Several aircraft reported an explosion to the Boston air route control center that turned out to be TWA 800, a transcript of the air traffic control tape showed yesterday. The transcript was released by FAA.
Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) officials said yesterday two of four concepts for expanding Los Angeles Airport have been eliminated. The expansion will not entail the use of Hawthorne Airport for commuter operations or a six-runway plan - one of two six-runway concepts under consideration - calling for development of a new commuter runway in the northwest portion of the airfield.
United and Mexicana applied jointly at DOT for authority to expand their U.S.-Mexico code-share service to points in Central and South America. Mexicana wants to display United's designator code on flights from Mexico City to Guatemala City, San Jose, Panama City, Bogota, Caracas, Lima, Santiago and Buenos Aires. United seeks exemption to hold out extrabilateral service to Bogota and Lima, via Mexico City, linking service to Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco and Washington.
Reno Air posted a 4.8% drop in traffic and a 0.2% rise in capacity for December 1997 over December 1996, lowering the load factor 3.4 percentage points. Reno reported 245.9 million revenue passenger miles, 387.1 million available seat miles and a 63.5% load factor. Passenger enplanements were down 0.8% to 445,851. Year-to-date RPMs rose 2.9% to 3.124 billion, while ASMs increased 4.3% to 4.698 billion, resulting in a 0.9-point drop in load factor. Passengers enplaned rose 7.2% to 5,530,454.
TWA applied at DOT for a two-year initial exemption to serve Australia and New Zealand from Los Angeles under a cargo-only code-share arrangement with Air New Zealand. TWA would place its code on ANZ flights linking Los Angeles with Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand; Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia; and London Heathrow and Frankfurt. TWA holds authority to serve London and Frankfurt from New York and St. Louis but requires additional authority for Los Angeles.
U.S. National Carriers Productivity, In RPMs And ASMs Per Employee Third Quarter 1997 Revenue Available Passenger Seat Miles Miles Total (000) (000) Employees American Trans Air 2,635,782 3,634,205 4,447 Carnival * 565,041 816,320 1,400
United will terminate a Mesa Air Group code-share contract for regional feeder service in Portland and Seattle and will not renew a separate Mesa contract for service from San Francisco. Mesa's service for United in Denver, the largest single portion of the relationship, is "under review," a United spokeswoman said. The actions caused the troubled Farmington, N.M., company to write off $72.1 million yesterday for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 1997.
Industry Pesawat Terbang Nusantara of Indonesia said it will continue its $2 billion program to develop the 130-seat N-2130 twinjet airliner, but analysts questioned the move in light of the country's growing financial crisis. IPTN launched the project in October 1994 and has envisioned entry into service in about 2000. A representative of U.S.
American objects to a Mexicana-AeroPeru code share that would operate between Los Angeles and Mexico City. AeroPeru flies the route and wants to put Mexicana's code on its services. American said Mexico's "restrictive" policy has sharply limited third- and fourth-freedom code shares across the border, including proposed American-Aero California services.
International Air Cargo Association has inaugurated 11 air cargo industry pioneers into a new hall of fame. They are Robert Prescott, founder of Flying Tigers; Chester Mayer, founder of Air Express International; John Emery Jr., chairman of Emery Air Freight; Albert Plessman, founder of KLM Cargo; Richard Jackson, chairman of Seaboard World Airlines, and Oleg Antonov, designer of heavy-lift aircraft.
London-based Debonair Airways has signed a five-year, #100 million (US$162 million) contract with the government of Calabria in southern Italy to provide scheduled passenger service within Italy. The airline will operate from Calabria region airports in Reggio and Lamezia to Rome, Turin, Florence and Bologna. Debonair will use two BAe 146-200s on the routes and expects the service to generate #20 million ($32 million) annually.
