New noise limits proposed yesterday by the U.K. Department of Transport for London's Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports call for reducing daytime aircraft noise by 3 dBA to 94 dBA and nighttime noise by 2 dBA to 87 dBA. British Airways, which flies a 90% Chapter 3 fleet at Heathrow, said the government has set limits that most 747 operators will be unable to meet, even affecting the most modern Chapter 3 747-400s on the production line.
American and its pilots "have realized most of the benefits of the code- sharing partnership" with partner Canadian Airlines International, the U.S. carrier's president, Donald Carty, said in a letter to Allied Pilots Association members. Trying to use American's transborder business as a bargaining element in contract negotiations with the pilots, Carty said American has increased service to Canada by 42 weekly roundtrips, or 416 block hours for its pilots, since the U.S. and Canada signed their open skies bilateral 18 months ago.
Delta is increasing staff at its Weber State University reservations center, where it employs college students to handle non-sales calls. The practice frees more experienced reservations agents for other duties. Delta has increased the number of positions to 134 from 73, with plans to have 200 students working by the center's first anniversary in March. Delta has a similar center for students in Atlanta. At Weber, the students call passengers about delayed or canceled flights and assist in reservations. The center processes about 3,000 calls a day.
Eastern Airlines is sending a cease-and-desist order to New Eastern Airlines demanding it stop using the Eastern trademark name. A reorganized company, Eastern continues to exist as an entity with a number of multimillion dollar deals, but it does not fly airplanes, a company official said.
Kiwi International Air Lines has hinted it could announce new markets next month - when it turns four years old - and new programs. To celebrate the anniversary, the carrier is giving travel agents an extra 4% commission, for a total of 14%, on all tickets issued in September. Travel must originate by Sept. 30. Kiwi President Jerry Murphy said, "Four years ago, Kiwi made a very conscious decision to work with travel agents at a time when the major carriers began to eschew the traditional distribution system.
Eastwind Airlines inaugurates service to Orlando today from its Trenton base, becoming the 40th scheduled airline to serve the Florida vacation spot, and one of many flying 737s from the Northeast. In inaugural ceremonies today in Orlando, it will introduce its mascot, a bee.
Swissair yesterday purchased a 51% share in Airlogo Ltd., a Swiss company that offers logistical solutions for airline inflight service and catering. The purchase price was not disclosed. Leading Swiss freight and logistics firm Kuhne&Nagel holds 25% of Airlogo, and German inflight services firm Gunter ACS owns the remaining 24%. Swissair and regional subsidiary Crossair were among the first airlines to use Airlogo's software.
Summary of U.S. National Carriers Systemwide Traffic January 1996 Revenue Average Revenue Passengers Length of Passenger Enplaned % Travel Miles Carriers (000) Change (Miles) (000) American Trans Air 398 3.78 1,785 710,706 Carnival 198 28.97 1,208 239,010
Horizon Air ordered a record 25 firm and 15 conditional de Havilland Dash 8 aircraft and took 30 options, Bombardier Regional Aircraft Division said yesterday. The firm portion of the order is valued at $270 million. Deliveries begin in February.
McDonnell Douglas said yesterday it filed a shelf registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $1 billion in debt securities. The new registration, plus the unissued portion of an earlier shelf registration, will enable the company it to issue up to $1.2 billion in debt securities. It said it intends to use the net proceeds from the future sale of debt securities for general purposes, including the repayment of existing debt.
Continental, pushing forward with international alliances, signed yesterday an agreement with U.K. regional Business Air on code sharing through Manchester, England (DAILY, Aug. 7). Business Air, part of the Airlines of Britain Group that includes British Midland, will feed Continental's daily Newark-Manchester service and place Continental's code on Manchester service to Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Continental will enlarge capacity on the Manchester route, replacing 757s with DC-10-30s on Sept. 4. The code share with Business Air begins Sept.
One of the first projects Air France and the former Air Inter will undertake once they are merged is a domestic shuttle operation linking Paris with Nice, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Marseilles. A shuttle decision could come within two weeks, even before the ink is dry on merger documents.
Business aviation groups charged yesterday that President Clinton's proposal to assess a $225 per-flight fee on corporate and business turbine aircraft not only is unfair to that segment of the industry but also will hurt businesses and raise less money than the $541 million projected over six years (DAILY, Aug. 28). The business jet tax is one of eleven proposals to raise $8.456 billion over six years, offsetting the proposed $2.75 billion national literacy program and other recent Clinton initiatives to achieve a balanced budget.
