Bombardier's 70-passenger de Havilland Dash 8Q Series 400 turboprop made its first flight Saturday, reaching a speed of 200 knots and an altitude of 7,500 feet during the three-hour flight. The flight was monitored using real time telemetry between the aircraft and the flight test center mobile ground station at Downsview Airport, a first for a de Havilland product, Bombardier Aerospace said. The aircraft, Serial Number 4001, weighed about 50,000 pounds at takeoff, well below the maximum takeoff weight of 60,250 pounds.
AB Airlines will operate its new 737-300s with business class as well as economy when the aircraft enter service. The carrier plans to begin operations with the first aircraft May 24 and the second soon after. A third 737 is available from leasing firm Ansett Worldwide, but the airline has not signed for it. AB Airlines ordered six 737-700s in December and will receive the first in April 2000. The carrier serves Berlin, Lisbon and Shannon from London Gatwick and will launch London Stansted-Shannon this summer.
There was not a decliner for the eight regional-airline stocks in January. The issues climbed by an average of 18.9% on the month to $22.23 per share, led by SkyWest's good fortune of taking over all new United Express markets captured from Mesa Air Group. Even Mesa was up on news that former Executive VP Jonathan Ornstein and former board member Jim Swigart rejoined the Mesa board. SkyWest stock was up nearly 25% to $37 per share after reaching a 52-week high of $38.50 on Jan.21. Mesa was up 36.6% to $6.75.
(Munich) Fairchild Dornier hopes to make an announcement at Asian Aerospace In Singapore this month launching the 42- to 44-seat Do 428JET. "That's my goal,"The DAILY was told Wednesday by Jim Robinson, president of Fairchild Aerospace. "We are now trying to decide whether it will be 42 or 44 seats. It depends on how much metal is added and what Pratt&Whitney Canada can do with an uprated PW306B."
Keijo Suila, 52, will take over as chairman of Finnair at the beginning of 1999, when the current chairman, Antti Potila, retires, the supervisory board of the Finnish airline said. Suila is deputy chairman of Finnish concern Huhtamaeki and chairman of Leaf, its confectionery division. He will join Finnair in August.
BAA plc's operating profit for the nine months ended Dec. 31 increased 5.6% to #449 million (about US$745 million). Pre-tax profit for the nine months rose 4.5% to #415 million ($689 million), and BAA estimates that pre-tax profit for the whole of 1997 grew 9.5%. BAA said revenue from airport and traffic charges at its seven airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Southampton - increased 4.2% for the nine- month period to #400.9 million ($666 million). Non-duty-free retail revenues increased 8.4% to #514.9 million ($855 million).
The company that once tried to help Western Pacific raise cash for a merger with Frontier tried to convince Westpac financial backer Smith Management that Westpac would not make it in the Denver market, Westpac President and Chief Executive Robert Peiser told The DAILY yesterday. The Seabury Group LLC represented Westpac until the end of September.
Aviation trust fund, near insolvency just a year ago, is expected to be back to the old days of large surpluses by the end of fiscal 1999. President Clinton's budget estimates an uncommitted balance greater than $8.6 billion by Sept. 30, 1999. The surplus results from new and increased taxes imposed by the Tax Relief Act of 1997, as well as that law's provision to deposit aviation fuel tax receipts into the trust fund. The administration's budget also proposes $1.7 billion in FAA user fees beginning in fiscal 2000.
Midwest Express and American Eagle, the regional airline subsidiary of AMR Corporation, have entered a code share that will add 40 destinations to Midwest Express's service. The agreement, subject to final contract signing, will offer passengers connecting service from Los Angeles to eight California cities, and from Dallas/Fort Worth to 32 cities in the southern and southeastern U.S., effective this spring.
KLM said yesterday it will acquire the 50% stake in Martinair that it does not already own, making the Dutch charter carrier a wholly owned subsidiary. Under the proposed agreement, KLM will acquire the 50% stake currently held by Dutch insurance group Royal Nedlloyd NV. Neither side put a value to the transaction. KLM said that because of the rapidly growing leisure market and improvements in the cargo market, "the two airlines need to maintain an ongoing strong position." The deal will be back-dated to Jan.
