Kenya Airways will suspend its thrice-weekly Paris Charles de Gaulle service on Feb. 26 owing to a plunge in bookings that followed a French government advisory against travel to Kenya. "We are hopeful that we will resume Paris flights for the summer high season once the. . .travel advisory has been removed," CEO Titus Naikuni said. Air Canada and Jet Airways announced a codeshare agreement effective Feb. 28.
North American Airlines will discontinue scheduled service to Lagos, Accra and Georgetown on May 20. Chief Commercial and Planning Officer Rob Binns said the markets were performing as expected on a revenue basis but that rising fuel prices rendered them "untenable." NAA will redeploy the aircraft on charter services. Lufthansa will launch thrice-weekly Munich-Mumbai passenger service on May 3 with an A340-300 and increase thrice-weekly Frankfurt-Kolkata to five-times-weekly on June 3, when it will operate 50 weekly flights to six Indian destinations.
FAA Air Traffic Organization CEO Hank Krakowski told the US House of Representatives aviation subcommittee last week that the agency is making progress on reducing runway incursions, insisting that "serious" near misses on the ground are down significantly.
Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore will spend S$500 million upgrading Changi's 27-year old Terminal 1. Work will start in May and be completed by 2011. Upgrade will reflect features of the newly opened Terminal 3 ( ATWOnline, Jan. 10).
US and Australia announced an open skies agreement Friday in Washington at the conclusion of three days of negotiations. Australia becomes the US's 90th open skies partner. The deal was not signed formally and no schedule was announced. The number of airlines from either country that can serve the other once the agreement becomes effective will be unlimited, as will the number of flights permitted. Restrictions on pricing, codesharing and charters also were removed. Limitations on cargo services were removed in 1999, the US Dept.
Emirates will partner with Dubai International, London Heathrow and Hong Kong International to trial RFID baggage handling technology. EK will tag approximately 500,000 bags with RFID chips during the six-month test. Senior VP-Airport Services Dan Griffith said that "previous RFID trials by other parties on a smaller scale have shown that the technology almost eliminates scanner 'misreads,' significantly improving the efficiency of the baggage system and customer experience. We are now applying this on a much larger scale at three major airport hubs. .
Bmi will lease two 757-200s to expand its medium-haul network further from London Heathrow. In December, Chairman Michael Bishop told ATWOnline that bmi was looking for additional capacity, possibly 757s or 767-200s, to support growth on several former BMED routes that were performing well ( ATWOnline, Dec. 24, 2007). The aircraft have been wet-leased from Astraeus for two years with an option to extend.
JetBlue Airways announced an expansion of its Southern California service that will include its first flights to Los Angeles International and the West Coast debut of the E-190. Thrice-daily New York JFK-LAX and daily Boston-LAX will begin May 21. From Long Beach it will start daily flights to Austin on May 1 and service to San Jose (thrice-daily) and Seattle (twice-daily) on May 21, all operated by a mix of A320s and E-190s. Twice-daily Burbank-Washington Dulles, daily Burbank-Las Vegas and daily San Diego-Seattle all begin May 21.
Ryanair will establish its 26th European and fifth Spanish base at Reus, outside Tarragona. From October, the LCC will base two new 737-800s at the airport and add five new routes, bringing the number of destinations served from Reus to 12. New flights will go to Palma, Paris Beauvais, Santander, Santiago de Compostela and Seville. It will add a Birmingham service in June. It also has a base in Girona, approximately 100 km. northeast of Barcelona. REU is some 90 km. southwest of Barcelona. Ryanair expects to handle 1 million passengers at REU next year.
All flights to and from Greek airports will be cancelled from Tuesday midnight until Wednesday midnight due to air traffic controllers' participation in a general strike called by Greece's two largest unions, which are protesting the government's plans to reform pensions. Separately, French ATC staff are conducting strike actions this week, affecting mainly flights at Paris Orly. The CGT union is opposing plans to move ORY controllers to Roissy before regrouping them on one site near Paris in 2015, Reuters reported.
Eos Airlines will launch daily flights from London Stansted to Newark on May 5 and Dubai on July 6 aboard its 48-seat 757s. It already serves New York JFK. Eos claimed it currently carries one out of every nine business class passengers traveling between JFK and London. Virgin America yesterday launched thrice-daily San Francisco-San Diego, expanding to five-times-daily on March 9 aboard A320s. Aer Lingus will launch daily Belfast International-Paris Charles de Gaulle on March 30. It will cease operating one of its twice-daily BFS-Amsterdam flights.
US FAA will deploy 19 new air traffic control tower simulators over the next 18 months and an additional six at its Oklahoma City Academy. Simulators will be provided by Adacel Systems of Orlando. They already are in use in Chicago, Miami, Phoenix and Ontario, Calif., and are scheduled to be installed at New York JFK, Los Angeles, Oakland, Washington National, Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta, Denver, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Cleveland, San Antonio, Memphis, Honolulu, Orlando, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Boston and Newport News.
