Despite growing opposition and a bill pending in Congress, the Federal Air Surgeon is staying on course with his plan to require pilots and controllers with a body mass index (BMI) of at least 40 to undergo testing for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and seek treatment, if necessary.
The highly publicized failure of the right engine of a Thomas Cook Airbus A330-200 (G-OMYT) taking off from Manchester, England, on June 24 was caused by the failure of a single turbine blade in the high-pressure section of the Rolls-Royce Trent 700 turbofan.
Delta Air Lines’ strategy to grow through upgauging combined with plans to replace 50-seat regional jets with Boeing 717s means the carrier will meet its capacity target without maxing out its allowable regional jet (RJs) lift, the airline’s top executive says. “We aren’t going to buy all the 76-seaters we’re entitled to buy under our scope clause,” CEO Richard Anderson said at the airline’s annual investor day Dec. 11. “I don’t know where we’ll end up, but we have room right now for 30 more that we don’t have earmarked.”
Although it has received the smaller half of the newly merged American Airlines’ order for 76-seat regional jets, Bombardier’s contract for up to 70 CRJ900s will keep the aircraft in production and on the market as the Canadian manufacturer focuses on its CSeries narrowbody airliner. For Embraer, the orders and options from American for 150 E175s are a boost following JetBlue Airways’ October decision to defer delivery of 24 E190s to 2020-22, from 2014-18, and cap its fleet at 60 aircraft, down from the originally placed 100 firm orders and 100 options.
Luxair Executive Vice President-airline Martin Isler says 2013 was an “excellent year” for the carrier, with a 14% increase in passengers carried compared with last year, despite of the arrival of low-cost carriers (LCC) in the Luxembourg market.
Next year should be the most profitable ever for the airline industry, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) predicts. IATA upped its profit forecast for 2013 and 2014 based on several beneficial factors. The group believes that the industry will post a combined net profit of $19.7 billion in 2014, $3.3 billion higher than the last forecast in September. This year is also going to be better than expected as profits will rise to $12.9 billion, up from the previous prediction of $11.7 billion.
TAP Portugal will expand its fleet in 2014 with two Airbus A330s and four A320 family aircraft and add several new destinations, including two in Brazil which will further strengthen its leading market position on routes between Europe and Brazil. “Six additional aircraft to a fleet of 71 aircraft is a pretty good growth,” CEO Fernando Pinto told Aviation Week on the sidelines of the Aviation Leadership Summit organized by the Association of European Airlines (AEA) in Brussels.
Air Canada has announced plans to renew its mainline single-aisle fleet with orders, options and commitments for up to 109 Boeing 737 MAX, replacing its current fleet of Airbus A320 family aircraft and becoming one of the first major Airbus operators to defect to the re-engined Boeing twinjet.
British Airways (BA) plans to deploy its Airbus A380s on its London Heathrow-Washington service beginning next year, while its Boeing 787s will be rolled out on Calgary, Chengdu, Hyderabad and Philadelphia routes. BA has taken delivery of three Airbus A380s, which currently serve Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Johannesburg will join BA’s A380 network in Feb. 2014, followed by Washington from Sept. 1 next year.
A potential congressional budget framework revealed late Tuesday is already pitting parts of the U.S. commercial aviation sector against each other, with airline proponents lambasting doubled passenger security fees and airport boosters lauding the compromise and looking forward to more money for runway and other improvements.
While capital markets are gaining ground as a preferred funding source, traditional banks are expected to hold their own as the primary provider of aircraft delivery funding in 2014, according to projections from Boeing Capital. Commercial lending should win about 25% of the $112 billion in play in the 2014 delivering financing market, down 3% from its 2013 share, while cash will account for 23%, down 2%.
A Boeing technical team is in India applying a “modification package” developed for Air India’s 787 fleet, which has been grounded for nearly two weeks by government order. “To ensure reliability and safety, all the 10 787 aircraft in the Air India fleet [have] been taken in for a 10-day maintenance grounding, beginning from Dec. 1, junior Civil Aviation Minister K. C. Venugopal says.
Chances are rising that the Comac C919 will be largely limited to the Chinese market, as the manufacturer works towards local airworthiness certification while seeing no clear path to the desired FAA endorsement of the type. The Chinese market is big, so sales of perhaps 1,000 units remain plausible, in the opinion of program officials. But the 158-seat narrowbody’s prospects for making a much bigger splash on the wider market, perhaps never large, are diminishing.
Executives from Emirates and Qantas will meet this month to review their partnership and evaluate whether to extend it to include low-cost carrier Jetstar Airways. Speaking during a podcast broadcast on Emirates’ ICE in-flight entertainment system, president Tim Clark said: “We have our first head up in December to make sure that everybody is fully aligned. I don’t see any glitches there. We feel very comfortable that we can take this arrangement to the next level.”
Turkish Airlines aims to continue its high growth rate in 2014 as more new aircraft join its fleet, but the focus will be on adding frequencies rather than launching routes to new destinations, CEO Temel Kotil says. “Of course we will continue to add new destinations, but our network is now so large that the pace of adding new gateways will be lower than it was in the past years,” Kotil told Aviation Week on the sidelines of Aviation Leadership Summit organized by the Association of European Airlines (AEA) in Brussels.
Click here to view the pdf Top Carriers - Miami, Dec. 15-21, 2013, Ranked By Scheduled Outbound ASMs Top Carriers - Miami, Dec. 15-21, 2013, Ranked By Scheduled Outbound ASMs Departures Airport Share ASMs (mil) Airport Share Seats /Dept.
The House aviation subcommittee has tasked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) with evaluating foreign civil aviation authority (CAA) certification processes to see if any lessons learned can benefit both FAA’s process and U.S. manufacturers. GAO’s study will cover four areas: how FAA certification compares to foreign counterparts; general lessons learned; challenges that U.S. manufacturers have with foreign certification; and how FAA addresses foreign challenges to U.S. approvals.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) expects passenger air traffic to grow faster during the next few years than it has in the previous five years. In its latest Airline Industry Forecast, the association estimates air travel will grow by 5.4% annually (compound annual growth rate, CAGR). That is significantly more than the 4.3% the industry has seen in the five years up to and including 2012. According to IATA, growth has been slower in that period because of the 2008 global financial crisis in its longer term effects on the global economy.
Airlines operating in the European Union (EU) can count on a long-running benefit continuing permanently, as regulators this week acted to make a zero tariff on jet fuel permanent. The European Council formally adopted a regulation Monday removing the planned 4.7% levy on jet fuel imports beginning on January 1, 2014, although in practice the zero perecent tariff has been applied for many years.
Air Canada, broadening its regional feed cost-savings efforts, has tapped long-time partner Air Georgian to take over some regional jet flying, including transborder routes, currently served by Jazz. “Air Georgian has been selected to operate a number of additional regional routes including transborder routes in mid-2014 using Canadair Regional Jet aircraft,” Air Canada says in a statement on the memorandum of understanding.
