Air China reached an agreement with CITIC Pacific to purchase a significant portion of the latter's stake in Cathay Pacific, raising its share in the Hong Kong carrier to 29.99% from 17.49%.
Gulfstream International Airlines parent Gulfstream International Group announced a $2.2 million second-quarter profit, reversed from a $3.5 million loss in the year-ago quarter. Result largely was due to a $2 million noncash tax benefit, although the Florida-based regional was profitable on the operating level as well with a $984,000 surplus comparing to a $5.5 million deficit in the second quarter of 2008.
Southwest Airlines Pilots Assn. confirmed in a statement issued Friday that the union's refusal to integrate its seniority list with that of Frontier Airlines led to the impasse that scuttled SWA's bid for the Denver-based carrier ( ATWOnline, Aug. 17).
Turkish Airlines flew 21.3 billion RPKs during the first seven months of 2009, up 12.4% over the year-ago period. Capacity rose 19.7% to 30.6 billion ASKs and load factor fell 4.5 points to 69.5%.
Ryanair yesterday announced that it will close nine of its 10 routes to/from Manchester and switch them to "lower-cost competitor" airports such as Nottingham East Midlands, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool on Oct. 1, citing MAN's refusal to lower its charges.
Strategic Airlines, an Australian scheduled, charter and ACMI operator, said it received an AOC from the French DGAC last week. It plans to operate two A320s in Europe. One already is flying on wet-lease with Solomon Airlines and the second is expected to be available this month for ACMI and charter flights. Strategic acquired OzJet Airlines in June ( ATWOnline, June 30).
UK government will provide Airbus with up to £340 million ($562.2 million) of repayable launch aid for development of the A350, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson confirmed during a visit to Airbus's Filton facility Friday. At the Paris Air Show in June, European governments said they reached agreement to give Airbus €3.5 billion ($4.97 billion) in soft loans for A350 development. The French and German governments already have pledged a combined €2.5 billion for the project, while Spain is expected to loan around €400 million. A statement from the UK Dept.
British Airways said it held "positive" talks with Iberia last week in London about their planned merger. "We have now met twice with the new management team at Iberia and will meet again in due course," CEO Willie Walsh told BA News, the carrier's in-house weekly.
V Australia, the long-haul subsidiary of Brisbane-based Virgin Blue, announced a major expansion of its route network focused around Melbourne and Brisbane. It will launch twice-weekly Brisbane-Phuket service on Nov. 22, followed by weekly MEL-Phuket on Dec. 3. It will commence twice-weekly MEL-Johannesburg flights on March 13. It currently operates three 777-300ERs between Sydney and Brisbane and Los Angeles and will add an MEL-LAX service on Dec 1. It is due to take its fourth -300ER by early October, will add a fifth in September 2010 and has another two on order plus eight options.
Spain's Civil Aviation Accident Investigation Commission released another report yesterday on the August 2008 crash of a Spanair MD-82 that killed 154 people, confirming that the pilots did not know the aircraft's flaps and slats were not extended as it attempted to take off from Madrid ( ATWOnline, Oct. 13, 2008). "The aircraft had the standard procedures and checklists in force. . .which included the selection and confirmation of the correct configuration for takeoff," the report said, according to Reuters.
LOT Polish Airlines suffered a PLN178 million ($60.9 million) loss in the first six months of 2009, which included the closure of its low-cost subsidiary Centralwings ( ATWOnline, April 2), and will bring in a financial adviser to help sell new shares, Reuters reported. "Options include selling a stake to another carrier, a financial investor or even floating the airline on a stock exchange," CEO Sebastian Mikosz was quoted as saying.
Republic Airways Holdings confirmed late Thursday that it had been declared the winner in the court-monitored auction for bankrupt Frontier Airlines and plans to purchase the Denver-based carrier when it emerges from Chapter 11, likely in the fall.
Aircraft Leasing and Management arranged the sale of and delivered an additional BAe 146-300 to Lima-based Star Peru on behalf of Flybe, which has replaced its BAe 146 fleet with E-195s. ALM is remarketing the remaining Flybe 146s.
Finnair said it is proceeding with a restructuring that aims to achieve greater efficiency and save costs. The airline is in somewhat of a transitional state after President and CEO Jukka Hienonen announced his resignation following its fourth consecutive quarterly net loss ( ATWOnline, Aug 10), but he is staying in the post for the time being and the restructuring is slated to move forward.
Belavia Belarusian Airlines acquired a 737-500 from ILFC, bringing its fleet to five 737-500s, three 737-300s, three CRJ100/200s, four Tu 154-Ms, and one Tu-134.
TAM Friday reported that it earned BRL788.9 million ($429 million) in second-quarter net income on BRL2.4 billion in revenue. It did not provide year-over-year comparisons in the preliminary figures it issued. ATWOnline reported last year that TAM posted 2008 second-quarter net income of BRL50.2 million on BRL2.51 in revenue. The Brazilian carrier said last week that its 2009 second-quarter RASK decreased 20.9% while CASK declined 10.4%.
JetBlue Airways announced last week that it will sell "all-you-can-jet" passes through Aug. 21 for "unlimited" travel aboard the LCC between Sept. 8 and Oct. 8. The passes cost $599 each and "will allow [holders] to visit any of the airline's 56 international and domestic destinations as often as they like" if seats are available during the month-long period, the airline said in a statement.
Air France KLM reported a 3.3% drop in July traffic on a 4.1% capacity cut. Load factor increased 0.7 point to 85.1%. Lufthansa Group posted a 6.2% increase in July traffic to 15.48 billion RPKs on a 5.7% lift in capacity to 18.63 billion ASKs, producing a load factor of 83.1%, up 0.4 point.
Iberia's board asked the airline's new chairman and CEO, Antonio Vazquez, to look into alternatives to its merger with British Airways, elEconomista reported.
Cathay Pacific Airways said it will park six passenger aircraft despite its better-than-expected half-year result announced last week. Thanks to fuel hedge gains and cost/capacity cuts, it posted an HK$812 million ($104.8 million) profit for the six months ended June 30 ( ATWOnline, Aug. 6). But Chairman Christopher Pratt told media in Hong Kong yesterday that CX does not see "signs of any pickup in business," Bloomberg reported. The parked aircraft will comprise four A340-300s and two 747-400s.
China Southern Airlines yesterday became the first Chinese mainland carrier to gain regulatory approval to launch a branch company in Taipei that will be allowed to sell tickets for cross-strait flights.
The fallout over last week's incident in which 47 passengers were stranded overnight on an ERJ-145 operated by ExpressJet Holdings continued yesterday, with House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (R-Minn.) claiming that more than 415 flights had "taxi-out times of three hours or more" in the US in the first half of 2009.
Piedmont Airlines, a wholly owned regional subsidiary of US Airways, stands to lose the most in the slot swap agreement that was announced yesterday between US and Delta Air Lines (see story above). Piedmont, which operates a fleet of 56 Dash 8s, will end all service at New York LaGuardia and eliminate 300 positions when the reduced flight schedule begins. It also will close its pilot and flight attendant domiciles and line maintenance at LGA.
CAE announced that President and CEO Robert Brown will retire Sept. 30 to be succeeded by Marc Parent, currently executive VP and COO. Brown will continue as an adviser until the end of December. He became president and CEO in August 2004.
SAS Group launched a new SEK2 billion ($272 million) cost-saving program after posting its seventh consecutive quarterly consolidated net loss, a SEK1.05 billion second-quarter deficit that compared to a SEK422 million net loss in the year-ago period.