Lufthansa will strengthen its Munich hub with the addition of 180 weekly European frequencies and new services to Bilbao, Klagenfurt and Cluj in the summer schedule beginning March 30. It will base three additional A321s at MUC, increasing its Bavarian fleet to 102 narrowbody aircraft. It plans to operate 5,000 weekly flights from MUC to 90 destinations this summer.
British Airline Pilots' Assn. yesterday reiterated that it will not accept any kind of outsourcing at British Airways and stressed its readiness to strike if the carrier goes ahead with its plans to recruit non BA-crew for its new OpenSkies subsidiary, which will operate flights between mainland Europe and the US.
Northwest Airlines will launch twice-daily Minneapolis/St. Paul-Dubuque on June 20 aboard a Mesaba Airlines Saab 340B. Qatar Airways will add a fourth daily Doha-London Heathrow flight on March 30.
Aegean Airlines will launch flights from Athens to London Stansted (twice-daily from May 15 aboard A321s), Tirana (daily from May 2 aboard RJ100s), Limnos (four-times-weekly from March 30, becoming daily May 1) and Kefalonia (four-times-weekly from May 1, becoming six-times-weekly in July and daily in August). The carrier expects to take delivery of 10 A320s/A321s this year and to replace its 15 737s with Airbus narrowbodies by June 2009. Clickair will commence daily Bilbao-London Gatwick March 30 aboard an A320.
Air China said it will move into Beijing Capital Airport's new Terminal 3 next month. The 1-million-sq.-m. project includes a 3,800-m. runway and will help the airport double passenger capacity by 2015.
Skybus Airlines will discontinue Columbus-Oakland service on May 31, at which time it will operate flights on 27 city-pairs. Jet Airways launched daily Kolkata-Dhaka and four-times-weekly Delhi-Dhaka flights aboard a 737-800. It also doubled its Kolkata-Guwahati service to six-times-weekly and started daily flights from Kochi to Kuwait and Bahrain, daily Delhi-Kuwait, daily Mumbai-Bahrain, daily flights to Muscat from Kochi and Kozhikode and to Doha from Mumbai and Kozhikode, all aboard -800s.
British Airways yesterday gave little credence to concerns that it has fallen behind major European rivals in the rush toward consolidation, insisting it must move at its own pace. Instead it confirmed an increase in its Iberia stake to 10.1% from 10% that "ensures we continue to derive tax and accounting benefits," according to CFO Keith Williams.
Air France KLM will have to wait until at least Feb. 20 to conclude negotiations with Alitalia following an Italian court's decision to hold a hearing that day on Air One's challenge to the exclusive discussions ( ATWOnline, Feb. 5). AZ Chairman Maurizio Prato said AF KLM had intended to begin meeting with AZ unions starting Feb. 15, according to Reuters. Doubts about the sale's progress already had risen with the recent resignation of Prime Minister and AF KLM supporter Romano Prodi.
Norwegian will add a third 737 at its Warsaw base in June to support the launch of five new routes and an increase in frequencies on five existing routes. It will operate 22 routes out of Poland this summer including the following new services: Warsaw to Oslo Rygge (thrice-weekly), Trondheim (twice-weekly) and Split (weekly); twice-weekly Wroclaw-Oslo; twice-weekly Krakow-Stavanger.
Hainan Airlines plans to launch its first service to North America on June 9 with four-times-weekly Beijing-Seattle flights aboard A330-200s featuring 186 economy and 36 business-class seats. It plans eventually to switch to 787s. Gulf Air was granted additional capacity to India, giving it operating rights for daily service from Bahrain to Hyderabad, Kochi and Kolkata. Austrian Airlines will launch thrice-weekly Vienna-Baia Mare on April 21.
British Airways confirmed that its all-business-class A318 service scheduled to start next year from London City Airport will require a technical stop to refuel on the westbound leg owing to runway restrictions at LCY that will limit fuel load, according to widespread press reports. Flights will continue to either New York JFK or Newark. A stop on the eastbound leg will not be required since aircraft departing either airport will not be weight-restricted. CEO Willie Walsh said flights would stop between LCY and Shannon, with total westbound travel time of 9.5 hr.
Japan Airlines Group released its latest corporate plan covering the April 1, 2008-March 31, 2009, period and said the expansion of Tokyo's downtown Haneda Airport, downsizing of the fleet and the introduction of more premium products are pivotal. It plans to operate flights between Haneda and Beijing Nanyuan during this summer's Olympics as well as to increase the number of international "charter" flights from the airport. JAL currently operates flights from Haneda to downtown airports in Seoul (Gimpo) and Shanghai (Hongqiao).
