Kingfisher Airlines, which launched international service yesterday with a Bangalore-London Heathrow A330-200 flight, said it plans to raise $400 million through an equity sale, possibly during the first quarter of next year. Chairman Vijay Mallya told reporters that the exact nature of the sale has not been determined. "Everything depends on the right value," he explained. "Earlier, we tried to raise $300 million, but due to adverse market conditions, we have deferred this.
Kuwaiti government won an order in Quebec Superior Court allowing it to seize Iraq's stake in a fleet of 10 CRJ900s ordered in March, according to the The Gazette of Montreal. Bombardier's initial contract with Iraqi Airways, which is state-owned, was valued at $239 million. In April, Iraq converted six options, bringing the order's value to $498 million ( ATWOnline, April 17). The first aircraft was scheduled to be delivered next month.
Compagnia Aerea Italiana, a group of 16 Italian investors, submitted a "preliminary offer" to buy a large part of Alitalia, the carrier confirmed yesterday. AZ entered bankruptcy protection last week. Its Extraordinary Administrator, Augusto Fantozzi, said the "confidential" offer for "the purchase of business assets forming a significant part of the activities" of the company "seems" to meet the requirements established by Italy's recently amended bankruptcy law.
A summer survey of 113 airline executives conducted by US consulting firm IdeaWorks revealed that "more and more airlines are turning to a la carte pricing to provide an ancillary revenue boost" and that "more and more airlines appear willing to act independently on the issue of a la carte fees."
Continental Airlines reported an estimated 4.5%-5.5% year-over-year increase in August consolidated RASM. It flew 9.14 billion RPMs during the month, up 0.7%, against a 2.4% rise in ASMs to 10.89 billion. Load factor fell 1.4 points to 83.9%. British Airways flew 10.17 billion RPKs in August, a 1.6% fall from the year-ago month. Capacity climbed 1.9% to 13.16 billion ASKs, dropping load factor 2.7 points to 77.3%.
EADS will invest €180 million ($263.5 million) to build a new plant in Augsburg that will manufacture fuselage parts for the A350, the Associated Press reported. The facility will open in 2011 adjacent to the current Airbus factory.
Emirates' second A380 will be delayed by a "few weeks," the airline said. EK started commercial service with its first A380 on Aug. 1 with a flight from Dubai to New York JFK ( ATWOnline, Aug. 4) and now is operating the aircraft on the route thrice-weekly. It planned to take its second A380 this month and upgrade the Dubai-JFK service to daily but that timeline will be pushed back. "We are negotiating with Airbus the delivery date of a second A380," EK said.
Air New Zealand will launch a new cabin product on its A320 and 767 fleets used on Pacific and Australian services on Sept. 9. Rather than back away from capital expenditure, ANZ has embraced further product upgrades designed to snare premium customers ( ATWOnline, March 14). This year it is investing more than NZ$55 million ($38.3 million) installing IFE throughout the 767s and A320s used on short- and medium-haul routes and increasing seat pitch in economy ahead of the wing to 35 in.
Virgin Atlantic Airways is considering joining a consortium that may submit a bid for ownership of London Gatwick if airports operator BAA divests LGW, the carrier confirmed ( ATWOnline, Aug. 21). "Virgin Atlantic would be interested in possibly bidding to run it, as part of a consortium. We would be able to bring our expertise in customer service into any ownership group," it said.
Spanair continued to defend its decision not to move passengers from the MD-82 that crashed last month prior to a second takeoff attempt as reports surfaced that the pilot asked for two busses to be used to transfer passengers to another aircraft following the aborted first takeoff.
Mechtronix Systems said the International Flight Training Center in Istanbul received JAA Level D certification for its A320 FFS X featuring electric motion system, LCoS projectors and replication architecture. French DGAC performed the evaluation.
Hainan Airlines reported a net profit of CNY311 million ($45.5 million) in the first half, up 63.9% over the CNY189.7 million earned in the year-ago semester, thanks largely to the appreciating yuan. Operating revenue rose 1.5% year-over-year to CNY6.34 billion but HNA did not disclose the amount of its currency gains. The yuan has been the only reliable contributor to Chinese carriers' bottom lines in 2008 owing to the combined burdens of falling demand, fierce competition and high fuel prices.
