Southwest and American are keeping it in the family. The only airlines ever to rank first and second in the six-year-old Airline Quality Rating took the top honors again in 1995, this time with Southwest regaining the number one spot. The annual rating is conducted by researchers at the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Aviation Institute and the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University. The nine major airlines rated, in order, were Southwest, American, United, Delta, America West, Northwest, USAir, TWA and Continental.
USAir will offer its five-week Fearful Flyers course beginning April 30 at the Greater Rochester Airport. The program costs $325. One of the instructors, a psychiatric social worker, said many of the students are frequent flyers who develop a fear of flying over the years.
U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration will stay open until April 27 instead of closing this week in order to smooth the transition of some employees to the International Trade Administration. Former U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor has taken the place of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who died in a plane crash in Croatia. Stuart Eizenstat is the undersecretary of ITA, which has four assistant secretaries.
National Mediation Board will count ballots tomorrow from America West's mechanics on representation by the Teamsters. The union expects results by 1 :30 p.m. Mountain Time. Ballots were sent to 396 mechanics fired at the end of 1995 and 358 still working.
BFGoodrich reported first quarter net income of $19.9 million, up from $17.6 million in the same quarter last year. Sales totaled $604.5 million, up from $594 million. The company's aerospace segment turned in operating income of $39.2 million compared with $27.8 million. All four aerospace groups contributed to the improvements, with strong sales in wheels and brakes, maintenance, repair and overhaul services and avionics equipment.
The North American Airlines Public Relations Association last week awarded the 1996 Eugene Dubois Annual Award for excellence in aviation reporting to Bill Armbruster of the Journal of Commerce.
Mesaba Airlines logged its seventh consecutive month of record traffic, reporting that its revenue passenger miles reached 33.7 million in March, 23% more than in March 1995. It carried 152,939 passengers, up 21.2%, while available seat miles rose only 5.8% to 64.3 million. The load factor gained 7.3 percentage points, to 52.3%. For the first three months of the year, traffic was up 9.5% to 344.6 million RPMs, capacity was up 3.8% to 732 million ASMs, and load factor rose 2.5 points to 47.1%.
Susan Kurland, deputy corporate counsel for the City of Chicago, will become FAA associate administrator for airports, succeeding James Washington, who has been acting associate administrator since Cynthia Rich left the agency in January. Kurland will join FAA in about two weeks.
WestJet said it carried its 50,000th passenger last week. The startup carrier, which launched scheduled service Feb. 29, is flying Edmonton- Calgary, Calgary-Vancouver, Edmonton-Victoria and Edmonton-Winnipeg.
America West is hiring cabin crew, wet leasing airplanes and recalling furloughed workers to accelerate its flexible growth plan, announced last September, based on beefing up the Phoenix and Las Vegas operations (DAILY, Sept. 22, 1995). The carrier began service recently to Detroit and has announced new service to San Antonio and Anchorage and increased frequencies to Atlanta, Boston, Newark and Philadelphia. Its fleet will grow by at least 10 aircraft this year to handle service expansions.
Polar Air Cargo said yesterday it will begin direct, scheduled 747 all- cargo service April 27 linking the U.K. and Europe with the U.S., the Asia/Pacific region and South America. The new European service will comprise two weekly flights from Chicago and New York Kennedy to London Heathrow and Amsterdam. The return schedule will provide through service from London and Amsterdam to Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South America.
Holiday Inn Worldwide is the latest company to join the LatinPass frequent flyer program. The agreement enables LatinPass members who enroll in the hotel chain's Priority Club to accrue mileage by staying at any of more than 2,000 Holiday Inns throughout the world. The rate is one point or 2.5 frequent flyer miles for each qualifying dollar spent on lodging. The frequent flyer program has 15 Latin American airline members.
USAir is offering companion fares of $50, $100 or $150, depending on length of haul, on roundtrip flights in about 150 domestic markets, matching an America West offer patterned after a Southwest program announced last week (DAILY, April 15). A passenger purchasing a full-fare ticket can bring along as many as three passengers for the companion fare. Tickets must be purchased by June 12.
British Airways will make available one million seats this year between the New York area and the U.K. The carrier currently offers 2,081 seats per day from New York Kennedy Airport to London and 2,612 seats to Kennedy from London. That accounts for more than 950,000 seats per year, and the total tops one million when service to and from Newark is added. On June 1, BA will add an eighth flight from New York Kennedy to Heathrow, for a total of 12 daily flights from the New York area to the U.K.
American is set to begin May 1 daily nonstop Boeing 767-200 roundtrip service between Boston and Paris Orly, the route it was awarded Friday by DOT (DAILY, April 15). American said it plans to launch the service with special promotional fares "that are significantly lower than the current lowest published fares offered by the existing carrier on the route" - TWA, which operates daily 767 service between Boston and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Delta selected Pratt&Whitney engines for the 12 new Boeing 767-300ERs it ordered this year for its international fleet. Pratt said the order for 24 installed PW4060 engines is valued at about $170 million. Delta plans to use the new aircraft to replace L-1011s.
Canada's unusually wet winter caused its carriers to use a lot of glycol for de-icing.Air Canada estimates it de-iced a record 4,700 aircraft at Toronto alone, using 1.7 million liters of fluid. During the more typical 1994-95 winter, the carrier de-iced 2,698 aircraft at Toronto and needed 1.03 million liters of solution.
Sky Games International Ltd., a joint venture between Harrah's Entertainment Inc. and Interactive Entertainment Ltd., confirmed that Singapore Airlines will be the launch customer for its gambling software. The company announced the contract in November but withheld the airline's name.
Aero Systems Engineering, St. Paul, Minn., a member of the Celsius Group of Stockholm, Sweden, reported 1995 net income of $189,488, compared with a 1994 net loss of $1.2 million. Roland Dilda, president, said the improvement was due largely to better cost controls and increased wind tunnel projects. "The results clearly validate our 1993 purchase of FluiDyne Corp.," he said. "As a result of this new wind tunnel business, ASE can expect a more balanced business base." Celsius operations in the U.S. include AeroThrust Corp. of Miami and FFV Aerotech of Nashville.
Air Aruba requested renewal of its authority to operate scheduled combination service for two years between Aruba, via Bonaire and Curacao, and the coterminal points Miami, New York and Baltimore. (Docket OST-96- 1146)
Federal Express reported that the expiration of the 6.25% air cargo waybill tax on Dec. 31 increased its domestic revenues by $19 million and its yield by 1% in the quarter that ended Feb. 29. "This benefit will continue until such time as the excise tax is re-enacted by Congress," the company said in a quarterly report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. FedEx said its international revenues and volumes increased at slower rates than in the past, and "management expects these trends to continue through the fourth quarter."
Alaska Airlines appointed Jeff Cacy to the new position of director of system sales and distribution and Lisena Quintiliani to Cacy's former job, director of business travel marketing. Cacy will be responsible for field and corporate sales, distribution technologies, travel industry programs, international sales and special market programs. Quintiliani will be responsible for the Mileage Plan and other marketing programs.
Executive Jet Aviation has contracted with Raytheon FBOs for maintenance and avionics support of its NetJets fleet of 17 Hawker 100 midsize business aircraft.
