American Airlines executive George Hazy was named president of American Eagle carrier Executive Airlines based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The DAILY misspelled his first name (DAILY, July 11).
AirTran Airways flew 78.6 million revenue passenger miles in June, down 0.9% from June 1996. Available seat miles decreased 1.2% to 113.2 million, so the load factor inched up to 69.4% from 69.2%. For the first six months of the year, AirTran's RPMs fell 3.9% to 479.6 million, ASMs were down 2.5% to 710.2 million and the load factor was down one percentage point to 67.5%. AirTran carried 92,093 passengers in June and 567,738 in January-June.
U.S.-France bilateral talks scheduled this week in Paris have been postponed until the fall at the request of the French. No specific date has been set but October is a possibility, a U.S. government official said. Open skies talks with Korea still are on for today and tomorrow in Washington, and open skies will be discussed with Aruba in Washington on July 22.
Delta filed at DOT for code-share authority with Transbrasil, proposing to start service Oct. 26. The carriers last month signed a letter of intent to pursue joint services, including code-share/blocked- space contracts. Delta would code share on daily service from Orlando, Miami, Washington Dulles and New York Kennedy to Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia. Connecting-service code share would include Porto Allegre, Florianopolis, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, Manaus and Salvador.
U.S.-Korea open skies talks today and tomorrow are being held against the backdrop of the continuing dispute between World Airways, which wants to operate service beyond Seoul to Malaysia, and the Korean government, which has not permitted it. Regarding the talks, a U.S. official said the bilateral issues have been "fairly well fleshed out. We are hopeful that we have a shot at getting this thing finished, but it's not at all certain" that an agreement will be initialed at the end of this round. As for World, he said the U.S.
TWA, taking delivery of new aircraft and retiring old ones, will reduce its average aircraft age below 17 years by yearend. Northwest takes over as the major carrier with the oldest fleet - the average age is 19 years, including several DC-9-10s that observed their 31st birthday this year.
The share of U.S. domestic freight carried on freighter aircraft increased four percentage points since mid-1995, surpassing 60%, and the percentage of international freight carried on freighters grew by nearly the same amount, according to Air Cargo Management Group. The number of widebody freighters worldwide increased from 241 to 350.
Midwest Express reported a 22% increase in June revenue passenger miles to 130.9 million from 107.3 million a year earlier. Capacity for the month rose 21.2% to 187.2 million from 154.4 million. The load factor increased to 70% from 69.5%. For the first six months of the year, RPMs rose 12.1% to 675.5 million, ASMs grew 14.6% to 1.1 billion and the load factor was down to 63.2% from 64.6%.
Northwest named Don Washburn executive VP-flight operations and president-Northwest Cargo, in the latter position succeeding Bill Slattery, who will become chairman until his retirement in April 1998.
As government and industry work on ways to notify family members quickly and accurately following aviation disasters, the emotional price of human error was underlined at last week's hearing of the DOT/NTSB Family Assistance task force (DAILY, July 11). Gore Commission member George Williams lost a son in the destruction of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, but at one point "I was told he was definitely not on that plane," he said.
Continental and the Independent Association of Continental Pilots (IACP) have made little progress in contract negotiations on scheduling, staffing formulas, vacations or the much larger issue of compensation. The union says it wants enough of a raise to bring it up to the "industry standard." To the IACP, that means the raise needs to be whatever percentage is necessary at each level of seniority and for each aircraft type to bring the pilot up to the average salary.
Frontier will discontinue service to Las Vegas Aug. 1 because of low traffic and yields. The carrier operated three daily Denver-Las Vegas flights until last week, when it cut back to two.
The House Appropriations Committee Friday approved the fiscal 1998 DOT appropriations bill, providing $9.06 billion for FAA. The bill includes a measure prohibiting FAA from using any of the funding for the planning or promulgation of any regulation to impose a new user fee not specifically authorized by law. The bill also prohibits funding for FAA's planned Flight 2000 initiative, formerly called "Ha-laska," which would demonstrate "free flight" technologies in operations in and between Hawaii and Alaska.
International Association of Machinists, which represents mechanics and related employees at United, is beginning an organizing drive at Denver for customer service employees. John Peterpaul, the IAM member who sits on United's board, says the cargo division is doing well financially and is expected to make $1 billion for the carrier this year. He expects United to begin expanding its airfreight operation, which it already has plans to do at Los Angeles.
Florida's state attorney general's office expressed disappointment with British Airways' decision not to accept mediation in its dispute with Laker Airways (DAILY, July 10), but it accepted BA's offer to meet privately on the issue. Attorney General Robert Butterworth had urged mediation by July 9, and Peter Antonacci, deputy attorney general, wrote BA legal director Kenneth Walder that "your negative characterizations of Laker's claims simply add little to bringing this matter to a speedy conclusion.
Worldspan is offering Corporate Fleet, a computer reservations system package providing automated flight management, to operators of private scheduled air services. The system stores flight inventory and provides reservations management for private aircraft owners in conjunction with their host Worldspan travel agency. Travel agencies will be able to view commercial flights and the business aircraft flights on the same screen.
ValuJet Airlines, forever linked in the public mind with a swamp in the Florida Everglades, will shed the ValuJet name in favor of Florida airline AirTran in a deal, announced yesterday, to merge the carriers' holding companies into AirTran Holdings Inc. Airways Corp., parent of AirTran Airways, and ValuJet Airlines Inc. signed an agreement to merge into a single holding company and operate the carriers as separate entities with only slightly different names and a common look, aimed at building critical mass needed for profitability neither can achieve on its own.
