Boeing has renamed McDonnell Douglas Finance Corp. the Boeing Capital Corp. The $2.6 billion subsidiary, based in Long Beach, Calif., and in its 29th year, reported net income of $48.8 million, $867 million in new business and a return on equity of 16.2% in 1996. McDonnell Douglas Realty Co. also has a new name, Boeing Realty Corp. The changes reflect the Boeing- McDonnell Douglas merger.
Associated Global Systems promoted Gary Syner to VP-international, Gaylan Harrison to regional service manager-Southwest and Mike Moskwik to service training supervisor, and appointed Ray Whitmire regional manager- business development, Southwest Region, and named Trey Stevens district manager-Chicago.
UPS, in a quick decision, lost its lawsuit charging illegal intimidation by its pilots union, the Independent Pilots Association. The suit charged IPA with disrupting commerce by threatening action against pilots at contract carriers if they carry UPS goods, including publicizing their names (DAILY, Aug. 15). A Kentucky state court judge ruled within hours of the petition for an injunction. IPA denied blacklisting other pilots or refusing them jumpseat privileges on UPS flights, and the judge ruled such attempts would be prohibited.
Reno/Tahoe Parties filed in support of Reno Air's bid for an extraordinary- circumstances exemption for Reno-Chicago O'Hare. Reno already flies the route under the rule but wants to increase service by one daily roundtrip. This would bring total roundtrips during slot-constrained hours to four per day, but one early-arrival slot is timed before slot controls apply.
G&H Technology Chief Executive Thomas Cleary was named Entrepreneur of the Year in Manufacturing for the Greater Los Angeles Area, an award sponsored by Inc. magazine and Merrill Lynch.
Pilots of TAP Air Portugal agreed to stop the industrial action they launched in July after the Portuguese government agreed to start talks on their work and rest periods, the government said Friday in Lisbon. At the same time, the Portuguese authorities canceled their Aug. 9 requisition order aimed at forcing pilots back to work. The union representing TAP's pilots considered the order contrary to Portuguese legislation on strikes.
AAR Corp. plans to build a new hangar and upgrade an existing hangar at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City. When work is completed in January, the company intends to expand aircraft maintenance and overhaul capacity and add backshop support, including composite structure repair and state-of-the-art paint capability.
FAA said Friday that two of the 193 Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) systems it tested during the week were not working properly, and both were corrected. The faulty systems, at Fayetteville, N.C., and Florence, S.C., were recertified, as were the other 191. The MSAW function at the Aspen/Pitkin, Colo., airport is installed and certified but is not in service because of the large number of false low-altitude alerts in the mountainous terrain.
Airbus Industrie VP-Marketing Colin Stuart still believes the European manufacturer will "achieve a 50% market share by the year 2002." Speaking last week in Toulouse at rollout ceremonies for the consortium's A330-200, he stressed that the consortium is building up a complete aircraft product line, "from 100 to 1,000 seats," with the development of the European-Asian 100-seat AE31X regional jet at one end and prospective A3XX jumbos at the other.
After working more than nine years, an international consortium says it has come up with a solution to the Loran-C data rate limitation for communicating Global Positioning System differential corrections. The team says such corrections over the entire European Loran-C service area can provide position accuracy within 10 meters without relying solely on a single system, as does the U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System.
Delta's new president and chief executive, the first outsider to run the company, will start his tenure by targeting the airline's crumbling customer service. Leo Mullin, formerly vice chairman of Unicom Corp. and Commonwealth Edison, said Delta is in "tremendous" shape financially, but data for the last three years show the airline has "slipped somewhat in customer service," a situation he said was "bent and not broken." Consumer relations, one of Mullin's strong suits, is an "early priority," as are efforts to improve efficiency.
U.S. and Russia have agreed to hold formal bilateral talks Nov. 11-13 in Moscow. Regulated expansion will be on the table, including additional routes, code-sharing provisions and capacity increases. Previously announced bilateral talks remain on track, with Japan Aug. 27-29 in Washington, Romania Sept. 16-18 in Washington, and France Oct. 15-17 in Paris.
FAA signed a $500,000 contract with Lockheed Martin last week to "productionize" color display capability for the Automated Radar Terminal System (ARTS) IIIA and ARTS IIIE if Raytheon Co. is late delivering the initial system capability version of the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System (STARS) to the Boston Center in December 1998.
Airbus and Fokker Aircraft Operating Costs Systemwide Aircraft Utilization Per Day First Quarter 1997 A320-100/200 America West Northwest Number of Aircraft Operated 26 50 Total Fleet Operations Departures 135 188 Block Hours 347 530
Airbus and Fokker Aircraft Operating Costs First Quarter 1997 Dollars Per Block Hours A320-100/200 America West Northwest United Average Crew Cost $301 $596 $676 $539 Fuel&Oil 588 580 586 584 Rentals 723 403 555 537
American Airlines, which confirmed its aircraft acquisition plan in May, faces $4.67 billion in payments for firm-order aircraft during the next three years, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The airline will pay $570 million this year, $1 billion next, $1.3 billion in 1999 and $1.8 billion in 2000. Its first new-delivery aircraft will arrive in mid-1998.
Attorneys working on the Amerijet/Air Jamaica case had a busy schedule late last week as DOT issued procedural deadlines on a move to revoke Air Jamaica's authority. DOT took the action after learning that Amerijet's long efforts to launch service to Jamaica appeared to have broken down. DOT gave parties until 11 a.m. Friday to file answers and 5 p.m. to file replies after Amerijet told it of continued problems in securing bilaterally authorized cargo service to Jamaica, the subject of a long dispute that as recently as mid-July seemed resolved (DAILY, July 17).
United appointed Andrew Studdert senior VP-fleet operations and administration, succeeding Joseph O'Gorman, who is retiring after more than 31 years with the company.
