The Clinton administration has committed $2 billion in full-funding transit grants for rail projects in East St. Louis, Sacramento, San Francisco, Denver, Puerto Rico and Northern New Jersey. In San Francisco, extending the Bay Area Rapid Transit rail line to San Francisco Airport is one of the top priorities, and BART, SamTrans and airport officials applauded the funding announcement. The federal share of the $1.1 billion project is $710 million. SamTrans, the state and the airport will pay for the portion of the line inside airport property.
SAS will spend several million crowns this year to improve its EuroClass business product, according to Vagn Sorensen, senior VP-business systems division. The funds will go for more comfortable seating, better food and on-board entertainment.
Delta has set up a task force to improve customer service and operational reliability in Atlanta. The carrier recently said it is restructuring its airport customer service (ACS) at Atlanta Hartsfield after determining that cost-cutting measures have gone too far and hurt customer service. The team will consist of directors from the New York Kennedy station, airport customer service in Dallas/Fort Worth and ACS field operations.
As U.S. interests push the Global Positioning System as a sole means of satellite-based worldwide navigation, the International Civil Aviation Organization is preparing to accept Glonass, the Russian Global Navigation Satellite System, as a second and equal component of the ICAO Global Navigation Satellite System. GNSS is a linchpin of the future CNS/ATM (communications, navigation, surveillance/air traffic management) system, and the ICAO Council deliberated last week on Russia's offer to provide Glonass for at least 15 years with no direct user charges.
Summary of U.S. National Carriers Systemwide Traffic September 1995 Revenue Average Revenue Passengers Length of Passenger Enplaned % Travel Miles Carriers (000) Change (Miles) (000) Alaska 837 7.45 833 697,467 Aloha 398 2.57 135 53,752
Carnival Air Lines reported a 38.9% increase in February traffic, to 206.8 million revenue passenger miles from 148.8 million. Available seat miles increased 35.8% to 321.7 million from 236.9 million. The load factor inched up to 64.3%. Carnival enplaned 177,247 passengers during the month.
Government of Greece last week fired Olympic Airways Chairman Rigas Doganis. Doganis was hired in February 1995 to restructure the carrier as part of a European Commission-approved bailout.
American and the Allied Pilots Association, with the help of a federal mediator, resume negotiations today in Miami on a collective bargaining agreement that became amendable in August 1994. American said it needs an agreement to make decisions on expanding its fleet to remain competitive, according to the carrier's flight attendants union.
Standard&Poor's revised its ratings outlook on Continental Airlines Inc. to positive from stable. S&P affirmed the carrier's corporate credit rating of B- and assigned a CCC rating to its $200 million 6 3/4% convertible subordinated notes due 2006, through a private issue. The ratings, affecting about $638 million of debt, reflect the company's "sharply improved operating performance and prospects for continued good earnings," S&P said.
Bruce Nobles, chairman and president of Hawaiian Airlines, and Ron Letterman, president of Classic Custom Vacations, will be among the featured speakers at the American Society of Travel Agents Western Regional Conference, scheduled May 2-5 at the Kauai Marriott, Kauai, Hawaii.
American Trans Air reported that traffic increased 16.3% in February, to 799 million revenue passenger miles, while capacity rose 10.8% to 1.1 billion available seat miles. The load factor increased to 72% from 68.6%. Revenue passengers gained 22.4% to 550,918 and the average trip length declined 4.9% to 1,450 miles.
In a joint letter, United and Northwest told Access-U.S.-Japan Chairman Gerald Baliles that despite public statements, Access is pursuing the "parochial interests of its founders and financial supporters, principally American and Delta...to obtain point-to-point service" from the U.S. to Japan in exchange for beyond-Japan service.
Creation of a proposed regional airport authority to run Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports and develop and run the proposed airport near Peotone, Ill., could mean the withdrawal of low-cost carrier Southwest from Midway, where it has a large presence, Chicago Aviation Commissioner David Mosena told The DAILY. Legislation pending in the Illinois Senate (S.B. 1245) would establish the authority, put a cap on new runways at O'Hare and bar further development at Midway until activity at Peotone passes 120,000 operations per year.
