Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater should accept a recommendation from FAA, the Coast Guard and DOT officials to continue the Loran-C program, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association President Phil Boyer said last week. Officials from the three organizations agreed June 29 that the Loran system, scheduled to be decommissioned in 2000, should be continued (DAILY, July 7). Now, the Coast Guard plans to operate Loran through 2008 with Slater's concurrence.
Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (HACTL), on the threshold of a dramatic business expansion at the new Hong Kong International, had to put its plans on hold until the airport can resume cargo operations, not before July 18. Computer system problems have canceled them. Members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council have called for Airport Authority Chief Executive Hank Townsend to resign, and an independent commission is investigating, said a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Washington.
Online airline bookings will account for 60% of travel spending in 2002 - $7.1 billion of $11.7 billion, according to Jupiter Communications, a New York company that tracks digital commerce. Analyst Fiona Swerdlow said travelers spent $777 million in 1997 booking air travel online, she said.
Frontier Airlines reported increases of 29.9% in traffic and 22.6% in capacity in June compared with June last year, pushing the load factor up 3.7 percentage points to 65.6%. It flew 115.5 million revenue passenger miles and 176.1 million available seat miles, and passenger enplanements were up 4.8% to 124,668. Year-to-date RPMs jumped 37.4% and ASMs 41%, depressing the load factor 1.5 points, and passenger enplanements rose 10.5%.
American Trans Air reported June increases of 10.7% in systemwide traffic, to 840.1 million revenue passenger miles, and 11.8% in capacity, to 1.178 billion available seat miles, over June 1997. Block hours flown grew 12.5% to 13,636. Scheduled-service RPMs rose 21% to 553.2 million and ASMs were up 16.5% to 695.6 million. Charter RPMs dropped 4.8% as ASMs rose 5.7%, however. For the first six months, systemwide traffic gained 10.8%, capacity 12.8% and block hours 21.7%.
Airline securities analyst James Parker, managing director, Robinson-Humphrey Co., will speak at an Aero Club of Washington luncheon July 28 at noon at the Capital Hilton, Washington, D.C.
FAA has asked the Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee to come up with recommendations on reserve duty and rest requirements for flight crews.The agency says it wants to make sure flight crews get enough rest to perform their duties safely "at a minimal cost to certificate holders and operators." The recommendations also are to outline how FAA will measure compliance.
Ranking House Transportation aviation subcommittee member William Lipinksi (D-Ill.) wants hearings on European Commission recommendations for the American-British Airways and United-Lufthansa-SAS alliances. Writing to transportation leaders, Lipinski said the remedies should be examined, given the number of slots that could be transferred from American-BA and the chance that United-Lufthansa-SAS conditions might nullify rights granted under open skies.
Air Tours confirmed it will take two more Trent 700-powered A330-200 aircraft in addition to two announced last year, Rolls-Royce said. The two will be delivered in the fourth quarter and will be operated by Air Tours' Scandinavian airline Premiair on long-haul routes.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain's (R-Ariz.) bid to add 12 daily commuter and 12 daily long-haul slots at Washington Reagan Airport is part of a tentative compromise with key leaders including Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), according to a Hill source, but not all members of the Virginia delegation agree and opposition from Washington, D.C., leaders is widespread. While McCain favored more service, he also wants exceptions to the perimeter rule for the new long-haul slots.
Virgin Atlantic, a major player at London Heathrow, criticized the European Commission's recommendations on American-British Airways last week as inadequate and unresponsive to critical issues related to U.S.-U.K. competition. In addition, the carrier found it "very strange" the EC used 1996 traffic figures, while newer data are readily available, said Virgin Executive VP David Tait. The EC said the recommendation for American-BA to give up 267 slots is based on 1996 data and "will be revised in the light of 1997 traffic figures."
FAA has approved use of instrument-flight-rule-certified Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers in place of the automatic direction finders (ADF) and distance measuring equipment (DME) on many instrument approaches, a move the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association said can save pilots money because they no longer need to maintain DME or ADF in the panel. "An aircraft owner can now replace that aging equipment with an IFR-certified GPS and get greater navigation capability." FAA is expect to announce the approval in a July 16 Notice to Airmen.
