BB&T, a banking subsidiary of Southern National Corp., will offer affinity credit cards as the official credit card sponsor of the First Flight Centennial Foundation to celebrate the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. The card will have a photo-like painting of the Wrights flying the first airplane past the First Flight monument as modern jets also fly by.
Jet Express is cutting fares to Myrtle Beach, S.C., from its eight gateway cities, effective May 1. The carrier, owned and operated by tour operator World Technology Systems, will offer fares beginning at $59 one way from Myrtle Beach to New York, Newark, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Detroit. Fares to Baltimore/Washington were introduced last week at that price, and flights to Boston will cost $79. Previously, the lowest fares to all cities except Boston were $79.
Apollo's new University Profit Prescription program will show travel agents how much time and money they waste calling the Apollo Customer Support Center when they could be selling travel. The program will send a monthly tally to about 2,000 agencies, breaking down the number and nature of the calls, and it will identify key training needs.
Saab Aircraft will fly the 50-passenger 2000 high-speed turboprop behind a KC-135 water tanker at Edwards Air Force Base this month in a voluntary test of its capacity to handle super-cooled drizzle droplets. The manufacturer has been writing a test program for the airplane. According to one source, the Swedish manufacturer has a full-court-press sales pitch on AMR Eagle, and [AMR Chairman Robert] Crandall "will want to know, 'Did the 2000 fly behind the tanker?'" It was an AMR Eagle ATR 72 that went down in similar conditions at Roselawn, Ind., on Oct. 31, 1994.
Atlanta Southeast Airlines, a Delta Connection carrier, set a monthly boarding record in March when it transported 318,155 passengers, a 21.4% increase over March 1995. Revenue passenger miles were up 17.3% to 77.2 million, and capacity grew 6.7% to 154.9 million available seat miles. Load factor also improved by 4.5 percentage points during the month to 49.8%.
USAir Express affiliate PSA will launch two nonstop flights between Washington National and Burlington, Vt., effective May 6 - the only nonstop service between the two points. On the same date, the regional will add another flight to its service between Washington National Airport and Manchester, N.H. PSA will use 32-passenger Dornier 328 turboprops for both new services.
William Reynard, 53, director of NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, died April 10 in Palo Alto, Calif., of complications from a kidney transplant. He headed the ASRS since 1976.
American Eagle carrier Simmons saw its traffic rocket 85.5% in the March quarter, but there is an explanation. The first 1995 quarter saw the carrier's ATR 42/72 fleet moved to the southern U.S. when FAA prohibited the aircraft to operate in known icing conditions. Indeed, the fleet did not even operate during part of January 1995. Even though the aircraft continues under a prohibition in known freezing rain or drizzle conditions, the ATR fleet this year was back to strength at Simmons' Chicago O'Hare hub.
DOT is requiring TWA Express affiliate Trans States to continue its current level of service at Forney Air Field, which serves Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., through June 3 or until the department is able to secure replacement service. Trans States, which is the only carrier providing service to the community, had announced in February plans to drop the service May 5. The carrier was selected in 1994 to operate for a two-year period ending April 30, 1996, three nonstop roundtrips on weekdays and two nonstop roundtrips over the weekend between Fort Leonard Wood and St.
DOT has renewed Air New Zealand's authority to operate between any point or points in New Zealand and the co-terminal points Los Angeles and Honolulu, via intermediate points in Australia. (Docket OST-96-1143)
Continental will launch once-a-week service July 6 to Dusseldorf, Germany, from Newark, using a DC-10. Next year, the carrier will increase service in the market to daily flights. It will maintain its daily service to Frankfurt from Newark.
...FAA will issue those controversial ADs by month's end in advance of its planned May 8-9 International Icing Conference, despite strong RAA opposition. They will cover 27 different turboprop models. RAA believes the matter is operational and should be covered by training rather than as an airworthiness issue, while not suggesting the accident was the result of a pilot rather than an airframe problem. The ADs, says FAA, make "ATR aircraft consistent with other like aircraft." Perhaps it should read that they make "other like aircraft consistent with ATR aircraft."
