McDonnell Douglas executives, flush with last year's $1 billion order for 50 MD-95s and 50 options from ValuJet, said the order will soon be followed by further sales. "We will see additional customers this year," Douglas Aircraft executive VP John Wolf said in Singapore. He would not identify the prospects but added that "double-digit numbers of airlines" are interested. Wolf is enthusiastic about the MD-95's future, especially in Asia.
Senior managers of Continental Airlines recently made major purchases of the company's common stock on the open market, the airline said. Gordon Bethune, president and chief executive; Greg Brenneman, chief operating officer; Larry Kellner, senior VP and chief financial officer; Jeff Smisek, senior VP and general counsel; Ben Baldanza, VP-pricing and route scheduling, and David Siegel, president of Continental Express, each bought about $100,000 worth of the stock. Other officers, including C.D.
Fuel Cost and Consumption, U.S. Majors, Nationals and Large Regionals January 1995 - December 1995 Total Total Cost Gallons (Dollars) 1995 January Domestic 1,047,140,647 561,867,630 International 349,052,595 206,143,062
Airline analysis of Illinois Transportation Department traffic projections for a proposed Peotone Airport only reaffirm the industry's belief that the airport is being promoted on "wishful thinking," the Air Transport Association said. According to IDOT estimates, the airport would serve 14 million passengers in its first year of operation, making it the 26th busiest in the U.S., based on 1994 Airports Council International rankings, ATA said.
With the lifting of a restraining order that barred its reallocation of South Africa frequencies, DOT will move to restore U.S.-South Africa routes to active use as soon as possible, a DOT spokesman said yesterday. Since USAfrica entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 1995, no U.S. carrier has operated service to South Africa. But DOT has not decided whether to reissue its tentative allocation of the six available frequencies to World Airways and Southern Air Transport or begin a new proceeding from scratch, the spokesman said.
United's January traffic inched up 0.8%, compared with January 1995, on flat capacity. Traffic in North America fell 2.2%, while revenue passenger miles climbed 4.9% in the Pacific and 10.7% in the Atlantic. The systemwide load factor was up 0.5 percentage points to 66.5%. The airline experienced a 0.5% falloff in the number of passengers carried and a 3% drop in flights operated. January 1996 January 1995 RPMs 8,511,191,000 8,444,041,000
French engine maker Snecma has signed a letter of intent for technical cooperation with several firms in Taiwan, according to Singapore press reports this week. The agreement was signed by Taiwanese Vice Economic Minister Yang Shih-chien and by Philippe Humbert, Snecma VP for international development. The deal calls for cooperation on technical issues and may lead to joint venture engine production, the report said.
Airbus Industrie has drafted a letter to Boeing Chairman Frank Shrontz asking the U.S. manufacturer to withdraw promotional material stating the A330/340 cruise speed is Mach 0.78, the European consortium said at the Asian Aerospace '96 show this week in Singapore. The typical A330/340 cruise speed is Mach 0.82 to 0.83, Airbus said. Overall A330/340 cruise performance is within 1% of the 777's, according to John Leahy, Airbus senior VP-commercial.
American says it will pay for all upgraded systems, such as planned people-mover and laser baggage systems, included in its Super A expansion at Miami Airport, one airline official said. Although the carrier has not yet determined what type of baggage system it will install, it will cover the costs of upgrading a conventional system under the airport's residual rate-making process. Five suing airlines argue that the upgrades will be for American's exclusive use, while they will share costs but receive no benefits.
The latest attempt to get U.S.-U.K. aviation negotiations out of the doldrums might come today in London. In a speech addressing international trade issues, British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Malcolm Rifkind is expected to find "no good reason not to resume those talks, on the basis of the U.K.'s offer of last October."
Lufthansa could suffer a strike by its pilots who are pushing for less flight time, according to a German newspaper report. The report, carried Tuesday in the Berliner Zeitung, quoted the pilots as saying they could no longer rule out the possibility of a strike. The warning came after talks between the airline and its union broke down last week. The union, which represents 3,500 pilots at the carrier, has demanded that cockpit personnel's maximum working time on short-haul flights be lowered.