City of Dallas Aviation Director Danny Bruce has ordered Continental Express to share its two gates at Dallas Love Field with American, which wants to launch 14 daily flights to Austin on Aug. 31. Bruce noted that Southwest operates 139 Dallas Love departures from 13 gates, or 10.7 per gate, while Continental Express flies seven from two gates, or 3.5 per gate. Adding American's Austin service would boost use of the two gates to 21 flights per day, or 10.5 per gate.
US Airways intends to increase the number of U.S.-Europe markets it serves to 26 from 10 during the next few years. The carrier eyes future nonstop service to Brussels, Zurich, Milan, Athens and Manchester, and a transatlantic gateway from Washington Dulles.
Airlines, faced with the boom in electronic ticketing, are increasing the number of markets in which they offer e-tickets. At Northwest, 41% of North American and Canadian passengers booked e-tickets in June, said VP-
Orally approved use of eight weekly Russian overflight frequencies by Northwest, one by Polar Air Cargo and 14 by United, overflying Afghanistan on additional routing beyond the Wahkan Corridor, granting the carriers an exemption through June 16, 1999, and reallocated frequencies to Northwest and United that had reverted to DOT under dormancy requirements...Approved an initial one-year exemption for Aeromexico to conduct scheduled combination service between Monterrey, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas...Approved exemption-from-dormancy conditions through Oct.
National Air Transportation Association President James Coyne said FAA neglected the concerns of small aviation businesses with its recent proposal to create Federal Aviation Regulation Part 66. Coyne said the proposal "calls for radical redesign to the certification program for maintenance professionals and proposes costly training, education and performance limits on mechanics.
Nick Sabatini, a division manager in FAA's Eastern Region, is a candidate to be director of flight standards at FAA headquarters. Sabatini is a protege of Tom Accardi and moved into Accardi's Eastern Region flight standards job when Accardi went to FAA headquarters. Accardi, now teaching, was director of flight standards at headquarters when the agency came under heavy criticism following the ValuJet accident.
FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association reached agreement on staffing questions that led controllers to complain that the agency was violating the spirit of the tentative contract the parties negotiated last month (DAILY, June 16). Administrator Jane Garvey and Acting Deputy Administrator Monte Belger of FAA and President Mike McNally and Executive VP Randy Schwitz of NATCA reached the agreement.
Mexicana will increase Mexico-U.S. service today with new flights to Chicago and San Antonio. The carrier will give Chicago its first nonstop access to San Luis Potosi with two weekly flights that continue to Guadalajara and Leon. In addition, Mexicana will launch twice-weekly nonstop service from Guadalajara to San Antonio.
The Sabre Group has introduced Shop Safe Guarantee to its Travelocity site in an attempt to increase confidence that the system is not susceptible to unauthorized credit card usage. Sabre Chief Administrator Terry Jones said Shop Safe Guarantee provides customers with added security, even though there have been no reported cases of credit card theft on Sabre's Internet products. Most banks waive liability for unauthorized charges or limit liability to $50, which Sabre will reimburse if the transaction was made on Travelocity using the site's secure server.
Northwest Aerospace Training Corp. and KLM Flight Crew Training Center signed an agreement to combine training assets as the first step in developing a global pilot training network. NATCO operates 27 commercial airline simulators and training devices while KLM operates nine. All 36 will now be jointly marketed to customers, said Wijin Moonen, KLM VP-Flight Training Center. NATCO will handle sales, contracting and accounting for the two organizations. Braathens SAFE likely will join the network soon, they said.
DOT notified U.S. carriers of available U.S.-Peru charter opportunities under Annex 2 of the countries' aviation agreement. Through June 11, 2002, carriers of either country may operate no more than 52 charter combination roundtrips annually on routes receiving scheduled service; DOT noted that "a one-way flight will count as one flight under the terms of the quota." DOT will provide carriers that have firm plans to operate charter service with a Notice of Consistency for inclusion with the carriers' applications to Peru.
