. SAS wants to boost gross profit by 3.3 billion kronor within two years by cutting costs and boosting revenue from alliances. The carrier had planned to place the order in the first half of this year as part of its biggest revamp in 20 years to help expand traffic 5% over five years.
SAS and Air France filed at DOT for winter-season slot exemptions at Chicago O'Hare after hearing from FAA that it could not fulfill their slot requests. Each carrier seeks to continue service it now operates with a DOT-granted summer-season slot exemption. SAS wants one exemption for a daily controlled-hours arrival for its Chicago-Copenhagen service. Air France filed under its previous docket number, taking the stance that it seeks to renew its summer-season slot exemptions for daily Chicago-Paris service.
Spanair signed the first euro operating lease with GE Capital Aviation Services. GECAS says it launched a euro lease product in response to customer demand because many European airlines have non-U.S. dollar revenue and incur foreign exchange risks or hedging costs. The Spanish carrier says it plans more such leases with GECAS.
TAP Air Portugal's April traffic was unchanged from the same month last year but is down 1.8% for four months, compared with 1998 levels. April was the first month the airline did not report a decrease in revenue passenger kilometers. Freight volume dropped 17.1% in April to 15 million ton kilometers. The airline transported 412,998 passengers, up 3.8%.
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U.S. and French transportation representatives made "good progress" toward an agreement on intermodal code sharing in two days of discussions last week in Washington, according to a DOT spokesman. "Both sides endorse the concept," he said, and look forward to additional discussions. An example of the intermodal code sharing would be U.S. and French airlines holding out connecting service with, respectively, the French national railroad system or Amtrak.
The British Cargo Airline Alliance (BCAA) pressed the U.S. to put forward a "genuinely reciprocal agenda" in the U.S.-U.K. open-skies talks, delayed by the U.K. last week (DAILY, July 1). "Amending the current U.S. wet-leasing regulations to provide U.K. cargo airlines with an opportunity to compete on equivalent terms with U.S. carriers is an area where the U.S. side must move to eradicate existing imbalances," the alliance said. BCAA representatives, who met with DOT Acting Assistant Secretary Brad Mims in mid-June, report that Mims "still hopes the U.S.
Delta will drop its daily Atlanta-Vienna flight Oct. 1, instead placing its code on new Austrian Airlines flights, as the carrier slowly loosens its ties with its Atlantic Excellence partners. Delta said it made a "strategic business decision" to discontinue its Vienna service and believes it can serve the city better via its alliance with Austrian. Delta will place its code on Austrian's daily, nonstop Airbus A330/A340 flights between Atlanta and Vienna, effective Oct. 1, 1999.
Financier Ernesto Martens, chief executive of the CINTRA Holding Co., which successfully restructured AeroMexico and Mexicana as independent brands, reportedly wants to launch an initial public offering (IPO) of CINTRA's shares in major stock exchanges outside Mexico. The most recent attempt to do so was stonewalled by Mexico's antitrust bodies, however.
Atlas Air Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Chowdry was selected Entrepreneur of the Year in the Commercial Transportation Services category by Ernst&Young.
Slot-controlled airports are likely to lose many of the hundreds of daily turboprop flights with the advent of regional jets, according to Morten Beyer&Agnew. Regional airlines will use their RJs to serve "much more profitable long-haul markets, which generate far more revenue per departure than a 150-mile ATR flight to a closer-in city," MBA says.
FAA Administrator Jane Garvey Friday named Peter Challan acting deputy associate administrator for air traffic services. Challan was director of the office of air traffic systems development in the agency's research and acquisitions organization. Garvey named William Voss to succeed Challan and Carl McCullough to replace Voss. McCullough was the performance team leader for the Global Positioning System project.
Continental reported a 10.9% gain in systemwide jet traffic on 9.4% more capacity for June 1999, compared with the same 1998 month, pushing the load factor up 1 percentage point to 76%, the highest June load factor in the carrier's history. Continental flew 5.2 billion revenue passenger miles and 6.8 billion available seat miles. Domestic RPMs jumped 5.4% to 3.3 billion on 5.9% more ASMs, 4.3 billion, despite a slight decline in the load factor - 0.3 point to 75%.
With the company's latest tentative offer headed for failure and Labor Minister Claudette Bradshaw offering the help of mediators to help avoid a strike, Air Canada on Friday said it hoped to return to contract talks with its flight attendants this weekend. The 5,100 flight attendants, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Airline Division are in the final days of a seven-day countdown to a strike.
