Granted orally an exemption to Continental for service between New York and Quito, Ecuador, via Bogota, Colombia...Granted orally an exemption to Continental for service between Newark and Guatemala City via San Salvador...Granted orally an exemption to Excalibur Airways for charter service between the U.S. and the U.K...Granted orally an exemption to Northwest for service to Dortmund and Paderborn, Germany, via Amsterdam under its code-sharing arrangement with KLM.
Air Canada's traffic rose 15.5% last month, compared with January 1995, on a 10.5% increase in capacity. The carrier flew 1.14 million revenue passenger miles during the month on 2.04 million available seat miles. The load factor was up 2.5 percentage points, to 58.4% from 55.9%. Canadian RPMs grew 11.7% and international RPMs 17.6% Domestic ASMs were up 2.5%, and international capacity rose 15.4%.
Delta is doing something about its consistently mediocre-to-poor on-time performance. In a company-wide reliability campaign, it is asking every operational division to find ways to speed things up. First steps: Get the first flight of the day off on time, and close the boarding bridge door two minutes earlier than usual. The carrier is testing a completely revamped boarding process in Atlanta and plans to field it throughout its system in 30 days.
Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA) reported losing $2.9 billion (4.3 billion Deutschmarks) in 1995, largely due to expected losses by Fokker. The deficit is up sharply from the DM438 million the company lost in 1994. Sales also declined, to DM15 billion ($10.2 billion) last year from DM17.4 billion in 1994. DASA reported that talks have broken off concerning a merger of its MTU subsidiary with the BMW/Roll-Royce venture. Manfred Bischoff, DASA president, said the talks failed because of MTU's ties with Pratt&Whitney.
Retirement rate of Stage 2 and newer aircraft is being "materially slowed," MBA says in its newly issued 1996 edition of Future Aircraft Values, and the rate over the next 10 years will be about 40% lower than manufacturers' and analysts' projections. "As a result, current prices of these older jets have more than doubled in the past year and are continuing to rise," says MBA.
Japan Airlines plans to use its new Boeing 777s to bolster its domestic service as it explores possible international use of the twinjet. The carrier took delivery of its first 777-200 last week in Seattle. It has 10 on order, plus five stretched 777-300s, and holds options for 10 additional 777-200s. After training and familiarizing its personnel with the 777, JAL will introduce it April 26 on domestic service between Tokyo Haneda and Kagoshima.
Virgin Atlantic expects to introduce inflight gambling through its Arcadia entertainment system by the end of the year, a company official said last week. The carrier still is trying to find a way to limit bets placed with credit cards - to protect customers from losing too much money while flying Virgin.
Delta Connection SkyWest flew 49 million revenue passenger miles in January, a 39.9% increase from the same month one year ago. Capacity increased 31.3% to 103.1 million available seat miles from 78.6 million, allowing load factor to rise three percentage points to 47.6%. Enplanements increased 25.1% to 191,138. SkyWest Chief Operating Officer Ron Reber said, "Our operational group delivered in what was a very challenging weather month. We definitely needed the snow in our ski markets," but "We didn't need the fog on the west coast."
The recent purchase of four new Fairchild Metro 23 aircraft has given the regional carrier Asia Pacific the opportunity to develop new markets and to serve those markets with lower risk, according to Hairun Nisa Abu Bakar, chief executive of the Kuala Lumpur-based airline.
In its first profit-sharing payments since airline deregulation - outside of bankruptcy - Continental has distributed $31 million to its employees for 1995. Combined with on-time bonuses paid last year, Continental has dispensed more than $50 million to employees. Continental ranked in the top five on-time performers in nine of 12 months last year and was the on- time leader for the fourth quarter. In 1995 it paid $65 per employee for each month its on-time performance ranked in the top five.
Following a review of ice shape testing on the Embraer EMB-120 Brasilia, FAA confirmed that the regional turboprop is not susceptible to roll control problems in freezing drizzle conditions, and it deemed other handling characteristics of the airplane acceptable, Embraer said. The Brasilia is one of several regional turboprops undergoing an icing test program that began last summer.