CFM International has completed 70% of design work on its prospective CFM56-Lite engine and is "prepared to meet market demands" for it as the powerplant for the proposed Asian 100-seat transport. The company, a 50-50 joint venture of Snecma of France and General Electric of the U.S., told attendees at the Asian Aerospace '96 show in Singapore that it will be able to certify the engine within three years of a program launch, matching the aircraft certification schedule.
A task force looking into ways aviation industry databases can be joined to improve safety met yesterday at the Flight Safety Foundation but was unable to come up with recommendations for the industry group that created it (DAILY, Jan. 24). Instead, the task force decided to ask Battelle Corp., which manages NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, to "draft a paper" on the issue, Al Prest, VP-operations for the Air Transport Association, reported.
Greenwich Air Services Chairman Eugene Conese said yesterday his company plans to buy the much larger Aviall Commercial Engine Services Division for between $260 million and $280 million. Aviall said last week it intended to sell its airline engine repair and overhaul businesses (DAILY, Feb. 2), and Conese said he sees few problems in purchasing the larger company. "We feel we have a real qualified management team with experience in acquisitions. I think we can handle it comfortably."
In spite of appearances to the contrary, informal contact between the U.S. and the U.K. on aviation issues continues, according to a senior administration official.
Total air cargo, including freight, express and mail, declined 1.7% in December from the same month in 1994 but increased 4.5% for the full year 1995, the Air Transport Association reported. "A drop in cargo traffic is not the way the industry wanted to end 1995," said ATA President Carol Hallett. Cargo growth began slacking off in July, and in October it dropped to below-year-earlier levels. In November, it barely matched the year-earlier growth, and it slipped again in December, according to ATA data.
Southwest's 82.3% on-time record in 1995 enabled it to hold its position as the leader among the majors for the fourth year in a row. Continental posted the best record in December at 74.3%, however, breaking Southwest's string of six consecutive top monthly performances.
All Nippon Airlines plans to launch six international and three domestic routes as part of its 1996 business plan. The new international services are Tokyo Narita-Los Angeles, beginning late in March jointly with Delta; Kansai-Vienna, beginning in March jointly with Austrian Airlines; Kansai-Rome, via Frankfurt and Milan; Kansai-Yangon, Myanmar, beginning late in March; Kansai-Honolulu; and Kansai-Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Including the new routes, ANA's international service will increase from 45 flights per week to 60.
Criticism of DOT's travel record by congressional leaders "is about politics, not travel," according to the department. "Welcome to election year 1996," DOT said in a statement last week. "Top administrators aren't sitting behind their desks in Washington. Why? Because the DOT invested $27 billion in support of the nation's transportation infrastructure last year, and this administration demands that senior administrators, like bankers, get out into the field to make sure that we're protecting our investments."
Most airlines are offering flight schedules, press releases and other general information about themselves on the Internet, but British Airways is trying to take the technology a step further and promote its newly designed first class. The carrier has adopted its home page so people visiting the World Wide Web site can "wander" around the cabin, recline the seat and watch inflight movies. The carrier has adopted some of its television commercials, complete with its theme music, for the Web site.
Delta yesterday said revenue passenger miles increased 1.4% to 6.5 billion in January while capacity declined 2.6% to 10.5 billion available seat miles. The load factor rose to 61.87% from 59.41% in the same month a year ago. Robert Coggin, executive VP-marketing, said that "in spite of the weather impact, domestic revenue passenger miles grew a strong 7.3% from a year ago, pushing our domestic and system load factors to record January levels."
Potential new-entrant carrier Sunworld Airlines has revised its startup plan, cutting back service to Caribbean and U.S. points. Saying it still plans to operate between U.S. points and Grand Cayman Island, West Indies, on an immediate basis, Sunworld has eliminated, at least for the near term, the U.S. Virgin Islands as a destination because of recent hurricane damage in the St. Thomas/St. Croix area that drastically reduced the hotel capacity on those islands. Sunworld also dropped plans to operate St. Louis service after learning it could not obtain "timely U.S.
Alaska Airlines opened its fourth flight attendant base, this one in Portland, on Jan. 31. Initially, the base will be home to 65 flight attendants. Alaska also has bases in Anchorage, Long Beach and Seattle.