American Eagle, the regional affiliate of American Airlines, reported a 1.5% increase in traffic and a 4.1% rise in capacity, which caused a 1.3 percentage point drop in load factor for January 1998 compared with January 1997. The load factor for Flagship rose 1.8 percentage points to 60.1%, but other Eagle load factors fell - Executive 0.9 points to 58.6%; Simmons 2.7 points to 51.2%, and Wings West two points to 50.1%. (System Results) January 1998 January 1997
BAX Global, the operating unit of Pittston Burlington Group, said it will acquire privately held Air Transport International for about $30 million cash. ATI is a U.S.-based freight and passenger airline that operates a fleet of DC-8s and provides services to BAX Global and others. BAX Global said the acquisition is part of a strategy to improve the quality of its service by increasing control over flight operations.
Code-Sharing Regional Carrier Schedules Announced Or Implemented Carriers Added Dropped American Airlines Aspen Mountain Air Dallas/Fort Worth- - Chihuahua, Mexico Executive Airlines Dallas/Fort Worth- San Juan, P.R.-Antigua Del Rio, Texas San Juan, P.R.-Barbados San Juan, P.I.-
The full House late Wednesday approved the bill to change Washington National Airport's name in honor of President Ronald Reagan. The Senate approved a similar measure and President Clinton has indicated he will sign it, although some local authorities may challenge the move.
The Federation of Transport Workers' Unions in the European Union (FST) is reviewing how to support Ryanair workers in their month-long strike against the Irish carrier. Following a meeting Wednesday at its Brussels headquarters, FST said its representatives are considering "solidarity actions" in other EU countries where Ryanair operates. Ryanair's workers went on strike Jan. 9 to protest the company's refusal to allow them to bargain collectively on pay and working conditions.
Japan service initiatives are beginning to appear in the dockets now that the U.S. and Japan have agreed on a framework for a new bilateral. American wants permission to start advertising new Japan service, United already is announcing its plans, and Japan Airlines told DOT its old Hiroshima-Honolulu combination service bid is ripe for approval.
United Airlines is talking with Air Wisconsin and Great Lakes as possible code-share partners for its operations out of Denver beginning April 23 (DAILY, Jan. 30). United currently has a code-share arrangement with Mesa, which is due to expire on April 22. United has offered to renew the agreement if Mesa reinstates four routes it operated as a United Express carrier but abandoned as unprofitable. Mesa has not yet responded to the offer.
American is increasing by 43% the number of first-class seats on 106 of its MD-80s - to 20 from 14. The reconfigured aircraft will have 113 coach seats, for a total of 133 seats. Michael Gunn, senior VP-marketing, said many customers request first-class seats on heavily traveled business routes. Reconfigured MD-80s will begin entering the fleet in May, and all 106 are scheduled to be completed in 18 months.
The International Transport Workers Federation is urging "coordination and cooperation" between trade unions within major airline alliances. The federation acknowledges the force of the alliance movement in the late 1990s and says it is not opposed to them as such. ITF complains that unions are not consulted as alliances are developed, however, and that when managements do consult they "frequently present misinformation about the work practices and employment conditions of their alliance partners to support their own cost-cutting or productivity objectives.
DOT received nearly two dozen reply comments from computer reservations systems (CRSs), carriers, travel agencies and Internet travel-site operators in response to the avalanche of initial comments filed on the department's CRS advance notice of proposed rulemaking. CRSs like Amadeus point out a consensus among most commenters in favor of retaining current CRS and mandatory participation rules, regulation of Internet providers of CRS services and expansion of participation rules to those marketing CRS services to "augment competition" in the CRS industry.
Tower Air reported a 31.9% traffic increase in January and a 15.4% rise in capacity, which caused a 9.7-percentage-point jump in the load factor to 77.4%. Revenue passenger miles totaled 285 million and available seat miles 368 million. Block hours flown jumped 40.4% to 3,390 hours, the result of increased flying in domestic scheduled service and charters for a Middle East airline.
House passed FAA's Research, Engineering and Development Authorization Act of 1997 (H.R. 1271) authorizing FAA spending on RE&D for fiscal 1998 and 1999. The measure originally was passed by the House last April before being amended and passed by the Senate in November.
Swissair's passenger load factor reached 70.5% in 1997, 5.9 percentage points higher than in 1996 and half a point better than its 1997 goal of 70%. Capacity increased 7.5% to 36.4 billion available seat kilometers and the number of enplaned passengers jumped 22.4% to 10.8 million. In anticipation of the coming high season, Swissair plans to offer in March reductions up to 50% for children younger than 16 who travel with at least one adult on both flights of a roundtrip.
FAA has accepted the first of 20 Display System Replacements (DSR) for air route traffic control centers across the nation, contractor Lockheed Martin said. The company said acceptance of the DSR at the Seattle ARTCC comes "six weeks ahead of schedule."