Midwest Express Holdings' board of directors has elected Dennis O'Reilly to the newly created position of assistant treasurer. O'Reilly, business analyst since 1990, will be responsible for aircraft financing and relations with analysts and investors.
SAS has started negotiating with the Baltic state of Estonia about taking a stake in government-owned Estonian Air, an SAS spokeswoman said. The talks are being held with an Estonian government privatization commission, which was charged with taking bids for the carrier in December (DAILY, Dec. 22). The spokeswoman said the commission would make a final decision on a sale after considering the issue for 120 days.
Delta's contract negotiations with the Air Line Pilots Association reached a "very intense level" this week at National Mediation Board headquarters, according to the union. The pilots' Master Executive Council meets in special session this weekend to discuss the status of the talks. The union plans its first-ever systemwide teleconference Feb. 21, live from Atlanta with downlinks to each pilot base and Fort Lauderdale, as a "continuation of our strike preparedness process."
...Michael Brady, the usually reclusive owner of Express and its parent Phoenix Airline Services, has his hands full with his ALPA pilots over a new contract. After more than two years of negotiations, he recently issued - uncharacteristically - a press release taking his case to the public and touting an overall increase in pay of 28.3%. The pilots, most of whom are domiciled at the out-stations, are holding out for hourly per-diem, even though they seldom remain overnight elsewhere.
Airlines Reporting Corp. has suspended its agreement with Las Vegas-based Grand Airways, which has ceased scheduled operations. ARC will no longer process transactions for the carrier after Feb. 25. Grand Airways, which was operating DC-9s, could not be reached because its telephone has been disconnected.
Test pilots have made more than 60 landings at airports in Albuquerque, N.M., and Richmond, Va., using the Autonomous Precision Approach&Landing System (APALS), developed by Lockheed Martin and supported by Spectrum Signal Processing. Lockheed Martin said the system represents a "major evolution from existing ground-aided technologies, such as the Instrument Landing System." In the advanced development system being tested, Spectrum designed the electronics chassis and provided expertise in digital signal processing.
Minneapolis/St. Paul hub apparently has become a contentious point between Mesaba Holdings and Express Airlines I in their negotiations with senior partner Northwest over new marketing pacts. Mesaba has Northwest's Detroit hub to itself and Express has Memphis. Minneapolis was split evenly between the two when Republic merged with Northwest; Express was the Republic Express carrier.
Concentra, a Burlington, Mass.-based firm that for years has manufactured design software for the aviation industry, has launched new sales configuration software called Selling Point. The product enables a salesperson in the field to work with a customer to sell customized or complex goods. With the Windows based-software, which can be run on a laptop, the user can configure a product, engineer it and provide manufacturing information at the point of sale.
FAA has put out a worldwide alert against buying thousands of parts it suspects were taken from the American 757 crash site in Colombia, and a Colombia-U.S. team investigating the crash said yesterday it has shifted its focus after finding no evidence of engine or airframe failures.
FAA's Office of Airports has created the FAA Airports (ARP) Home Page, which can be accessed directly or from the FAA Home Page on the World Wide Web. The Home Page was created by an ARP Internet committee composed of representatives of the offices of Airport Safety and Standards, Airport Planning and Programming, and the ARP management staff. The site includes organizational data, advisory circulars, airport software programs and other information. The Internet address is http://www.faa.gov/arp/arphome.htm.
American Trans Air's January traffic increased 16.7% over January 1995, to 750.3 million revenue passenger miles from 643 million. Available seat miles rose 7.1% to 1.1 billion, and the load factor increased 5.5 percentage points to 68.1%. American Trans Air carried 23.8% more passengers during the month, for a total of 492,883.
America West said yesterday its secondary public offering, which was increased to 6.63 million shares of the company's Class B common stock, will be sold at $19.50 per share. The selling shareholders will provide the underwriters with an option to purchase up to 610,000 additional shares to cover over-allotments, the carrier said. The sellers said they would unload 6.1 million shares when the sale was announced last month, but yesterday the carrier said the offering was increased "in response to strong market demand." (DAILY, Jan. 30).
