Northwest is being sued for negligence, intentionally inflicting emotional distress, false imprisonment and breach of contract by passengers who were stranded on airplanes at Detroit Metropolitan Airport for hours after a major snowstorm. Northwest spokeswoman Kathy Peach declined to discuss the suit but said there has been "a lot of hindsight analysis, which is very different than on-site when you're dealing with a crisis situation." She said the airline and employees scrambled to deal with the situation but there was too much snow to allow passengers to disembark.
Dulles, Va.-based Atlantic Coast Airlines (ACA) reported a 67.7% jump in traffic on 55.4% more capacity for December over the same month in 1997, causing the load factor to climb 3.8 percentage points to 52.1%. ACA reported 71.7 million revenue passenger miles and 137.8 million available seat miles. Passengers flown grew 46.9% to 224,334. For 12 months, ACA posted an 88.6% rise in RPMs and 63.8% in ASMs, boosting the load factor 7.3 points. The number of passengers flown increased 51.9%.
Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) meets this week in China with Chinese air carriers, airport authorities and aviation leaders to discuss civil aviation service between the U.S. and China. The U.S.-China bilateral pact restricts direct service to three U.S. carriers - currently United, Northwest and FedEx.
Lauda Air ordered two 737-600s, four 737-700s and one 767-300ER with a book value of $519 million. The 737s will be delivered between 2000 and 2002 and the 767 in August this year.
House Transportation aviation subcommittee's expansion to 50 members makes it larger than any Senate committee and all but Transportation and four other House committees. It has more members than any other subcommittee except for another Transportation panel, surface transportation, which also has 50. Transportation has the largest membership of any committee of Congress.
Cold weather last week exposed problems that prompted FAA to issue an emergency order Friday requiring preflight engine test runs and inspections of the Allison 3007A engines on EMB-145 regional jets and Allison 3007C engines on Cessna 750 business jets when the oil temperature is below the freezing point. FAA said the order, designed to prevent inflight engine shutdown from loss of engine oil, impacts 120 U.S. aircraft. The biggest operators are Continental Express, American Eagle and Trans States.
United took further steps to shore up its Pacific route structure by reversing an October expansion to Korea and not resuming one long-haul nonstop. It will suspend its daily nonstop Osaka-Seoul flight and reduce frequencies on Tokyo-Seoul from 13 a week to seven, effective April 4. The carrier also will not operate its planned seasonal Chicago-Osaka nonstop, which was scheduled to return in mid-1999.
Furbies, the holiday season's hot new gift item, may not be used during takeoffs and landings, according to Transport Canada. The talking toys, which emit electromagnetic waves, fall under Canadian regulations on electronic portable devices, which include cellular phones, CD players, laptop computers and hand-held computer games. FAA said it treats Furbies "as just another electronic device."
China Southern has agreed to purchase a high-speed data management system from IBM China Co. Ltd. The airline will base two IBMRS/6000 enterprise-level servers at its headquarters in Guangzhou. It hopes to correct inaccuracies that result from manual processing.
International Civil Aviation Organization Council President Assad Kotaite in a yearend review pointed to the organization's 1998 accomplishments, including the endorsement by the assembly of a Universal Safety Oversight Audit Program. "I would describe 1998 as a milestone in ICAO achievements," Kotaite said. Highlights include: -- Endorsement of the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Program, comprising regular, mandatory, systematic and harmonized safety audits, to be carried out by ICAO in all 185 member states, beginning Jan. 1, 1999.
America West will challenge results of a representation election of the Transport Workers Union by its baggage and cargo handlers because TWU interfered with the secrecy of the election process, the carrier said last week. Of 1,999 eligible voters, 1,054 cast ballots for TWU representation, according to the National Mediation Board. But America West said union organizers collected election ballots at public meetings, which constitutes election coercion.
SimuFlite promoted William Campbell to director-standards and Robert Munro director-training for Challenger, Citation, Falcon, King Air and Westwind programs and Don Roney to director-training services for Gulfstream, Hawker, Learjet and C-21A programs.
U.S. business fares have risen 25.5% since 1996 while leisure fares have declined 13.5%, according to Salomon Smith Barney analyst Brian Harris. A leisure fare increase would close the gap but is unlikely due to Northwest's weakness.
Air Lanka's traffic fell again in 1998, but not as much as expected given the economic downturn in Asia and continued teetering between peace and violence situations in Sri Lanka. The airline's available seat kilometers increased 5.8% to 5.9 billion, but revenue passenger kilometers dropped 2.6% to 4.2 billion, resulting in a load factor of 71%, down 6.19 percentage points. The number of passengers carried fell 1.84% to 1,217,000.
An augmented Global Positioning System can provide sole-means navigation and landing services, FAA and industry officials were told last Thursday in a briefing on a draft risk assessment study by The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.The study, due Jan. 29, says the augmented system can provide the same level of safety as the existing ground-based system.
Four Cathay Pacific Airways executives resigned Friday to accept positions with troubled Philippine Airlines. Two of the officials - Peter Foster, Cathay general manager for Taiwan and the Philippines, and Ike Scantlebury, finance director at Cathay parent Swire Pacific Trading Division - reportedly were involved in Cathay-PAL investment discussions. Cathay, which ended discussions last month to acquire a significant stake in PAL, said the moves were unrelated to Cathay's negotiations.
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin last week terminated a year-old charter service between Texas and Russia for International Space Station employees after the U.S. space agency's inspector general determined the service has flown with so few passengers that the average cost of a seat has ranged as high as $19,883. Originally set up as a cost-saving measure, the charter has been operating substantially below breakeven passenger goals set by NASA's Johnson Space Center, driving up costs, the NASA IG reported.
US Airways' Air Line Pilots Association unit negotiating committee is working with representatives of the company's wholly owned regional carriers to develop a flow-through agreement. An initial proposal from the parties, including flow-up job opportunities and flow-down furlough protection, is in the hands of US Airways management.
U.K. Civil Aviation Authority will establish its seventh and eighth foreign offices under contracts issued by Mauritius and Cyprus to CAA's Safety Regulation Group.
Cathay Pacific will begin offering American Airlines' AAdvantage frequent flyer miles to economy-class passengers Feb. 1. Cathay already offers AAdvantage miles to first- and business-class passengers, who earn credits at 150% and 125% of actual miles, respectively. "Our goal is to ensure we don't put any obstacles - real or perceived - in front of consumers when they are evaluating whether to make Cathay Pacific their airline of choice," said Ian Callender, VP-Americas.
Without waiting for a formal markup session, the House Transportation Committee underscored the need for prompt congressional action on an FAA reauthorization Thursday and approved by voice vote a $10.1 billion reauthorization for the balance of fiscal 1999. The bill would extend the Airport Improvement Program for the remaining six months at a funding level of $2.347 billion, higher than the $1.95 billion level contained in the six-month reauthorization enacted last year. The six-month authorization expires April 1.
Allied Pilots Association board of directors, representing American's pilots, has passed a resolution advising pilots to refuse assignments that may violate its contract with the carrier. Pilots are reacting to American's Dec. 23 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that AMR has placed four officers on the seven-member Reno Air board of directors, including American President and Chief Executive Don Carty.