Flight attendants at the four American Eagle carriers have reached a tentative agreement under a single contract, succeeding individual contracts at Executive, Flagship, Simmons and Wings West. Barbara McNaughton, Association of Flight Attendants Master Executive Council president at AMR Eagle, said the new pact includes improvements over the separate contracts and makes the flight attendants "a cohesive group." The agreement is subject to AFA and MEC approval and ratification by the flight attendants.
Northwest launched a broadside against the likely outline of the new U.S.- Japan aviation agreement, but a Japanese government official expressed cautious optimism that a framework pact could result from next week's talks. The carrier held out the prospect of congressional action on the accord.
Southwest has experienced sustained growth in Providence, partly due to more O&D traffic than it expected. In the first quarter of 1997, Southwest carried more than 100,000 local passengers between Providence and Baltimore, compared with 10,000 in the first quarter of 1996.
Air France traffic jumped 9.8% in December to 5.8 billion revenue passenger kilometers. Capacity grew 4% to 8.1 billion RPKs, and cargo volume fell 2.2% to 431 million freight ton kilometers.
A 25-year Northwest flight attendant initiated a class-action suit against the carrier in King County Superior Court, Seattle, claiming that permitting smoking on transpacific service favors the preferences of corporate clients in Asia over the health interests of flight attendants. Northwest spokesman Jon Austin said smoking is banned on 99% of flights, including some out of Japan, and flight crew concerned about second-hand smoke "can bid just about any other route in the company."
National Transportation Safety Board said yesterday the uncontained failure of an engine on a Delta MD-88 in a July 1996 accident probably was caused by the failure of the carrier's fluorescent penetrant inspection process. It said the inspection did not "detect a detectable fatigue crack initiating from an area of altered microstructure that was created during the drilling process by Volvo for Pratt&Whitney that went undetected at the time of manufacture.
Western Pacific will retain three aircraft leased from Boullioun Aviation and financial backer Smith Management Company will retain control over the leases as part of its collateral agreement for helping Westpac out of Chapter 11, a Denver judge ruled Monday. Boullioun appealed a bankruptcy court order that allowed the airline to turn control of the leases over to Smith Management as collateral on an initial $10 million loan. Boullioun sought to repossess the aircraft or gain more control over the leases.
Winair told DOT that it expected to receive its FAA operating certificate yesterday and intends to request a waiver of DOT's six-day review period when it submits its operating specifications and certificate.
LOT asked DOT to approve a wet-lease arrangement for the Polish carrier to provide Aerolineas Argentinas with a 767-35DER, cockpit crew and three of four flight attendants for 243 roundtrips to perform Aerolineas's scheduled Buenos Aires-New York service Jan. 20-April 30. During that time, one of the Argentine carrier's aircraft will undergo a heavy maintenance check.
The new Hong Kong International Airport will open July 6, more than two months later than planned, the Hong Kong government said yesterday. The delay will allow for completion of a rail link to the city. The airport authority has maintained that facilities under its control will be completed by April; the rail link is being built by the Mass Transit Railway Corp.
DOT granted a two-year initial exemption to Continental Micronesia to operate scheduled combination service between Guam and Cairns, Australia, and to integrate the new authority with its existing authority. It also received a two-year renewal to integrate its Guam-Indonesia and Guam-Palau authority to operate Guam-Palau-Denpasar flights without local traffic rights between Palau and Denpasar. (Dockets OST-97-3283, 95-808)
Atlantic Coast Airlines and American/American Eagle, answering Comair's criticism of DOT's "ad hoc" slot exemption procedures, said the Delta Connection regional is seeking to protect its Cincinnati hub from competition.
Edmund Pinto, Aviation Week Newsletters publisher, will leave The McGraw- Hill Companies to become a managing director of GKMG Consulting Services Inc., Washington, D.C., effective Feb. 4. Pinto wrote for The Hartford (Conn.) Times and the Associated Press early in his career and later was a senior Senate aide, an assistant administrator of FAA and a senior VP of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He came to McGraw-Hill in 1989 as editor of Airports and became editor of Aviation DAILY in 1990 and publisher of the aviation and aerospace newsletters in 1993.
