American is offering London as its newest Net SAAver featured destination at www.aa.com. Package prices start at $699 per person, double occupancy, depending on city of origin. Packages include roundtrip airfare and five nights at one of three London hotels. Options include low-cost tickets to London theater productions.
Midway Airlines reported increases of 4.9% in traffic and 1.7% in capacity for March 1998 over the same month last year, which boosted the load factor 1.9 percentage points to 62.2%. Midway reported 232 million revenue passenger miles, 373 million available seat miles and 442,000 onboard passengers, a 9.8% increase. The company attributed the growth to the introduction of the first three of 13 Canadair Regional Jets, offset by the year-over-year impact of eliminating service to Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Penny&Giles Aerospace, which supplies aircraft instruments and avionics, has opened an engineering and manufacturing facility in Wichita, Kan. The company is a unit of Bowthorpe Aerospace Sector, a British holding company.
TWA yesterday posted a net loss before extraordinary items of $54.1 million in the first quarter, an improvement from the $70 million loss in the prior-year period. Revenue was flat at $765.4 million, while expenses declined 3.2% to $834.1 million, including a $26.5 million non-cash expense for employee stock distribution. After restoring the airline to operational integrity, spurring demand and improving yield, Chief Executive Gerald Gitner said the current challenge is to drive up revenues with new business and market-specific initiatives.
Grupo TACA and LanChile are adding U.S.-Latin America service that increases capacity to Miami and New York Kennedy. TACA started two daily New York-San Salvador nonstops Tuesday, using new Airbus A320s. "Our new nonstop service responds to increased demand," said Melvin Leiva, group sales director. LanChile will add frequencies from Bogota and Guayaquil, Colombia, to Miami using Boeing 767-300s. Both Colombian cities receive a third weekly flight, up from two. The airline is in the middle of a $370 million expansion program.
Aerolineas Argentinas leased a 747-200 from International Lease Finance Corp. The Pratt&Whitney-powered aircraft previously was on lease to Korean Airlines.
American Society of Travel Agents and travel agency consortium Coalition for Travel Industry Parity hailed the introduction of legislation directing DOT to investigate the conduct of airlines in their dealings with travel agents and consumers. The bill, the Consumer Access to Travel Information Act of 1998, was introduced by Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.), and Rep. Mike Forbes (R-N.Y.) launched a companion bill in the House.
The U.S. Trade Representative office should conduct international aviation negotiations, according to Northwest Senior VP Richard Hirst. The State Department is too concerned about non-aviation issues and DOT lacks trade negotiation expertise, Hirst said at last week's aviation symposium in Phoenix. USTR has the mandate and the culture for "single-minded pursuit and enforcement of market-opening trade agreements."
House Transportation aviation subcommittee will hold a hearing today at 9:30 a.m. in Room 2167 Rayburn on the impact of alliances, international agreements, DOT actions and airline competition. Witnesses include DOT General Counsel Nancy McFadden, who will appear today at 2 p.m. with others, including former Civil Aeronautics Board Chairman Alfred Kahn, at a Senate Commerce aviation subcommittee hearing on airline competition, Room 253 Russell.
Flight recorders from a 727 that hit a mountain Monday minutes after takeoff from Bogota, Colombia, are being brought to the National Transportation Safety Board. The aircraft, owned by TAME of Ecuador but contracted to Air France, was en route to Ecuador when it crashed, killing all 43 passengers and 10 crew.
Federally administered Airports Authority of India (AAI) plans to set up an Aviation Safety Directorate in New Delhi to monitor the country's air traffic control operations and investigate transgressions of air safety rules, including ground accidents. Set to become operational by June, the directorate, which is expected to work closely with the federal Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), will have a staff of 52 experts culled from various aviation-related government departments and will be headed by an AAI director, the officials said.
FAA wasted $1.5 billion on the Advanced Automation System, and then the agency and its contractors mutually waived claims of liability and non- performance before the contract was restructured in 1995, according to a report released yesterday by DOT Inspector General Kenneth Mead. The report, prepared at the request of Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations transportation subcommittee, termed the $1.5 billion a "total loss."