China will decide by the end of June whether Boeing, McDonnell Douglas or Europe's Aero International (Regional) consortium will be the western partner in a planned 100-seat aircraft development program, officials said yesterday. France signed a memorandum of intent yesterday with China under which the AIR partners - Aerospatiale of France, Alenia of Italy and British Aerospace - will work on the project with Aviation Industries of China. Industry executives on all sides, including those at Aerospatiale, played down the significance of the agreement.
..AMR Eagle, ironically, was the source of some of RAA's major recent problems emanating from two fatal crashes in late 1994 - serious revenue losses by members due to derogatory media reports and a public perception that turboprop aircraft were not safe. That perception sparked a major investment in public relations by the association, including hiring an outside public relations firm and an in-house PR director.
Midwest Express has signed a contract to upgrade analog equipment to GTE Airfone's Advanced Digital Airfone Service, enabling passengers to receive calls inflight, transmit data, send and receive faxes, access e-mail and voice mail and conduct conference calls. GTE will install a digital radio base station in Milwaukee to support the new service. The system will be installed on all 22 aircraft in Midwest's fleet by the end of July.
Airline political action committees gave twice as much money in 1995 to Republican congressional candidates than Democrats, while airline union PACs gave 78% of their money to Democrats.Airline PACs gave almost $1.6 million during the year, but about $1.2 million of the total came from the PACs operated by multi-modal carriers United Parcel Service and Federal Express. Airline union PACs contributed $953,030 in 1995.
Hemisphere International Airlines asked DOT to review the order revoking its interstate certificate, complaining that uncompromising demands by FAA held up its certification. The department revoked the carrier's certificate last month because Hemisphere could not attain FAA certification and start operations by March 14, a year after it received DOT certification. Hemisphere said it told DOT in 1995, when it received the interstate certificate, that it "was encountering normal bureaucratic delays as well as other delays" in gaining FAA certification.
Delta Connection affiliate SkyWest flew 60.4 million revenue passenger miles in March, a 47.9% increase from March 1995. Capacity rose 25.7% to 108.5 million available seat miles. Mar. 1996 Mar. 1995 3 Mths 1996 3 Mths 1995 RPMs 60,419,015 40,858,217 163,235,957 110,998,293 ASMs 108,523,936 86,362,038 316,158,803 238,932,257 LF (%) 55.7 47.3 51.6 46.5
Frontier Airlines flew 69 million revenue passenger miles in March, a 179% increase from its 24.7 million RPMs in March 1995. Available seat miles for the month rose 82.9% to 102.2 million, and the load factor improved to 67.5% from 44.3%. Enplanements were up 125.7% to 100,313. For the first quarter, Frontier flew 183 million RPMs, a 168.5% increase over the same period in 1995; 297 million ASMs, up 90.8%, and a 61.6% load factor, up from 43.9%. The March traffic was a monthly record for the 21-month-old carrier.
Midwest Express subsidiary Skyway Airlines flew six million revenue passenger miles in March, a 9% increase from 5.5 million in March 1995. The Midwest Express Connection carrier's capacity increased 3.6% during the month to 13.1 million available seat miles from 12.7 million. Load factor rose 2.2 percentage points to 46% from 43.8%, and passenger boardings rose 3.1% to 27,933 from 27,105.
Air France flew 4.9 billion revenue passenger kilometers last month, a 25.4% increase over last year. Capacity for the month rose 6.2% to 6 billion available seat kilometers. The load factor was 81%, up 12.4 percentage points.
Alaska Airlines will offer $75 one-way fares between Vancouver and San Diego when it starts operating two daily roundtrips May 6 with 140-seat MD- 80s. The fare is available until June 8 for travel until that day. No advance purchase is required.
FAA, in conjunction with ICAO and Miami Airport, will hold the first annual Americas Conference on Aviation in September in Miami, DOT Secretary Federico Pena said yesterday at the Latin American Transport Summit in Santiago, Chile. Addressing concerns about FAA's safety evaluations of foreign civil aviation agencies, Pena said, "I know that a Category 2 or 3 rating of an airport carries with it significant consequences.
