The top 10 U.S. airlines posted worse combined records in April for on-time performance and consumer complaints than in April 1996, although the mishandled baggage rate improved slightly. The carriers recorded a 79.8% on-time record at all reported airports, down from 80.2% in April last year but up from 78.1% in March 1997. Southwest had the best record at 84.2%, followed by TWA, 83.6%, and United, 81.6%. Delta came in last with 75.6%. Consumers filed 649 complaints about service in April, an 18% increase over April 1996 and a 10% increase from March.
Belgium's new long-haul, no-frills carrier, CityBird, put a second MD-11 into service Monday on flights from Brussels to New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The carrier, which launched operations March 27, said it carried 15,269 passengers and had a 71.02% load factor as of May 15.
Antitrust issues and multilateralism were among the highlights of U.S.-New Zealand open skies talks, judging from the Memorandum of Consultations that emerged from the agreement initialed last week (DAILY, June 2).
Air France will give an all-expenses-paid, four-day trip to France to the lucky Indian who can prove he or she visited France exactly 50 years ago, airline officials said Monday. The offer is the airline's contribution to celebrations observing India's 50 years of independence from British colonial rule on Aug. 15, 1947. Eligible persons must notify Air France by Aug. 31, after which the winner will be chosen by lottery. The prize includes tickets for as many as five family members and travel in business class, Air France said.
Japan has granted Federal Express new routes into Tokyo and Naha, Okinawa, from a number of U.S. gateways, a Japanese official said yesterday. The action will expand FedEx's ability to deliver packages to Japan but fails to address its efforts to increase beyond-Japan service. There is no "direct connection" between the decision and the current framework of U.S.- Japan aviation issues, the official said. But it could set a "positive tone" for the new round of formal talks proposed by Japan.
KLM is in talks to sell its airport rolling stock subsidiary, KLM Equipment Services (KES), to Ryder Plc of Britain. The Dutch airline and the British unit of Miami-based logistical services provider Ryder System "will conduct talks on a partial or total takeover of KLM's KES shareholding," the Dutch airline said last week.
United Airlines is promising employees two things in its third year of changing the corporate culture - empowerment and fewer confrontations with management. As the airline embarks on its United Rising advertising campaign, telling customers it knows they are frustrated and is working to change, the trick will be whether it can translate its numerous internal changes into better customer service, and do so fast enough to keep its promises in the marketplace.
Alitalia and Continental yesterday added a second daily McDonnell Douglas DC-10 flight on their code-shared service between Rome Fiumicino Airport and Newark. The Italian carrier and its U.S. partner launched code-sharing flights on the route in 1994.
A code share DOT approved last week between United and Thai Airways was animated partly by FAA's upgrade of Thailand from Category 2 safety compliance. United plans to place its code on Thai Airways' flights in the Hong Kong-Bangkok and Tokyo-Phuket markets for one year, new service that had been barred until FAA's April 28 reassessment of Thailand as Category 1. The airlines still must apply for permission from Hong Kong and Japan, however, since the blind-sector services through those points are not permitted in their parties' bilaterals with the U.S.
Cathay Pacific Airways, which suspended operations of its 11 A330s May 24 due to engine problems, expects the first aircraft to return to service tomorrow. The Hong Kong-based carrier said replacement parts for its Trent 700 engines have arrived and manufacturer Rolls-Royce is working on a solution to problems that led to several inflight engine shutdowns in a short time (DAILY, May 28). The loss of the A330 fleet - with several less than a year old - has caused Cathay to consider seeking damages from Rolls.
Burlington Air Express is expanding air freight service into Portland, Ore., as part of its "Tex/West Direct" western market service upgrade. The new service will offer direct flights to Burlington's Toledo hub and "dedicated second-day lift with flexible pickup times."
American has changed the sequence of flights, lengthened connection times and adjusted flying times in an effort to improve on-time performance. The result has been an instant improvement - 85% on-time arrivals from May 1 to May 28 and 89% during the Memorial Day weekend. At 72.9%, American ranked seventh among the 10 U.S. majors in the first quarter.