FAA Administrator David Hinson has approved a Global Positioning System transition plan that will phase out most current ground-based navigation systems by 2010 and some - such as Omega and Loran-C - even sooner. "If everything goes as outlined in the plan, an augmented GPS will replace today's ground-based systems that use technologies dating back to the 1950s," the agency said. The advent of satellite-based navigation will have a "profound effect on aviation," it said.
Emery Worldwide has requested an exemption to operate scheduled all-cargo service between Dayton and Guadalajara, Mexico, and to combine that authority with its Dayton-Mexico City rights. Beginning Sept. 11, Emery wants to extend its Dayton-Mexico City service to Guadalajara two days each week, returning nonstop to Dayton. It would use DC-8-62s. (Docket OST-96- 1669)
Stork Group subsidiary Fokker Elmo signed a contract with Aviation Industries of China subsidiaries China Precision Engineering Institute and China National Airborne Equipment Corp. to manufacture wire harnesses for aircraft for the "benefit of both the Chinese and western aviation industries." The Lang Fang Fokker Corp. joint venture, with a 60% Fokker Elmo shareholding, "will be the basis for developing and manufacturing electrical systems for future Chinese aircraft programs such as the 100- seat regioliner.
American's Allied Pilots Association has advised its board members to prepare their bases for a 30-day cooling-off period in contract talks, but said the negotiating committee and American President Donald Carty will remain in Washington until they reach a "mutually agreeable conclusion." APA says American has offered an adjustment to the variable compensation plan that will enable pilots to recoup some profit sharing lost through the spinoff of The Sabre Group.
United and Saudi Arabian Airlines are seeking exemption authority to offer blocked-space services on some of each other's flights. Under their agreement, United will block space on Saudia flights over the route sectors New York-Jeddah/Riyadh/Dhahran, and Saudia plans to block space on some United flights between New York Kennedy and Los Angeles, which will connect with Saudia's international services. Saudia will offer New York-Los Angeles service in its own name only to traffic that arrives at or leaves New York on Saudia's Saudi Arabia flights.
Delta will list live fare information on the Internet for the first time when it publishes tariffs for its new low-cost initiative, Delta Express. Because of their simplified structure, Delta Express fares will serve as a test before Delta publishes all fares on its SkyLinks World Wide Web site. Customers will be able to use the Internet for bookings later this year. The fare information is found at www.delta-air.com/express. Delta Express will start operating Oct. 1 with a dedicated fleet of 25 737-200s.
Canadian Airlines International will begin using Heathrow Terminal 4 and start offering daily nonstop code-share flights with British Airways from Vancouver and Calgary to London, and 14 flights per week from Toronto to London, all on Oct. 27. The airport's newest terminal "is a spectacular facility with a shopping mall, spacious, modern luggage handling and convenient access to British Airways' unmatched network destinations," said Don Casey, Canadian's VP of capacity planning.
The Association of Flight Attendants, filing again at DOT in its campaign to keep ValuJet on the ground, charged that the airline changed the title of a top executive whose competence AFA was challenging and, in the process, seemingly left itself without a maintenance overseer. The union is arguing that David Gentry, ValuJet VP-maintenance, had no management responsibilities for two years prior to being named to the position.
Summary of U.S. Major Carriers Domestic Traffic January 1996 Revenue Average Revenue Passengers Length of Passenger Enplaned % Travel Miles Carriers (000) Change (Miles) (000) Alaska 711 13.98 807 574,081 America West 1,274 10.13 797 1,015,079 American 4,870 (8.98) 1,129 5,496,424
With open skies efforts already well advanced in Europe, the Clinton administration is pushing attempts to gain such agreements with Asian nations. "We have begun exploratory discussions with our market-oriented aviation partners in Asia, economies with whom we already have relatively liberal agreements, on the possibility of undertaking full Open Skies agreements," DOT Deputy Assistant Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs Mark Gerchick said in a presentation prepared for delivery today at The Financial Times Conference in London.
National Park Service is lobbying visitors to the Grand Canyon National Park to support proposed rules that would significantly reduce air tours over the park, according to the U.S. Air Tour Association (USATA). "This action is a clear violation of congressional intent regarding this issue, is unethical, immoral and may be illegal," it said.
Regulations - including procedures to be used by U.K. competition authorities in assessing the compatibility of the proposed American-British Airways alliance with European Commission competition rules - were laid out yesterday before the U.K. Parliament. "The United Kingdom competition authorities have a duty to consider the proposed alliance between British Airways and American Airlines under Article 88 of the EC Treaty," said John Taylor, U.K. corporate and consumer affairs minister. "These regulations clarify how the U.K.