EVA Airways has applied for an exemption to operate combination service between Taipei, Taiwan, and Anchorage, as an intermediate point for service to and from New York. The carrier plans to operate daily service on a Taipei-Anchorage-New York-Anchorage-Taipei routing. (Dockets OST-96-1151&OST-96-1152)
USAir reopened an expanded, redesigned USAir Club in the B Concourse of Charlotte Airport, one of three at the hub. The club offers a new ventilation system in the smoking area, free cappuccino and gourmet coffee, cordless telephones, an enlarged conference room with equipment and a new telephone system. USAir operates 26 clubs at 20 airports.
TWA, the city of St. Louis and the St. Louis Airport Commission (St. Louis parties) are urging DOT to ignore objections to its tentative award of new U.S.-Toronto services to TWA and USAir and make final its show cause order on the second year of the U.S.-Canada bilateral. The DOT tentative decision sparked protests from Continental, Northwest, Midway Airlines and the Raleigh/Durham Airport Authority (DAILY, March 14). "Of the five competing applications in this proceeding, TWA's proposal is clearly superior in all respects," said the St. Louis parties.
ValuJet Inc. received a BB corporate credit rating from Standard&Poor's, reflecting ValuJet Airlines' "limited operating history and current small size within the airline industry, offset, to some extent, by its low cost structure and very strong financial profile." S&P said ValuJet's outlook is stable but its margins could come under pressure from competition in Florida from Southwest and lower-cost service from Delta.
After one year of operating Trans World One, TWA reported big gains in filling up premium-class capacity on its transatlantic and transcontinental service. The load factor for first- and business-class cabins in 1994 was 53.5%, but the new combined front-cabin Trans World One class load factor was 72.2% in 1995. TWA said 94% of 3,600 comment cards returned by passengers rated overall service as excellent or very good, while 96% gave the same ratings to cabin service and 90% to personal space aboard the aircraft.
Irish carrier Aer Lingus said it will report "very successful results" in the next few weeks, proof that a two-year turnaround of the state-owned airline is firmly in place. Aer Lingus Group Chief Executive Gary McGann told The DAILY last week that most of the company's units posted profits and that the carrier's financial performance will show improvements.
The airline industry, whose average debt rating is Ba2, or junk, could return to investment grade by the end of the decade, an airline analyst said. At a Moody's conference in Chicago, Renee Shaker, Moody's VP and senior airline analyst, said that even if a recession strikes the cyclical airline industry, as some fear, the airlines are in a much better position to deal with it than in the past. "Before, there was a big run-up in aircraft deliveries," Shaker said.
At a hearing ostensibly about FAA's state block grant program, representatives of general aviation users, small airports and state aviation agencies pushed last week for a refocus of the Airport Improvement Program toward the needs of smaller airports. The General Accounting Office told the House Transportation aviation subcommittee that the block grant pilot program involving seven states has been a success. Many states - about 80% - appear interested in participating in the program and most seem to have the programs and staff to do the job, GAO said.
Competing U.S. interests and an absence of negotiating leverage are shackling U.S. efforts to gain new access to London Heathrow, the General Accounting Office told the Senate Commerce Committee aviation subcommittee last week. "While DOT has been successful in negotiating more liberal aviation agreements with a number of other countries, it has only achieved limited success in securing access for U.S.
Dutch planemaker Fokker was forced into bankruptcy Friday, ending nearly 77 years of aircraft production as rescuing bids failed to materialize. Saddled with high costs during a cyclic slump in commercial aircraft orders, the failed company will leave 5,664 workers jobless, although about 950 will be rehired by operating companies brought together under a new holding company. Another 350 will work for three more months to complete aircraft under assembly.
Seven months after issuing its show cause order, DOT made final last week its tentative decision allocating seven weekly frequencies in the U.S.- South Africa market to World Airways and Southern Air Transport. World was awarded five frequencies to operate three weekly roundtrip combination flights and two weekly roundtrip flights between New York and Johannesburg, via Accra, Ghana, using MD-11 on all flights.
Danzas North America said it has opened a facility in Indianapolis equipped to handle all domestic and international transportation and documentation services. The forwarding company also said it has moved to larger facilities in Minneapolis and Philadelphia and opened an office in San Antonio to keep pace with transborder business.