Finnair and Finncomm Airlines entered into a 50/50 joint venture to establish Finnish Aircraft Maintenance, which will specialize in ATR turboprops and E-145s. FAM will serve domestic and international customers at Helsinki Vantaa pending approval of competition authorities. A new maintenance hangar will open by next spring. Finncomm currently operates nine ATR 72-500s and will grow its fleet to 16 by 2011.
LAST YEAR WAS A BUMPER YEAR FOR airports around the world as they posted their fifth consecutive year of traffic increases, reaching a passenger throughput of 4.9 billion. This was up 6.5% on 2006, and the rate also surpassed the 4.9% increase recorded between 2005 and 2006 (see Table 1). Since the industry bottomed in 2002, passenger traffic has grown at an average annual rate of 5.7%, bringing 1 billion new passengers into airports, an increase of 32% over the five years.
Frustrated by its inability to process travel agency sales through IATA's billing and settlement plans, V Australia launched its own travel agent payment and settlement system. IATA barred the carrier from using the BSPs until it acquires its own operating certificate.
AS US LEGACY CARRIERS COME TO grips with soaring fuel costs, the pain is trickling--in some cases pouring--down onto their regional partners. This reversal of fortune comes after more than a decade of impressive growth that saw regionals assume an ever-expanding role in the nation's air transportation network, deploying hundreds of 50-seat regional jets (and smaller numbers of 70/90-seaters) to markets for which slower but more fuel efficient turboprops would not have been practical and to replace and complement mainline jet service in existing city-pairs.
US airline executives may be feeling a bit of whiplash. Just a year ago, the second quarter was celebrated as the first reporting period in nearly five years that ended with no US carrier in bankruptcy protection, and all of the nation's 10 largest airlines were in the black with cumulative net income of more than $5 billion. A year later, dramatically rising fuel costs coupled with a weak US economy led to the 10 carriers posting a cumulative net loss of $5.8 billion in the 2008 quarter, results that stamped out any remaining enthusiasm about the "recovery" of 2007.
The idea came about when the carrier was thinking of ways to stimulate travel during the fall lull. "We were looking for something unique to get people thinking about travel," Don Uselmann, manager of business development, said. "We wanted a 'water cooler' story, something that people would talk about." JetBlue decided to auction off 218 flight packages--roundtrips for one or two people to specific destinations on specific dates--and six vacation products for weekend trips in September and early October.
Ryanair said it welcomed the decision of the Hamburg Court to uphold its injunction against Vtours.de, which it described as "a screenscraper/ticket-tout website which was previously selling Ryanair tickets, with inflated hidden markups, to German consumers." Ryanair's aggressive stance against screenscrapers has drawn the attention of the European Commission ( ATWOnline, Aug. 27).
Aeroflot's board last week decided to open a branch in Krasnoyarsk, where it will base a Tu-154 and add up to seven aircraft in the fourth quarter. It said the decision was based on "KrasAir's difficulties to continue its operations and to meet the considerable demand in this region." KrasAir is one of the largest constituents of the debt-ridden, five-airline AiRUnion alliance, which recently suffered from operational difficulties and groundings and last week was promised 24,000 tonnes of fuel by the Russian government through Sept.
SkyEurope Airlines suffered a €16.8 million ($24.8 million) loss in the fiscal third quarter ended June 30, widened from a €5.1 million deficit in the year-ago quarter, as high fuel prices offset the company's continuing efforts to cut costs and streamline its operation.
US National Transportation Safety Board said it is investigating an Aug. 28 incident in which a Transaero 747-400 and a Delta Air Lines 737-800 "came within zero ft. vertical and 1 min. lateral separation at an altitude of 33,000 ft. about 179 mi. north of San Juan, Puerto Rico." It added that the Transaero 747 "descended 200-300 ft." after receiving a TCAS alert. The DL aircraft was en route from New York JFK to Port of Spain.
Lufthansa is competing with Air France KLM to be a strategic partner with a reorganized Alitalia, whose board declared bankruptcy last Friday, the head of a key investor group told La Repubblica Friday. Roberto Colaninno, who reportedly leads the consortium of 16 Italians organized by Intesa Sanpaolo and prepared to invest €1 billion ($1.48 billion) in the carrier, said, "We are negotiating with both, and they're going at the same speed. .
LOT Polish Airlines low-fare subsidiary Centralwings will cease operating scheduled services next month and become a charter and ACMI carrier, it announced last week, saying market conditions have "imperil[ed] the company's stability." It will begin the transition on Sept. 14 and by Sept. 30 will operate only charter flights save for Warsaw-Lisbon service that will end Oct. 7.