Northwest's net income of $71 million for the first quarter was a 9.9% increase from the same period last year and accompanied a 15.9% rise in operating income to $156 million. Diluted earnings per common share were $0.66, up 34.5%. Airline Chief Executive John Dasburg attributed the performance to strong demand in North America and the Atlantic and lower fuel prices, which compensated for weaker demand in the Pacific.
DOT awarded slot exemptions yesterday at Chicago O'Hare to America West, Atlantic Coast, Simmons and Trans States, and at New York LaGuardia to American Trans Air and Spirit. It turned down requests by AccessAir, America West and Colgan Air for LaGuardia slots and by joint applicants Pan Am and Carnival for New York Kennedy slots.
U.S. National Carriers Traffic March, 3 Months 1998 (000) March March % 1998 1997 Change Air Wisconsin Revenue Passenger Miles (000) 52,969 55,914 -5.3 Available Seat Miles (000) 86,545 83,424 3.7 Load Factor (%) 61.2 67.0
Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways have filed applications for further flights to China. JAL plans to start two weekly Tokyo Narita-Dalian flights July 1 and two weekly Narita-Qingdao frequencies July 4. ANA will begin one weekly Narita-Qingdao flight July 1, three weekly Osaka Kansai- Xiamen frequencies July 20 and two weekly Kansai-Shenyang flights July 1. Both carriers say they hope to expand China service more in the near future.
Standard&Poor's assessment of US Airways' positive outlook included upgrading the company's corporate credit rating from B- to B+, with indications of further upgrades over the next several years (DAILY, April 20)
FAA is notifying foreign carriers that it is "now accepting refund requests" for overflight fees. The agency said it has decided not to appeal the Jan. 30 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacating the fees charged foreign aircraft transiting the U.S. The Air Transport Association of Canada, and its Washington attorney, Robert Kneisley, asked FAA this month to return $10 million in charges, plus interest (DAILY, April 9).
All Nippon Airways' pilots union decided Monday night to suspend its strike of the airline temporarily to avoid the chaos forecast for the Golden Week holiday April 29-May 5. The union has not decided whether to resume its walkout after May 6, although it has indicated the cease-fire will continue at least until May 5. Resuming the strike seems difficult as the action has been severely criticized by the company and the public. ANA has canceled 94 747-400 flights since the strike began April 6 and had transferred 21,900 passengers to other carriers before April 20.
DOT yesterday submitted a report requested by Congress on rural air fares that verified some complaints about service to smaller communities, including a finding that travelers from those points pay higher fares than those from large hub markets. It also found that average fares at small communities with jet service do not differ significantly from those served by turboprops.
India's only private aircraft maker, Taneja Aerospace and Aviation Ltd. (TAAL), has signed a memorandum of understanding with the federally run National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) to design and develop a 15-seat turboprop aircraft for civilian use. Budgeted at about 1.1 billion rupees (US$31.5 million), the project will be financed by India's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and its Technology Development Board. The prototype is scheduled to be ready by late 1999.
Passengers seeking the best service and baggage handling, and highest customer satisfaction should fly Southwest or Alaska, according to the 1997 Airline Quality Rating study by the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University and the University of Nebraska at Omaha Aviation Institute. For the second year in a row, Southwest was rated the top airline. Alaska, a distant second, was not on the list in 1996.
Responding to objections by the Association of Flight Attendants on FAA's notice policy to use data analysis and subscale tests instead of full-scale evacuation demonstrations, the agency emphasized yesterday that it is not eliminating full-scale evacuating testing (DAILY, March 26, 27). An FAA spokeswoman said the notice policy issued March 17 pertains only to Boeing 777 and Airbus 340 derivative aircraft. "For every certification and major modification, they have to do full-scale evacuation testing.
FAA Administrator Jane Garvey will deliver the keynote address June 2 at the American Association of Airport Executives' 70th annual conference May 31-June 3 in Nashville, Tenn. Other speakers are House Transportation aviation subcommittee Chairman John Duncan (R-Tenn.), Continental Chairman Gordon Bethune and National Transportation Safety Board Chairman James Hall. For more information, call 703-824-0504.