Bombardier Business Aircraft has introduced Dependability Plus, a guaranteed-cost-of-ownership program for the Learjet 31A that guarantees a trade-in value of 85% of the original purchase price after three years, or 75% after five years, toward the purchase of another Bombardier business aircraft. Dependability Plus members have access to Bombardier's Smart Parts Plus program, with free parts for the first 1,200 hours of operation, and AlliedSignal's MSP program, which covers the TFE731-2-3B engine's first 400 operating hours.
Mediated contract talks between UPS and the Independent Pilots Association are in recess until September after continued disagreement on wages and other issues.The union says not only has it not seen an offer it could accept, but it will "vote on a contract as soon as management leaves it on the table long enough for us to make a copy."
Airline Industry Stock Trends Closed Closed Exchange 5/30/97 4/31/97 Majors Alaska Air Group NYSE $ 24.875 $ 24.875 AMR NYSE 99.370 93.000 America West (Class B) NYSE 15.375 15.325 Continental (Class B) 1 NYSE 35.000 31.750 Delta NYSE 93.750 92.125
The Social Security Administration warned DOT against using social security numbers to help identify passengers and notify relatives in the event of an air disaster. Commenting on DOT's advanced notice of proposed rulemaking on passenger manifests, Darrell Blevins, acting director of the office of disclosure policy, raised privacy and legal issues and said SSNs could be unreliable identifiers.
Emery Worldwide Airlines said it has selected a team from its parent, CNF Transportation, to manage a recently awarded $1.7 billion, 58-month Postal Service contract to transport and sort Priority Mail, mainly on the East Coast. Gerard Trimarco will be VP and chief operating officer for the project. The contract is the largest in the history of any CNF company as well as the Postal Service. Emery Worldwide will provide principal management and operate a fleet of 18 aircraft dedicated to transporting Priority Mail.
United, effective yesterday, is requiring passengers with advance seat assignments on domestic flights to show up at least 20 minutes before a flight, instead of 10, in order to retain the assigned seat. The policy does not apply to connecting seat assignments or affect the policy that reservations will be honored until 10 minutes before departure on domestic flights, 20 minutes to Canada, Hawaii, Mexico and the Caribbean, and 30 minutes to all other international destinations.
Middle East Airlines of Beirut has become the first A321 operator in the Middle East following delivery of a leased aircraft from International Lease Finance Corp., powered by IAE V2533 engines. MEA is operating five leased A310s. Egyptair has taken delivery of the first of four A321s on order from Airbus. The carrier operates A300s, A320s and A340s and was the first Middle East airline to order the A321. Its experience with the A320 made the A321 stretch "the natural choice for routes with more traffic," Egyptair Chairman Mohammed Fahim Rayan said.
John Spooner, East Midlands Airport's new managing director, says there should be more room for traffic from regional points across Britain to London Heathrow. "Slots should be allocated on the basis of the regional airport being served as opposed to the conventional allocation to airlines who would then be free to use slots for whatever route their own commercial priorities demanded," Spooner said. "There is a huge untapped market for scheduled services from East Midlands," he said, noting that demand from local business travelers for such a link "is very high."
Cyprus Airways may go bankrupt as early as 1999 unless the government postpones planned deregulation and the airline undertakes a drastic restructuring, said Takis Kyriakides, chairman of the 80% state-owned airline. Addressing members of the Cypriot parliament last week in Nicosia, Kyriakides forecast the airline would post a deficit of 5 million to 6 million Cypriot pounds in 1997, while its charter subsidiary Eurocypria would lose between 1 million and 1.5 million pounds.
The European Parliament, in a second reading of the European Union's new draft liability regulation, persevered in its push to apply EU air carrier liability rules to non-EU airlines. The new regulation aims at lifting compulsory legal compensation to 120,000 European currency units in the framework of the 1929 Warsaw Convention.
Officials of FAA and U.S. airlines have raised questions recently indicating concern about something that has troubled their counterparts abroad for years - what one source called a "lack of civil involvement" in the Global Positioning System. The system, which determines an aircraft's position and velocity by processing data from a constellation of satellites, is to become the only means of navigation in the not-too- distant future, and the U.S. Air Force has turned down an FAA attempt to locate a GPS control facility at a site the civil agency is establishing.
Turkish Airlines' traffic for April jumped 22.7% to 1.1 billion revenue passenger kilometers. The traffic increase is 17.1% in the January-April period, and THY is on a pace to carry 8.4 million passengers this year, up from 7.7 million in 1996.
